912 Patriots of Lower Bucks - Your Daily Updates ALL in ONE Place!
April 15, 2013
Quote:
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
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WND EXCLUSIVE
U.N. REPORT COVERS UP OBAMA ROLE IN ARMING TERRORISTS
Bombshell revelations show how secret administration policy is fueling conflicts
JERUSALEM - Questions remain about the Obama administration's role in supplying arms to Libyan rebels as a United Nations report released this week reveals the weapons from Libya to extremists proliferating at an "alarming rate," fueling conflicts in Mali, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere.
During the fight against Moammar Gadhafi's regime in 2011, it was widely reported the Obama administration coordinated foreign arms shipments via cut outs to the Libyan rebels.
In December 2012, the New York Times reported that after discussions among members of the National Security Council, the Obama administration backed arms shipments to Libyan rebels from both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
American officials told the Times that the UAE first approached the Obama administration during the early months of the Libyan uprising, asking for permission to ship American-built weapons that the U.S. had supplied for the emirates' use.
The administration rejected the request to ship U.S. weapons, instead urging the emirates to ship foreign weapons to Libya that could not be traced to the U.S., the Times reported.
"The U.A.E. was asking for clearance to send U.S. weapons," one former U.S. official told the Times. "We told them it's O.K. to ship other weapons."
The Times further reported in 2012 the White House "secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats."
There is more evidence of the Obama administration OKing arms to Libyan rebels. In March 2011, Reuters broke the story that Obama had signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Gadhafi, quoting U.S. government officials.
Reuters noted the order was a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency.
16 Senate Republicans: We Have to Pass the Gun Control Bill to Find Out What's In It by Philip Hodges
It's not just the Senate Democrats who voted to bring the "bipartisan" Toomey-Manchin gun control compromise to the floor for a vote. After all, Pat Toomey is a Republican. And the motion to pass cloture would have failed if it weren't for 16 Republicans who decided that the bill should be moved forward for a vote. Sure, they might cast their symbolic "no" vote once it's actually voted on, but they could have prevented the bill from being voted on in the first place.
And not only that, no one's read the bill. Not even Dianne Feinstein. That was one of the main reasons that Senators Paul, Lee and Cruz were going to filibuster the bill. Here's part of a statement released by those 3 senators:
"This morning the Senate will vote on the motion to proceed to the firearms bill (S.649). It is expected that the Toomey-Manchin provision announced yesterday will replace the current language regarding background checks. Yet, as of this morning, not a single senator has been provided the legislative language of this provision. Because the background-check measure is the centerpiece of this legislation it is critical that we know what is in the bill before we vote on it. The American people expect more and deserve better. Unfortunately, the effort to push through legislation that no one had read highlights one of the primary reasons we announced our intention to force a 60-vote threshold. We believe the abuse of the process is how the rights of Americans are systematically eroded, and we will continue to do everything in our power to prevent it."
Here are the 16 Republicans that need to be voted out of office for agreeing to bring this gun control bill to the senate floor for a vote without even reading what was in it:
Imagine if each of the 67 county GOP's did this very same thing?
Can you imagine how powerful that would be?
It can be done with the proper leadership!
In the spring of 2014 many of the local GOP committee seats will be up for re-election in your precinct and every precinct in your county. The committee people elect the county leadership. County chairs also serve on the state GOP committee.
Up to 90% of these committee seats can be vacant on Primary Election Day. That means there is a blank spot on your Primary ballot where it says "Republican committee."
Will you allow those spots to remain BLANK or held by RINO's?
We can change the GOP, but first we have to BE the GOP!
Lois Kaneshiki
There have been two developments in the last several days that will have a negative impact on your future 2nd amendment rights.
1) Foremost is the Toomey Senate bill which is a political ploy to start an incremental erosion of your 2jnd amendment rights. It outlines a full background check and would leave open a backdoor gun control by disallowing mental illness as refusal to gun purchase. This means that some liberal bureaucrat could disallow a combat veteran or if perhaps your doctor discloses that at one time you were depressed or angry. It Addresses gun show "loopholes", but 90+% of the gun show sales are through licensed dealers, who use federal forms . In some states a full background check is required for long guns also.
This law is a political ploy and an opening door to gun control expansion. None of the provisions of this law would have prevented Sandy Hook or Aurora. Instead of proposing some effective action such as elimination of "gun free zones" and putting armed guards in school they chose a political path.
Ask Sen. Toomey what will he propose after the next mass shooting and it will happen because of the immoral lunes in society and no effective legislation has been proposed.
Call Senator Toomey and express your opposition to this bill:
Washington, DC--(202) 224-4254 Philadelphia, PA--(215) 241-1090Allentown/Lehigh Valley--1-855-552-1831 (toll-free for PA callers
2) Rep Fitzpatrick(7 Dist) has sent out a questionnaire that asks leading questions. Its purpose appears to be a way of painting popular support for the Toomey bill. Again it does not address the real issue of gun crime prevention. Ask him to rewrite the question and to include meaningful issues like armed guards in schools as the President and wealthy individual have for their children and elimination of gun free zones.
Contact Rep Fitzpatrick:
Phone: (215) 579-8102 Langhorne PA
Phone: (202) 225-4276 Washington DC
Here is his current survey:
Where Do You Stand On Gun Control?
Your opinion is important to me. Please share your opinion and then leave a comment below.
Do you consider criminal background checks to be a form of gun control?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Undecided
Should gun buyers undergo a background check if they are purchasing from a gun show?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Undecided
Should gun buyers undergo a background check if they are purchasing on the internet?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Undecided
Do you think there should be a penalty for states that do not send criminal and mental health records to be added to the background check system?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Undecided
Do you agree with a proposal to study the causes of mass shootings?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Undecided
New York State now using anti-anxiety prescriptions as excuse for gun confiscation (Rush Limbaugh)
"Undignified" (& worse): Limbaugh on Obama's "We've got to make it harder to gun down our kids"
SAVE THE DATE: APRIL 16th CITIZENS FOR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
Tuesday, April 16, 2013, 6:30-8:30 pm
Quakertown Library, 401 W. Mill Street, Quakertown
hosts PEG LUKSIK -
"EDUCATION: From the 3 R's to the 3 P's"
(The Federal Government Takeover of Education)
Founder & Chairman Pennsylvania Parents Commission and National Parents Commission - to give parents a voice in education and public policy: State-wide leader in successful effort to stop implementation of Outcome Based Education
Founder, CEO, Chair Board of Trustees of Mom's House - service network assisting single parents and children in completing education to become employable
State Chairman, Constitutional Party of Pennsylvania 1995
T.V. host "The Learning Curve"
Co-author "Outcome Based Education: The States Assault on our Children's Values"
WHO CONTROLS THE CHILDREN??For a preview of this fantastic speaker, watch this dynamite YouTube video
Peg Luksik "Who Controls Our Children" How Public Schools Dumb Down Kids
Our meeting for April is TUESDAY April 16 (not Thursday like usual) at 7pm at Rock (857 Main St Harleysville). We have Leo Knepper from Citizens' Alliance of Pennsylvania. He will talk about PA state issues. Please come!
Here are action items Pam wanted to forward to you. 1. Members of PA Tea Party Patriots are working on a plan to get our State legislatures to pay attention to how our schools are implementing curriculum to conform to Common Core. http://nopacommoncore.com/
PA state education department agreed to implement the Common Core Curriculum before it was written.
Antithetical to our principles: 1) Limited govt: Obama admin enlisted private organizations to create standards which are replacing the PA standards. We don't know who these orgs are and have no recourse to contact them. We're on the hook for federal education $ to teach curricula to meet the standards. Should remain state issue. 2) Fiscal Responsibility: $645 million to implement in PA. 3) Is also invasion of privacy: Looks to implement a student tracking database which includes metrics like health histories, disciplinary record, family income range and religious affiliation.
2. Ungag the Benghazi 33 - The American people deserve the truth! Sen. Lindsey Graham is the only voice speaking out on the Benghazi cover-up. Attached is a .txt letter for you to address, sign, print and send to your representative or senator.
3. Election Laws We're not affiliated with John Birch Society but the info below, when combined with "immigration reform", welfare/medicaid expansion/Obamacare, student loan forgiveness, etc, looks an awful lot like a well-orchestrated plan to secure voter blocks and the voting system in the Progressive's favor. This from the JBC::
Stop the Federal Power Grab of Our Elections
No fewer than five bills to increase federal control over American elections have been filed in the 113th Congress. The Obama administration has appointed a bipartisan presidential commission supposedly for the purpose of streamlining election procedures and reducing the long lines. However, even a cursory review of the bills already proposed reveals that passage of these bills would enable an unconstitutional federal power grab over American elections accompanied by drastic reductions in the safeguards against electoral fraud that remain in at least some of the states. The bills submitted so far are:
H.R. 50 - Streamlined and Improved Methods at Polling Locations and Early Voting Act of 2013 (SIMPLE)
H.R. 280 - Same Day Registration Act of 2013
H.R. 281 - Voter Access Protection Act of 2013
H.R. 289 - Value Our Time Elections Act of 2013 (VOTE)
The Founding Fathers of our republic knew how dangerous to freedom centralized control over elections would be. But they also feared opponents of the proposed U.S. Constitution might try to undermine the new form of government by failing to call elections. That's why they put a provision in Article I, Section 4 saying Congress may alter the states' voting laws. The purpose of this grant of power was explained in Federalist Paper #59 as only to be used to address specific extraordinary situations and would be temporary. Further confirmation of this explanation can be inferred by its placement in Article I, Section 4 and using the word "may." The ongoing permanent powers for Congress are granted in Article I, Section 8 using the word "shall" in listing those powers under the phrase "Congress shall have the Power To."; History has proved the dangers of centralized control over a country's elections. Witness those of modern-day, third world dictatorships or those of an earlier day in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. United States Ambassador Arthur Bliss Lane documented the fraud in the Polish election in 1947 where he quoted reliable estimates that 60 percent of the Polish voters voted for the Polish Peasant Party and its freedom agenda, but that the Stalin-controlled, centralized elections bureaucrats counted the votes behind closed doors and declared the Communists the winners. We urge contact with members of Congress to alert them of this danger and ask them to pledge to block the dangerous centralized control over our elections that would be enabled by the five bills mentioned above. The ability for us to cast our ballots in free and unfettered elections is at stake.
Click here to send a message to your representative and senators to alert them to this danger and to request that they block this legislation.
5. Smart meters - This from our friends in central PA Tea Party Patriots:
SMART METER update is as follows: REP ROBERT GODSHALL could be the nail in our coffin if we don't act fast. Please call him and ask that he does these two things. First, ask him to bring Reese's three Stop Smart Meter Bills out of committee and ask him to vote "yes" for all three bills. The bills are as follows: HB 902 which is "Consumer Opt Out". HB 899 which is "Repeal a mandate to install smart meter technology on the buildings of their customers". HB 906 which is "Consumer Consent to share smart meter information". PLEASE CALL GODSHALL NOW! Rep. Robert W. Godshall (717) 783-6428. Fax: (717) 787-7424 TTY: (855) 282-0614
Thanks, See you on Tuesday for our meeting with Leo Knepper! -Jim, Pam, Tim
Updated PA Leadership Conference Agenda Released
The conference which will be held April 19-20, 2013 at the Radisson Penn Harris Convention Center in Camp Hill (Harrisburg), PA.
Registration includes admission to all conference functions EXCEPT the pre-dinner reception. Registration DOES include the Friday evening dinner with speaker Steve Hayes of Fox News/The Weekly Standard (do not register separately for the dinner); the Saturday breakfast with John Gizzi and Saturday lunch with pollster/commentator Scott Rasmussen. It also includes all panels, workshops and speakers. The only function NOT included in the registration fee is the pre-dinner reception with Steve Hayes, which is priced separately.
Urgent action required It is urgent that every gun owner call their Senators today and demand that they oppose the "See a Shrink, Lose your Guns" sell-out bill that is being authored by Senators Pat Toomey (R) and Joe Manchin (D) - but which also has Chuck Schumer's fingerprints all over it. Call immediately at 202-224-3121.
See a Shrink, Lose your Guns The anti-gun "ranters" have spent the last week telling us that Republican Senators can't filibuster Harry Reid's gun control bill; that they can't cut off debate to a bill they haven't seen yet. "Let the bill come up," they say. "We need to see the bill" before Senators can vote against cloture in order to proceed to it. An unintended conscequence could be people afraid to seek help for depression or anxiety for fear of loosing their right to bear arms.
Repeal of gun owner protections In addition, Toomey no doubt unintentionally agreed to repeal one of the most important protections for gun owners that was included in the 1986 McClure-Volkmer Act - the provision that would allow you to take an unloaded, locked-up gun through states like New York without being stopped. Under a new subsection (c), the Toomey-Manchin-Schumer bill would require you to "demonstrate" to the satisfaction of New York police where you were coming from and where you are going to. And, if you don't do that to their satisfaction, they can arrest you.
Nothing is this bill would actually make children safer at schools. There is nothing that will actually keep bad guys from stealing or illegally acquiring guns, but there's plenty that will threaten our gun rights!
ACTION: Click here to contact your two senators immediately. Tell them the "see a shrink; lose your guns" sellout is even worse than the Feinstein gun ban which will reportedly be on the same amendment tree with it. Distribute this alert far and wide.
Three (3) Important Dates for Your Calendar-April 2013
We need people to RSVP so we know how to plan!
Thursday, April 25th-KTP 4 Year Anniversary
(This date was changed from Friday, April 26th to the above date)
Where: The Standard Club, Doylestown (formerly The Moose) Time: 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Please join us for pizza and light refreshments to see where it all began.
Speakers from our original 04/18/09 event will be there to discus where we are now and what direction we will be going forward.
We have heard back from Pat Bachtle, Candidate for Prothonotary,and Tom Lingenfelter, Candidate for Sheriff. They will talk for a few minutes and take questions from the audience.
State Representative Marguerite Quinn is Speaking as well.
We will also hear from some folks from the movement including our very own Steve Onufrey.
Depart: Doylestown Library When: 7:30 a.m. Arrive: Harrisburg, PA Depart: 2:30 p.m. Cost: $50.00 due ASAP to reserve bus(es) Includes: Shirt, Drink
This is a very important event! We need to be heard here in Pennsylvania or we will end up like New York. The Founding Fathers would be cheering us on!!! Don't forget you get a shirt and lunch with this ticket.
For more information please call or email Steve Onufrey at:
Please mail your check payable to CGOBC as follows:
CGOBC PO Box 745 Doylestown, PA 18901
Come join the Concerned Gun Owners of Bucks County (COGBC) on their bus trip to Harrisburg to promote H.B. 357. Plan on entering the capital to meet with your legislators and to support your 2nd Ammendment Right!
April 14, 2013
Dear Members and Friends,
We are thrilled to announce that Amity Shlaes, author of Coolidge and The Forgotten Man, will deliver the keynote address at our 5th Annual April T.E.A. (Taxed Enough Already) Party.
(Last year, special guest Governor Mitt Romney joined us at the Franklin Institute.)
The theme of Ms. Shlaes talk will be: "The President Who Said 'No' to Taxes and Spending."
Making his 5th straight appearance at our April T.E.A. Party will be our great friend,
Dom Giordano. Dom will speak and also moderate the Q & A Session with Ms. Shlaes.
The event will be held Sunday, April 28, 3-5 PM, in the Ballroom of the Independence Visitor Center. Further details will be announced soon. Please save the date!
Pot of Gold Money Drop Campaign
As you well know, the Independence Hall Tea Party Association rarely sends out appeals to raise money for itself.
We are very sensitive to the fact that far too many organizations solicit funds from you, via email, on a daily or weekly basis.
Rarely, if ever, do you see the fruits of your contributions to these groups. Much of the money raised goes to cover the cost of paid staff and/or to professional fundraising and consulting firms.
Unlike most of these organizations, the Association is an all volunteer organization. Every penny we raise is spent on costs associated with our mission.
One observer said of the Association, "You get more bang for your dollar from the Independence Hall Tea Party than most conservative organizations combined."
In order for us to continue to serve our country, we must erase a small debt and raise money for future expenses, including our constant contact bill ($1500 a year).
If everyone sent us just $5, we would easily raise in excess of $30,000.00.
As it is, our goal is to raise $5000.
* Those giving a $25 donation will receive an Independence Hall Tea Party t-shirt as
our thank you.
* Those giving a $50 donation will receive an Independence Hall Tea Party golf shirt
as our thank you.
* Those giving a $100 donation will receive an Independence Hall Tea Party golf
shirt and a signed copy of Amity Shlaes book, Coolidge.
Beginning tomorrow, April 15 (tax day) WPHT 1210 AM will feature a new daily lineup of which you can be proud.
Dom Giordano as Dr. Benjamin Rush during our 2010 Christmas Commemoration of the Original December 27, 1773 Philadelphia Tea Party
Gone is Michael Smerkonish (we'll refrain from comment)--and is in his place, the dean of local talk show hosts--and conservative extraordinaire, Dom Giordano. Dom's show will air for an additional hour, every weekday, 10 AM - 2 PM.
(We believe Amity Shlaes will be one of Dom's featured guests on tomorrow's show.)
Gary R'nel Introduces Pamale Geller, Keynote Speaker of our 2012 'American Exceptionalism' July 4th Celebration, Independence Mall
Another great friend, the multi-talented Gary R'nel, moves into Afternoon drive with conservative pundit, Dick Morris. (We welcome Mr. Morris to the tri-state region!) Their show will air from 2 PM - 6 PM, Monday-Friday.
Chris Stigall reading the part of Benjamin Franklin, from the play Kingbird and Franklin, during our 2011 Constitution Day Commemoration
Of course, the natural, Chris Stigall, will begin our day with his stellar program which will now air weekdays from 6 AM - 10 AM.
We hope to see you soon!
On behalf of the Association Board,
Teri Adams
The Independence Hall Tea Party Association is a regional, tri-state (DE, PA,NJ) grassroots organization encompassing the 5th largest media market in the United States. It officially formed in May, 2009 after holding two highly successful Tea Parties earlier that year.
Its mission is to educate the general public regarding the principles of limited government as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. (Visit us @ www.IndependenceHallTeaParty.com.)
We are so blessed that over the last four years thousands of churches in over 60 countries have stood in solidarity with Israel through CUFI Sunday. From the largest cities to the smallest towns, from mega churches in the American heartland to underground churches in China, Christians have come together to express their love and support for Israel.
We pray that your church will participate in the fifth annual CUFI Sunday on May 5, 2013. CUFI will provide you with all the materials you need to implement a successful CUFI Sunday, including videos, literature and Pastor John Hagee's personal sermon notes for your use.
Please click hereto participate in CUFI Sunday. As you'll see, you don't have to be a pastor to ensure that your church stands with Israel on CUFI Sunday.
The date we've chosen for CUFI Sunday -- May 5th -- is close to Israeli Independence Day. As the Jewish State celebrates her 65th birthday, there is no better present we can send than the news of thousands of churches standing in solidarity with her!
We look forward to uniting in action and prayer on behalf of Israel with you and your congregation on May 5, 2013.
May God Bless You and Those that You Love,
Pastor John Hagee National Chairman
David Brog Executive Director
Brigitte Gabriel to Speak
in Baltimore, MD!
Brigitte Gabriel
Leading Global Islamic Terrorism Expert
CLICK HERE to view Brigitte's special video invitation!
It is my privilege to invite you to a special event featuring Brigitte Gabriel, Founder and President of ACT! for America. This event is free and open to the public and will be held at the following:
Central Christian
7411 Rossville Blvd. Baltimore, MD 21237
Monday, May 6th at 7 pm
Ms. Gabriel will speak on the rise of Islamic radicalism in your community and in our nation. Her story of survival as a persecuted Christian living in a bomb shelter for 7 years will have you captivated and inspired! She will share how the events of 9/11 compelled her to start ACT! for America, the largest national security grassroots organization in the U.S.
The recent assaults at our embassies have been a sobering wake-up call to America. The lesson is that we should be displaying strength to our enemies, not appeasement which only demonstrates our weakness. Without question, the threats of radical Islam to America have increased.
These are just some of the threats Brigitte will discuss:
Suppression of criticism of Islam
Homegrown jihad
Terrorists infiltrating our borders
The Muslim Brotherhood and creeping sharia law in America
Misrepresentation of history in our public education
You will hear first-hand how ACT! for America is successfully rolling back the tide of radical Islam...how we are winning legislative victories...how we don't have to live in fear or resign ourselves to the inevitability of the threats arrayed against us...and how we will prevail.
I encourage you to forward this email to everyone you know. For those who are not familiar with ACT! for America, please share this short video with them.
I know those of you who have heard Brigitte will agree, not only do you not want to miss this, but you will want to bring your relatives and friends with you. It will be an event people will be talking about for a long time to come!
Invite your friends and come join us in Baltimore, MD! We look forward to seeing you on May 6th
Guy Rodgers Executive Director
$25 OFF Bus if you register before April 22 $25 OFF Participation if you register before April 22
June 19 - 21 we will convene at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC for our fourth annual National Conference & Legislative Briefing.
And here's some really great news: This year's registration fee is only $229! Register by April 15th and you'll receive our "Early Bird" rate of just $189!
We also offer again this year special benefits for Patriot Eagle and Patriot sponsors.
We have some exciting new wrinkles planned for this year's event, and our list of confirmed speakers already includes:
Steven Emerson - Journalist, author, and the Executive Editor of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. A. M. Rosenthal, late-managing editor of The New York Times, described Emerson as "one of the nation's best national security correspondents."
John Guandolo - Former FBI agent and one of America's leading authorities on the Muslim Brotherhood and its inner workings in America. Guandolo spoke at our conference in 2011 and received rave reviews from conference attendees!
Ezra Levant - Canadian lawyer, author, newspaper columnist with Sun Media, and former publisher of the Western Standard. Hauled before a Canadian "human rights commission" because he published the Danish cartoons that satirized Muhammad, Levant's personal account of a politically correct government inquisition is something you won't want to miss!
The National Conference & Legislative Briefing will begin on Wed. evening, June 19th, and conclude on Friday, June 21st at noon, with additional optional training sessions Friday afternoon.
It will again feature our very popular Capitol Hill Awards Luncheon and our signature gala banquet-and of course, our Legislative Briefing, where Members of Congress will brief you on various issues and answer your questions.
So make your plans now to join us in our nation's capital for what promises to be our best National Conference & Legislative Briefing ever!
More details to come!
As Israelis celebrate their 65th Independence Day this year, we should all take time out to reflect on the miracle of Israel's independence. We must also ask ourselves the question, "What can I do to ensure that this miracle of Israel survives and thrives?"
We announced earlier this week that we'll be headed to New Orleans the first weekend in August for this year's RedState Gathering. As a member of our RedState family, we'd like to extend exclusive Early Bird registration and pricing to you (just use the promo code EARLYBIRD on the registration page).
The 2013 RedState Gathering will be held August 2-3 at the Westin Canal Place in New Orleans, LA. We'll have two full days of speakers and activities and you can expect a good mix of elected officials and potential candidates for the 2014 cycle (we'll keep you informed as additions are made).
The Gathering has always been a unique event, in that all speakers, even the most in-demand and influential, pay their own way and make their own travel arrangements. This helps keep our costs low, a savings we are happy to pass along to our conference attendees. Additionally, we strive to get you up close to the speakers, ask them to take your questions, and we take care of nearly all your meals during the conference. Bottom line: fewer frills, more thrills and access.
We are thrilled to once again be joined by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who will be hosting a reception for all attendees and appear at the Gathering podium as a keynote speaker. A huge hit in 2012, we're looking forward to Gov. Jindal playing an even larger role this year as he welcomes us to his home state.
Now, more than ever, true conservative activists must come together to exchange ideas and strategize for the future. That's what this year's Gathering is all about. We hope you'll join us.
P.S. Don't delay! You'll receive 20% off if you register today - just use the promo code EARLYBIRD. Click here.
From a trusted friend:
As some of you may know, I am associated with Coventry Christian Schools as a parent of a graduate (2010) and as member of the Board of Trustees. Last October we spent a wonderful evening honoring Mark Niehls at our revitalized Founder's Dinner and celebrated our shared heritage in the remarkable community that is Coventry Christian Schools. Our vision for future Founder's Dinners is to inspire and inform not only our alumni and current CCS families but to inspire and inform the Tri-County Area and even our region by hosting speakers and artists who can uniquely assist us in celebrating the heritage, core values, and mission of CCS while also lifting our vision for an even greater future built upon the foundation of our past. The caliber of our speakers and guest artists should provide us with wonderful opportunities to share our CCS story with new partners in Christian education. Proceeds from the dinner will be applied to our annual Coventry Kids Fund for CCS scholarships.
This year we are proud to announce that our distinguished guest and speaker is Dr. Benjamin Carson, and our dinner's theme is "Faith of Our Fathers: The Role of Faith in American Schools." Please join us as we welcome Dr. Carson to the Tri-County Area and celebrate the great things God is doing at CCS!
Dr. Carson is a highly regarded neurosurgeon and motivational speaker who has addressed various audiences across the country. He is one of the most honored and recognized physicians in the world and holds more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees along with hundreds of awards and citations. He is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. He is the author of five books and is the founder of the Carson Scholars Fund. The 2009 award-winning movie entitled Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. as Carson, premiered on TNT and is based on his memoir. Dr. Carson is an authentic disciple of Christ, has been married to his wife Candy for more than 37 years, and is the father of three sons.
The 2013 Founder's Dinner, which will once again be a part of our Homecoming festivities, will be held at the historic Sunnybrook Ballroom in Pottstown on Sunday, October 13th, 2013. Doors will open at 4:30pm, followed by dinner at 5:15. Dress will be business/professional. Tickets will be priced at $100 until May 15th, then will be $125, so reserve your tickets for the reduced price.
Due to Dr. Carson's international reputation and recent prominence in the media, including his recent speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, we fully anticipate that this event will sell out quickly once advertised to the public. Tickets go on sale to the public April 15. If you are interested in attending, tickets can be purchased online. I will send the link out to those who wish to go on April 15
th
. While online reservations are preferred because they facilitate efficient event planning, you may also complete a paper order form, which I can forward to you as well.
All of us at Coventry Christian Schools, look forward to sharing this very special evening with you and acquainting you with the school and its mission!
Blessings,
Christine Gordon
Sponsorships are available as well and are as follows:
Gold Sponsor $3,000
Two tickets at Speaker's Table
Two tickets at Headmaster's Table
Listed as sponsor on school website through 12 months post event
Listed as sponsor on pre-event print marketing
Mentioned by name at event
Full Page ad in Dinner Program
Silver Sponsor $1,500
Two tickets at Speaker's Table
Listed as sponsor on school website through 12 months post event
Half page ad in Dinner Program
Bronze Sponsor $500
Two tickets at Headmaster's Chairman's or Founder's Table
Listed as sponsor on school website through 12 months post event
·Quarter page ad in Dinner Program
Heritage Foundation weighs in on Common Core
By Rachel Sheffield April 11, 2013: Policy Analyst, The Heritage Foundation (courtesy of Citizens' Alliance of Pennsylvania)This coming school year, Pennsylvania public schools will begin implementing the Common Core education standards. Like many other states, Common Core standards are quickly making their way into the classroom. While proponents of the standards continue to champion their predicted benefits, there is significant cause for concern.First, the standards represent a massive federal overreach. The Obama Administration jumped on board from the get go, promoting national education standards, via policy and federal taxpayer dollars, as part of their education agenda. Billions of federal dollars have gone towards and are continuing to fund, the promotion and implementation of these standards nationwide. The federal government's involvement with the standards should be alarming. Pushing state and local leaders away from classroom curriculum is not only a breach in federalism but gives parents, teachers, and communities less say over what children learn in school. Education experts have also raised alarm over the quality of the standards. Sandra Stotsky, Professor of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, has particularly expressed concern over the English Language Arts. Common Core's ELA standards reduce emphasis on literature by promoting the study of "informational texts." Stotsky says
, "A diminished emphasis on literature in the secondary grades makes it unlikely that American students will study a meaningful range of culturally and historically significant literary works before graduation. It also prevents students from acquiring a rich understanding and use of the English language. Perhaps of greatest concern, it may lead to a decreased capacity for analytical thinking."
Common Core goes SOCIAL MEDIA!!! Please share with everyone you know and help us make this a huge success. MARK YOUR CALENDAR!!! Not a TWITTER person.....grab a kid and have some fun.
Parent-Led Reform (@ParentLedReform) will host a Twitter Rally on April 16, 2013 which will start will go from 12:00p-2:00p (EST). We will discuss how the Common Core State Standards effect your family, community and schools? We invite you to participate.
There will be an expert panel and several organizations that will discuss#StopCommonCore. So far I know the panel will consist of:
I'll update with a live link for the Twitter Rally (or you can just follow the hashtag #StopCommonCore) and as the expert panel is finalized.
Update: Be sure to RSVP with the Facebook event invite, this will help keep you up to date with pertinent info.
The whole story on Common Core
Read the sourced and footnoted response to the National Review Online and get all the facts you need to know about Common Core HERE. Compiled by American Principles project and Glenn's research team.
Common Core is the new set of federal education standards being pushed by the Obama administration and several leftist organizations but it's even seeing some support from some conservatives.
defending Common Core, and Glenn gave the definitive response on radio today."Common Core is something that we didn't really get for quite some time and again it's something we've learned from the 9/12 project and concerned parents all around the country that have been bringing this to our attention. When we started in on this work, we thought it was pretty bad. The more we do, the worse it becomes," Glenn said.
Below are some of the points made by the National Review Online in defense of Common Core, followed by Glenn's response.
Today on radio, Glenn gave the definitive response. See that and get all the sources to back it up HERE.
Students in some Albany High School English classes were asked to participate in the unthinkable this week as part of a persuasive writing assignment. The objective? Prove why Jews are evil and convince the teacher of their loyalty to the Third Reich in five paragraphs or less. See the actual lessonHERE.
A concerned parent tipped off TheBlaze to the disturbing fact that NY public schools are teaching the U.N.'s Socialist-leaning Universal Human Rights. We also discovered that the schools are delivering this indoctrination using videos made by the Church of Scientology. Learn what our investigation revealedHERE.
TheBlaze has been at the forefront in uncovering the disturbing details of the nationalized curriculum standard known as Common Core. One of the most troubling aspects of this federal program is that government bureaucrats are currently mining sensitive and highly personal information on children through Common Core's tracking system. Watch the powerful segments from The Glenn Beck Program HERE.
Pennsylvanians Against Common Core Facebook page has nearly 450 "friends" which is 8 times that of the pro-Core Facebook page!
Pennsylvanians Against Common Core website has had incredible traffic
We have been contacted by email by many interested parties looking for help and materials in getting the word out and in fighting Common Core. Below are some items that should be of interest to you:
Speakers - Cheryl Boise of the Commonwealth Education Organization will be coordinating speakers that can be available to speak to groups around the state on the subject. You can contact her at: ceb@ceopa.org
Flyers - We have designed an informative flyer for handout at school board meetings, political events and to your friends that should be ready in 10 days. We have ordered 10,000 of these flyers and can mail them out to you upon request when received (be patient). Attached is a one page flyer for your use now that you can print out for distribution.
Suggestion on Curriculum - Many people are telling us that their legislators are arguing that Common Core does NOT control curriculum it only sets standards. We will shortly have a piece debunking that, but in order to not to get lost in a hopeless argument you may just want to call them "national standards" when writing letters to the editor or communicating with your legislator rather than stating that Common Core determines curriculum.
Rallies - Stay tuned, they will be coming at the appropriate time...
State Board of Education Meetings - Please be advised that the PA State Board of Education did hold meetings that technically were open to the public to discuss Common Core prior to voting to enact CCS, but were not well publicized and in some cases were held in buildings with restricted access.
Petition and Passion - the comments that are posted by petition signatories tell a great story of the passion generated by this usurpation of our local and states rights.
Gennell from Reading says: Our family stands firmly against Common Core. Please be advised that our votes WILL depend on your vote against this education standard that would destroy education as we know it.
Amanda from Montgomery County says: Stop this NOW!
Deborah from Dauphin County says: "Stop Common Core and let the local authorities and the PARENTS decide how to educate their children. This is morally wrong."
Susan from Mount Holly Springs says: "Governor Corbett, We do not need Common Core in our schools. Please leave the education of my children alone. "
Michael from Pittsburgh says: "This is an absolute outrage and a violation of our parental rights and state sovereignty."
John from Erie says: "Common Core secondary math education is substandard. Classical literature is being left out in a mad attempt to teach to the test."
Action items:
Contact Secretary of Education Ronald Tomalis at rtomalis@pa.gov and 717-783-6788 and ask him reconsider advancement of Common Core and to hold open well publicized meetings to discuss. Contact your legislator in the PA House and Senate Education Committees and ask them to hold hearings on CCS and to oppose. Please pass on the links to our website and Facebook page to all of your contacts Print and pass out our one page flyer to friends and at meetings. in your area
What information is being collected on your kids through Common Core?
TheBlaze TV subscribers can watch past episodes covering Common Core and CSCOPE. The March 14th episode focused on Common Core and the March 7th episode focused on CSCOPE. Not a subscriber? Sign up HERE.
Glenn has spent a lot of time over the past few weeks exposing some of the education initiatives in states across the country that are indoctrinating kids into the radical progressive agenda. Today, Glenn discussed an issue tied into Common Core that many people aren't aware of: data mining.
"We cover many important stories and topics on this program, but I don't think any could be more important than what we are covering tonight: the progressive takeover of America's schools,"
OK....when they look at you like you have a tin foil hat on your head......take some of this information with you. It is 126 pages. I have not read through the entire document (YET) but what I have read is enough to blow off the top of your head. I have highlighted some stuff. KIPP (Charter Schools) has a CHARACTER REPORT CARD on Page 39. So for now start on page 39 and work your way through to page 45. Remember FERPA laws were changed last year and I am sure not one parent is aware that permission to share information about our children no longer requires parental consent. Obama just slipped all these new changes in and I don't believe any parents were ever asked their opinions about these changes. And where was our Republican Congress when this happened???
AGENDA 21 is: The complete control and inventory of every human activity. After your friends read some of this information ask them if they still believe A21 is not real. Chapter 36 of A21 document is devoted to education.
Our government forgets there are still people alive that can think and see through their garbage.
Print this document and get a highlighter...........then start visiting your neighbors, school boards, elected officials and start screaming. GET COMMON CORE AND THE GOVERNMENT out of our class rooms. I think it is time to start a MASS movement for Home Schooling. I know Home Schooling will not be spared. This should be a movement to bring education back to the local level and DESTROY the Federal Department of Education. If our kids are not in school it will create an uprising at all levels. We should not settle for shutting down Common Core because they will masquerade it....they are already doing this in VA. VA supposedly never signed on to Common Core but GUESS WHAT........they ARE implementing Common Core and disguising it from the citizens in VA....of course they aren't doing a good job of hiding it and people in VA are catching on. Our schools have been in the process of a government take over (in earnest) for more than 20 years. If we don't shut down the Department of Education it will never stop. We have to cause a citizen uprising!!
Here is the U.S. Department of Education - Office of Educational Technology document:
"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
Glenn: Help us get in millions of home
Why should you support the "Get TheBlaze" movement to get TheBlaze in millions of homes across the country? For starters, how about a network that will cancel out the damage Al-Jazeera will be doing in America as it replaces Current in your lineup? Check out Glenn's "why" in this exclusive letter HERE.
Ready to take action? Click here to contact your TV provider and urge them to add TheBlaze.
ATTENTION: Are you a Verizon FiOS Subscriber? They've created a new form for you to fill out to request TheBlaze! You can complete the form HERE. And don't forget to make your request public by posting on their Facebook page. Thank you for supporting us!
Sirius XM adds TheBlaze Radio News to Patriot channel
Sirius XM Radio announced today that TheBlaze, Glenn Beck's multi-platform news, information, and opinion network, will produce 24/7 hourly radio newscasts on SiriusXM Patriot, SiriusXM's conservative talk channel. DETAILS
Hi All - I just spoke w/ Lisa Lnancollas@aol.com (717 437 1327) who lives in Lewistown, Pa and is majorly involved in fighting the smart meters............and it's more than just electric, it's water, furnaces/ac's and wells too
We need to share this information. I asked her if she'd speak to groups in our area and she said yes, but would like to include Mike Reese who's written several bills that we want to get out of committee and approved:
2.signs in our yards saying NO SMART METERS......put them around like election signs
3.Let our State Reps know how you feel ie Warren Kampf....tell him you're in favor of the bills against smart meters
4.Do neighbor alerts........call your neighbors if you see trucks coming into the area
5.Write letters to the editors....remember if they get several letters, they're more likely to put at least one in.....educate the public
6.Prepare handouts
7.Send certified letter to electric company and get return receipt of name of person who signed for it
Be aware:
Water Smart Meters.........(IF YOU LET THEM IN, you're giving permission.) YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LET THEM IN
Well Smart Meters......are coming and will limit the amount of water you use.
If you get someone knocking on your door asking if you want to save money on your heat/ac, do not say yes or they'll put a clip on your unit that will limit your usage of air conditioning. The fan will work, but your usage will be CONTROLLED.
IF you get a new wall mount (thermostat & it may be required w/ a new ac unit because of the wiring) for your AC DO NOT GET ONE WITH A GPS in it........there is a cheaper model that has no GPS........ask questions BEFORE you start or consider any changes!!!!!!!!
Important Announcement from SFL
Across America, state and local officials are writing bills and resolutions to protect citizen's from Agenda 21's policies. Because many people do not recognize Agenda 21 in action, property owners still remain at risk.
To help officials recognize Agenda 21's footprint, SFL created a document in a Q&A format that answers:
How do I know Agenda 21 exists in the U.S.?
What does Agenda 21 have to do with sustainable development?
What is wrong with the Brundtland Commission's definition of sustainable development?
How do I know the UN's sustainable development is the same one in our community?
I thought sustainable development is good, what makes you think it is so bad?
How can something like this happen in America?
How will I recognize Agenda 21?
The document has a lot more information for community members and officials, including a brief history of Agenda 21 and actions to take to have safe planning without top-down intervention.
Grants issued in conjunction with government 'sustainability initiatives' contain stipulations or implementation practices that are the primary doorway for Agenda 21/sustainable development to enter your community. These stipulations often require no growth boundaries, income integration through low-income housing demands, reduced vehicle usage, healthy cities, livability principles and other forms of social engineering.
Other grants issued by non-profit groups such as the Packard, Pew or Carnegie Foundations, frequently promote Agenda 21. Often this happens when HUD or some other federal agency funds the foundation with the money they in turn offer as a sustainability-related grant.
Non-governmental organizations:
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including ICLEI, the Nature Conservancy, American Farmland Trust and the American Planning Association have close ties to HUD-EPA-DOT sustainability initiatives and promote Agenda 21 through their regional and community work, conservation easements and funding.
Federal agencies:
Federal agency Acts including the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act have so expanded, that individual's rights are losing way to unfounded and often exaggerated endangerment findings. The solutions to their findings invariably require fines, taxes, property rights' infringements or the outright transfer of private lands to the government.
Preservation programs, National Parks, Historic Places and Byways, Heritage Sites and Legacy Forest programs have exceeded prudent land and species' protection and are now confiscating massive quantities of the U.S. land mass in alignment with Agenda 21 principles.
The planning process:
Planners' surveys - contain unfair questions that do not express all of resident's options
Consensus meetings - are conducted in ways that elicit responses that support the planner's goals rather than genuine community desires
Visioning sessions- may be over-conducted to the point that the vision belongs to the facilitator and only appears to be that of the community.
Stakeholder meetings - can produce misleading results when the stakeholders do not represent the average community member. Frequently the "stakeholders" have a financial or ideological interest in implementing the plan.
Zoning regulations - originating with the American Planning Association (and others,) contains language that establishes the legal framework to implement Agenda 21 in communities. HUD, other federal agencies and firms such as Siemens funded the development of the APA's Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook, 2nd ed. These supporters all have a stake in Agenda 21's implementation.
Conservation easements - often contain undiscussed clauses that severely restrict property owners' rights, reduce property values and favor the land trust for future contract changes.
Regionalism:
Regional councils replace much of the local officials' authority with unelected boardmembers.
As the regional council matures, local rule diminishes, leaving citizens with more distant and reduced representation.
Once a region is formed, the ability to oppose sustainable development is limited.
Generally, when the regional council accepts grant monies, all tethered communities are bound by the grant stipulations.
Regional planning often includes tax base sharing which promotes wealth transfer by forcing community members to pay for services in other locations.
Regional planning often includes "no growth boundaries" that force housing into urban and inner ring suburban areas. This reduces homebuyers' choices and artificially inflates the value of some properties, while reducing it for others.
Awareness about Agenda 21 is finally spreading throughout the country, due in no small part to your efforts. But knowing it is there isn't enough. Now we need to educate ourselves on how to combat it. That's where you come in.
American Policy Center has recently released a booklet that explains everything you need to know to start fighting back against sustainable programs both locally and nationally. The booklet is called Special Report: Agenda 21 and How to Stop It and is available in the APC store for only $5.95.
I wrote this 35 page booklet in order to give activists a succinct resource they can refer to if they suspect Agenda 21 or Sustainable Development is being implemented in their area. It includes my own research coupled with incredibly helpful graphics created by Carroll County, Maryland Commissioner Richard Rothschild.
In the booklet you will find answers to several roadblocks that grassroots anti-Agenda 21 activists often face, including a definition of property rights and "Resolution to Protect Citizens' Property Rights," which many concerned citizens are already using to tie the hands of power hungry politicians.
This booklet is a great resource for anyone interested in preserving their property rights. It includes all the information to put up a first line of defense and step by step instructions for how to proceed from there. If you face Agenda 21 or Sustainable development in your area or are simply concerned with the national fight this booklet is a must read.
P.S. - The American Policy Center store has recently updated our inventory to include everything you need to fight back against Agenda 21. The revamped catalogue includes the "Stop Agenda 21 Action Kit", which provides users with everything they need to know about Agenda 21 in their own living room, as well as ways to share it with other concerned activists and critical knowledge on how to fight back. The store also offers DVDs of past successful conferences and symposiums, books and articles that deal with the issues of sustainability and Agenda 21 and individually packaged manuals and workbooks to aid you in your activism. You don't need to look any farther than the American Policy Center Store for everything you need to combat Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development in your area.
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
America needs a history lesson
Sign up now for Hillsdale's newest online courses - available FREE to every American!
Did you know that over 500,000 other students have already registered for one of our free online courses?
As Ronald Reagan once said during a speech delivered on our campus in 1978, "Hillsdale deserves the appreciation of all who labor for freedom...Your creative outreach on national issues enables little Hillsdale to cast a long shadow."
As a school of only 1,400 students, we reach over 350 TIMES that number with our online courses on the Constitution and America's founding principles.
Now is your chance to join with your fellow citizens!
Register now for this free "American Heritage" online course so you can better understand - and defend - the principles of liberty. This is the type of education America's Founders thought necessary to preserve our republic. Lectures in this not-for-credit online course are delivered by members of Hillsdale's history department faculty, and readings are drawn from the American Heritage Reader used in the American Heritage core course taught on Hillsdale's campus.
Course Schedule
Approximately 40 minutes in length, lectures will be released each Monday according to the schedule below. Once available, each week's materials can be viewed at your convenience.
Americans are waking up today to the worst "case of the Mondays" they'll have all year: It's Tax Day.
Most Americans dread Tax Day, and for good reasons. Beyond the huge tab Americans pay to the government, the tax code is so complex that it's difficult to figure out what we owe to the IRS. This is a pain for taxpayers and a huge drain on the economy.
According to the federal Taxpayer Advocate in its 2012 report, Americans' cost of complying with today's complex tax code totaled $168 billion in 2010. That's almost as large as the impact of the Obama tax hikes in fiscal year 2013, and twice the size of sequestration this year [see chart].
It takes taxpayers 6.1 billion hours-or 51 hours per household-to complete all the required filings. That's more than six full eight-hour working days per household!
The compliance burden comes on top of the direct financial cost of $3.5 trillion in federal spending. In 2012, Washington collected $20,000 in taxes for every household in America. But Washington spent nearly $30,000 per household.
Americans pay high taxes as it is, and with the 13 tax increases that hit this year, tax revenue is growing beyond its historical average as a share of the economy. But Washington's deficits continue, because spending keeps going up.
Future Tax Days promise to be even worse because of the tax increases from the fiscal cliff deal and from Obamacare. Taxpayers will start seeing these costs when they do their tax returns next April and in future years.
Too much taxing and spending is bad for the nation. Americans are right to be concerned about how the President and Congress allocate their hard-earned money. As the above infographic shows, 45 percent or almost half of all spending went toward paying for Social Security and health care entitlements. Without reforming these massive and growing programs, Washington will have to borrow increasing amounts of money, piling debt onto younger generations and putting the nation on a dangerous economic course.
Growing government spending threatens current and future taxpayers with higher taxes. Congress should reduce spending and prevent any more tax increases. Congress also needs to reform the tax code so it is less of a burden on the American people.
Tax day is a real drag, but it doesn't have to be this bad. Learn more at savingthedream.org.
Tony Perkins: 'Don't Give a Dime to GOP' Until It Clarifies Positions
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
Friday, 12 Apr 2013
By Bill Hoffmann
.
Religious conservatives should cut off all contributions to the Republican Party - until it grows a "backbone" and stops waffling on social issues like gay marriage, a leading conservative Christian group says.
In an email to supporters obtained by CNN, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, slammed the Republican National Committee for its suggestion that the GOP should reconsider its take on same-sex marriage to attract younger voters.
"Until the RNC and the other national Republican organizations grow a backbone and start defending core principles, don't send them a dime of your hard-earned money," Perkins said.
Illegals Taunt Border Patrol Agents: "Obama's Gonna Let Me Go"
By Daniel Greenfield
Sadly they don't realize that there is now a bipartisan effort to let them go. If only we could somehow get the word out to them, they might vote for us.
Officials say the number of people entering the U.S. illegally is way up and, tragically, the number of undocumented immigrants who have been found dead in the unforgiving Texas Brush Country is way up, and is on path this year to beat last year's record for the number of people found dead in the ranch country.
Linda Vickers, who owns a ranch in Brooks County, which is Ground Zero for the immigration debate, pins the blame directly on talk of 'amnesty' and a 'path to citizenship' for people who entered the U.S. illegally.
She recalls one man being arrested on her ranch not long ago.
"The Border Patrol agent was loading one man up, and he told the officer in Spanish, 'Obama's gonna let me go'."
Border Patrol agents report that immigrants are crossing the border, and in some cases surrendering while asking, "Where do I go for my amnesty?"
"When you have amnesty waving in the wind, you're going to get an increase," Vickers says. "And when you get an increase, especially with this heat, you're going to get an increase in deaths."
In a tragic irony the attempt to create millions of undocumented democrats is causing migrant deaths. But don't expect Obama or the Senate Amnesty Gang to care about the consequences of their cynical political calculations and their pandering.
RedState Morning Briefing
For April 15, 2013
1.How to Give Vulnerable Democrats Cover on Guns
16 Republicans voted along with the Democrats to break the filibuster against the Reid gun control bill (S.649).Although Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn voted against it, they failed to whip against the vote, exerting no pressure on these wayward Republicans to put the brakes on this fast moving train wreck.The end result is exactly what the Wall Street Journal editorial page advocated earlier this week: we will now have a debate on how much we are willing to limit the Second Amendment.
On Tuesday, the WSJ condescendingly chastised Senate conservatives for mounting a filibuster on the motion to proceed with debate.They mockingly observed that "If conservatives want to prove their gun-control bona fides, the way to do it is to debate the merits and vote on the floor. They can always filibuster the final bill if they want to, but it makes no sense to paint themselves into a political box canyon before even knowing what they're voting on." . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2.Despite Veto Threat, U.S. House Votes To Freeze Obama's Constitutionally-Challenged NLRB
Despite the threat of a Presidential veto, on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act to halt the National Labor Relations Board from issuing decisions or rulings until the U.S. Supreme Court can rule on the NLRB's legitimacy or nominees are properly confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
The bill was drafted in an effort to rein in the labor relations chaos created when Obama's 'recess' appointees to the National Labor Relations Board were found to be unconstitutionally appointed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
3.Construction Union Bosses Agree To 10-Year Wage Freezes To Keep Dues Flowing To Union Contractors
Michigan is quickly becoming known as the Land of Union Mischief following last year's passage of a state law making certain kinds of union contracts illegal.
Since Michigan passed its controversial Right-to-Work law late last year, which makes it unlawful for unions to require workers to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment, many unions have been able to skirt the law by negotiating new long-term contracts before the new law actually took effect on March 28. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
4.Even If It Saves Just One Life: Abortion Regulation NOW
Kermit Gosnell is charged with multiple counts of murder and his motley crew of poorly-trained, unprofessional staff has testified to the number of large, live infants he brutally murdered with the snip of scissors in his clinic. The time has come to have a national conversation about sensible abortion control. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
If you can mentally put yourself in Kim Jong-un's shoes, once you are aware of the constraints he faces you will understand why the South Koreans aren't getting terribly worried about how the current round of threats will end. ...»
North Korea knows that she cannot win a war against the U.S. and South Korea. So why is she pushing every button one would push if one wanted to precipitate the outbreak of such a war?...»
Common Core is not actually about standards, it's about gaining control over the educational system in a futile attempt to create a Progressive utopia....»
Sometimes even the scientist, if he is truly as open-minded as scientists claim to be, must open his mind and look beyond. The story of Israel typifies one of these times....»
Obama's budget joins two earlier budgets presented last month which also have little chance of becoming law: the House budget authored by Paul Ryan, and a Senate proposal authored by Patty Murray...»
The Real Legacy of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's Iron Lady
Adam Gadahn Makes GUN CONTROL AD. Using Democrat Talking Points. PROPAGANDA
Prager University: Did FDR End or Extend the Depression?
Rand Paul explains "Leave Me Alone" government philosophy to Howard University student
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
DON'T TELL ME WORDS DON'T MATTER
"Don't tell me words don't matter," Obama once said, while insisting that they meant the opposite of what we thought they meant. The left believes that words matter because they allow people to communicate the wrong sort of ideas. Change the words and you change the ideas.
Islamism is one of those ideas. The idea is that people ought to live under Islam. This was thought to be a bad idea, back in those dark days before we learned that Islamism is as American as Mom, Other Mom and Apple Pie.
Now we know that Islamism is actually the best defense against Islamism so long as it's the good kind of Islamism that involves terrorist groups winning elections and shooting their people in the streets instead of the bad kind of Islamism which involves terrorist groups shooting people in the streets without first running for office.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
The first urban political machine was named after a fictional Indian saint unrecognized by any church and whose name, when pronounced with a Y at the end, began to strike many as Irish which only further confused the issue.
The godfather of that machine was another fictional saint who became Thomas Jefferson's vice president after successfully rigging an election using a phony water company that eventually became Chase Bank, was tried for murder after killing the first Secretary of the Treasury, was tried for treason after a conspiracy to make himself King of Mexico and plotted to convince New England to secede from the Union.
The urban political machine was born in New York but died in Chicago. It's no longer a separate entity. One of the inconveniences of urban life along with smog, muggings and excessive regulation. The urban political machine has gone national. It's here. It's there. It's everywhere.
You may disapprove of New York's soda ban or Chicago's love affair with gun control or Los Angeles' pandering to illegal aliens; but what happens in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the rest of the country's blighted metropolises no longer stays there. You can live surrounded by ten thousand acres of wilderness on one side and the deep blue sea on the other and it will still find you because the urban political machine has gone national.
The last election was the triumph of the urban political machine. In 2008, Obama ran as a national candidate. In 2012, he ran as the figurehead for the urban political machines and let their voter turnout and voter fraud efforts carry the day. In 2008, he tried inspiring people. In 2012, he ran the same tired campaign run by a hundred corrupt mayors in a hundred cities who know that they can't lose because the game is rigged and the voters have no choice.
The urban political machine was born in New York but died in Chicago. It's no longer a separate entity from the rest of the country; one of the inconveniences of urban life along with smog, muggings and excessive regulation. The urban political machine has gone national. It's here. It's there. It's everywhere.
Lawmakers eye North Korean cash cow blessed by South By Julian Pecquet
Lawmakers who want to bleed North Korea dry have mounting misgivings about the South's business partnership with the rogue communist country.
As the House Foreign Affairs Committee prepares to take up legislation to cut off Pyongyang's funding sources amid rising tensions on the peninsula, lawmakers say it's past time to consider closing the Kaesong joint industrial park. The joint economic venture between the North and South serves as a key diplomatic bridge, but it also funnels $90 million a year into the hands of Kim Jong-Un's regime.
Tensions are rising on the Korean peninsula. At this point, it seems as though anything could happen. Why is a poverty-stricken totalitarian state like North Korea setting the terms of the conflict's debate and not President Obama?
On PJTV's Afterburner, Bill Whittle examines how things got to a point in which the weakest country in the world is essentially dictating the course of events against the most powerful country in the world -- and why this has happened throughout modern history.
On PJMedia.com, Gordon G. Chang reports that China has sided with North Korea. Citing recent comments by President Xi Jinping and Chinese military mobilization, Chang comes to the conclusion that Mr. Xi is blaming the United States for North Korea's provocative behavior.
But why would Beijing back the world's most ruthless regime? Chang believes the answer lies in China's fraying political system, which is allowing generals and admirals to cement control over policymaking.
Love and fear are often presented as exceptional motivators, but which one is the greatest? From a theological viewpoint, the answer is love: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love." (1 John 4:18)
Fair enough, but on the way to perfection, it's virtually impossible for us to ignore our fears, especially if the punishment involved will affect our health. Thus, we are assaulted-on a daily basis-by all sorts of health scares. No doubt, these scare motivators are portrayed as being for "our own good," but some of us question such altruism.
While a few of the scares will simply encourage us to give things up (an extra helping, dessert, smoking, drinking, and illegal drug use), most of them direct us to acquire products and services. I refer, of course, ... Continue Reading:Fear, Empowerment, and Health Care-With an Eye Toward Women
With the repeal of the Clinton era "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy allowing gays to quietly serve in America's armed forces, the politically correct goons in the Department of defense are working to silence any opposition to the Gay Agenda. Military Chaplains are being silenced. (4) Soldiers are being taught to equate Christians with extremists and racists who preach violence against non-believers. (2)
The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty sent a letter to the House Armed Services Committee warning that Military Chaplains are being threatened by higher brass to keep quiet about their opposition to Homosexual Marriages. The organization has pointed out that in some cases Chaplain's military careers have been damaged and at least one man of the cloth was told to resign. Despite denial from a Pentagon Spokesman, the reality of Chaplains in the field proves otherwise. After all, the Commander in Chief opposes any freedom of religion protections for chaplains or ... Continue Reading:The Pentagon's War on Religion
There is some very good news from Wisconsin. Republican Governor Scott Walker is winning his war with the state's public employee unions.
When Walker stepped into the political ring to battle his state's powerful government workers' unions no one gave him much chance of surviving, let alone winning. Walker's efforts have been startling. He has succeeded beyond what anyone could have foreseen.
Wisconsin's American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 40 has seen its members steadily jump over its plantation walls since Walker, backed by a thin but courageous Republican majority in the state's legislature, voted to give workers the right to opt out of union membership.
When the law took effect 31,730 union members were imprisoned in AFSCME's clutches. They were being extorted for dues which kept union thugs in a comfortable life style. At first the newly freed slaves were a bit hesitant to run ... Continue Reading:Good news from Wisconsin: ASFCME is melting like the Wicked Witch of the West
The tension keeps rising on the Korean peninsula. In a bizarre message today North Korea's Stalinist regime warned that Tokyo would likely be its first target in the event of military action. The warning comes as Japan has moved to rapidly deploy Patriot missile batteries around Tokyo and at other strategic locations in advance of an anticipated North Korean missile test.
Japanese defense officials have stated that they are prepared to shoot down any North Korean missile that strays into its territory. The North Korean regime said that any attempt to shoot down its missile would see Tokyo "consumed in nuclear flames." Its statement added that the "outbreak of nuclear war" in the region was "unavoidable."
This chilling warning comes on the heels of congressional testimony yesterday revealing a bombshell report from the Defense Intelligence Agency. During a hearing on the Defense budget, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) asked General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if he agreed with the DIA's assessment that North Korea "currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles." General Dempsey twice refused to comment.
Hours later, the Pentagon tried to downplay the report with a statement saying that North Korea had not yet "demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the passage." So we'll just have to wait for the mushroom cloud over Tokyo or Honolulu or Los Angeles and maybe then we can confirm it.
Obama To Kim: Cool It
The mixed messages from the administration are not very reassuring. But everybody agrees on this much: North Korea has a robust nuclear program. It possesses nuclear weapons. It possesses ballistic missile technology. Every test and every day brings it one step closer to having the ability to lob nuclear weapons at us or our allies, if they can't do so now.
Barack Obama has been president for four years, and North Korea may be closer than ever to launching a nuclear missile.
The president must have known about the DIA's assessment, yet he sent a budget to Capitol Hill that cuts Defense spending by $120 billion. Not surprisingly, members of Hawaii's congressional delegation are not happy about Obama's cuts to missile defense.
But don't worry -- Secretary of State John Kerry has been dispatched to the region. President Obama said yesterday, "We will continue to try to work to resolve some of those issues diplomatically," and he called on North Korea to "try to lower the temperature." Feeling better yet?
Big Media and the American left may swoon over Obama's words, but Kim Jong Un and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must be laughing at us. Diplomacy does not have a very good track record of stopping dictators. (See Neville Chamberlain.)
And while we have been downplaying North Korea's abilities, we have been attempting to reassure our allies by deploying missile defense systems to protect them and our troops in the region. A prudent move to be sure, but I don't recall any of these liberals thanking Ronald Reagan for the fact that we even have some ability to defend ourselves.
In fact, Kerry once referred to Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative as a "dream based on an illusion" and he called it a "cancer on our nation's defense." As a candidate in 2008 then-Senator Obama pledged to cancel funding for "unproven missile defense."
The Democrat Party for decades has been wrong on national defense. Every step of the way, left-wing politicians have tried to gut the defense budget, stop needed weapons programs and kill Reagan's missile defense system -- the very system they now proudly deploy to reassure the American people and our allies that they are protecting them. How in the world did the Republican Party ever allow the American people to forget that if you care about our national security you can't vote for the party of Pelosi, Kerry, and Obama?
Not to put too fine a point on it, just who were the young people who spat on U.S. soldiers during Vietnam and called them baby killers? They were young leftists who today are college professors, heads of foundations and even members of Congress.
Media Ignore Gosnell Abortion Trial
A number of our loyal readers recently emailed to tell me that they had never heard of Dr. Gosnell until they read about him in this daily report. The media have conspired to spike the story and the effort is a glaring example of the media's anti-life bias.
Here's proof. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and the picture shows three rows of reserved seating inside the courtroom for interested journalists -- completely empty.
One blogger attempted to hold members of the press accountable for their dereliction of duty and the responses she got back were unbelievable. She asked Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post, who wrote dozens of stories about Todd Akin and Sandra Fluke, why she has not reported on Gosnell. Kliff responded, "I cover policy for the Washington Post, not local crime."
So "local crime" stories (like the Newtown shootings) never have implications for public policy, right? It was the same with other news outlets. For example:
"Politico's search engine pops out 165 results on Trayvon Martin (local crime story in Florida), 94 stories on Komen, 233 on Sandra Fluke and 866 on Todd Akin. Guess how many stories Politico has published on Gosnell. Did you guess zero? You win!"
Democrats Block Resolution Honoring Thatcher
Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Senate has not yet done so. Why not? Our friends at Heritage Action are reporting that Senate Democrats are blocking it.
I hope the report is wrong. It's not as bad as the reaction of leftists in England, but it would be incredibly petty of liberals in the Senate to refuse to acknowledge one of America's greatest friends and allies.
After receiving a paltry initial sentence of 28 months for abetting terrorism, the disbarred civil rights attorney was re-sentenced to 10 years in the slammer.
There was a time when Hitler seemed like a comic character, as much perhaps as Kim Jong-Un and it might be hoped, as Charlie Chaplain did, to mock him off the stage of history in The Great Dictator.
The fiscal 2014 plan he released Wednesday is a very slightly modified version of his previous budgets that reduces the deficit by raising taxes and trading defense cuts for more domestic spending.
"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
"No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains," said President Xi Jinping on Sunday. Has Beijing finally made the switch from supporting Pyongyang to siding with the international community?
It's revolting to watch the outpouring of morbid glee at the death of Baroness Thatcher from the British left-not from Occupy Wall Street fringe elements, but from trade union leaders and senior Labor MPs.
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Thursday that the lower chamber's Republicans "have kind of got their mojo back" over the past couple of months and are ready to charge forward with tax reform. With an eye on midterms, though, the whip said the looming implementation date of Obamacare could be the Dems' downfall.
A picture of a young girl holding a pink AR-15 appeared in Rolling Stone last month. The problem: Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickinson's accompanying article is titled "The Gun Industry's Deadly Addiction," and he never contacted girl, Morrigan Sanders, for comment. Sanders wants RS to actually interview her next time: "He should've gotten the opinion of women who shoot."
Secretary of State John Kerryis on tour this week, emulating the sort of frequent-flyer diplomacythat his predecessor Hillary Clinton prided herself on. With the help of an adoring press, Clinton managed to create the impression that roaming the globe was in itself an indication of success even if she didn't accomplish much, if 4/14/13 JohnKerry's Clinic in Diplomatic Futility«CommentaryMagazine www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/04/08/john-kerrys-clinic-in-diplomatic-futility/ 2/7 anything, by doing so. However, Kerry's wanderings will be even more difficult to portray as a public relations bonanza. That's because his stubborn refusal to face facts about intractable conflicts is leading him into the sort of fool's errands that the more cautious Clinton avoided. Case in point is his visit to Turkey this past weekend that was followed by a trip to Israel, where he will engage in some shuttle diplomacy between the Netanyahu government and the Palestinians.
Kerry's stayin Ankara was represented as a follow-up to President Obama's supposedly brilliant triumph in brokering what is still widelyreferred to as a "rapprochement" between Israel and Turkey. But the details of the talks he held with the Turkish foreign minister gave the lie to the administration's boasts about the benefits of its persuading the Israeli prime minister to apologize to his Turkish counterpart, since the Turks are making it clear they have no intention of abiding by any agreement to normalize relations with the Jewish state. Similarly, the idea of shuttling between Netanyahu and Palestinian Authorityleader Abbas, when the latter has already demonstrated his lack of interest in the sort of talks without precondition that Obama said was the only path to peace, is, at best, a waste of the secretary's time. That Kerryis inaugurating his tenure at the State Department by conducting two visits that give him no opportunityto succeed is bad enough. But it does more than illustrate how out of touch he is with reality. By diving into problems that he can't fix but can make worse by raising expectations of American pressure on Israel, this will not only bode ill for his tenure in his new post but also offers him opportunities to create mischief where none need have been found.
In Turkey, the secretary was confronted by a Turkish determination to use the much-celebrated conversation between Netanyahu and Prime Minister Erdoğan as an opening to try and extract more concessions from Israel about their Hamas ally rather than a way out of a nasty quarrel.
Read Victor Davis Hanson's new novel, The End of Sparta, a sweeping historical saga that follows one of the greatest generals of ancient Greece, Epaminondas.
Obamas' Tax Return Shows not even close to correct earnings..........
WASHINGTON-President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama paid $112,214 in federal income taxes in 2012 on adjusted gross income of $608,611, an effective rate of 18.4%, the White House said Friday.
The first family's income declined from the $789,674 in adjusted gross income they reported in 2011. That year they paid total federal taxes of $162,074, an effective rate of 20.5%. Their 2012 income continues a steep decline from 2010 when they reported $1.7 million in adjusted gross income, the bulk of which was royalties from sales from books written by Mr. Obama. Read More:
Why are gov't benefits excluded from taxable income? Obama and Biden receive millions in benefits everybody else in the "real" world would have to claim as income. When the Obama daughters go skiing at Jackson Hole, is that legitimate gov't business? Barack sure likes the politics of spending other people's money as well as personally spending other people's money.
The picture above, for what it's worth, is of the reserved media seats at the Gosnell trial. It was taken by JD Mullane, a news writer and columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, The Intel and the Burlington County (NJ) Times. He says:
"Sat through a full day of testimony at the Kermitt Gosnell trial today. It is beyond the most morbid Hollywood horror. It will change you."
I was surprised by the picture and asked "really?" He responded "Local press was there, Inky, PhillyMag, NBC10 blogger. Court staff told me nobody else has shown up."
Toomey Admits His Legislation Would Not Have Stopped Newtown More
Friday Digest
The 'Smoke and Mirrors' Budget
April 12, 2013
"The natural cure for an ill-administration ... is a change of men." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21
Finally, after more than two months of delays and excuses, Barack Obama released his budget for fiscal 2014. "It's a budget that doesn't spend beyond our means," he boasted. Unless, of course, you consider a projected $744 billion deficit to be "beyond our means." Furthermore, he added, "it's a budget that doesn't make harsh and unnecessary cuts that only serve to slow our economy." That would be because he doesn't make any real cuts at all, much less harsh ones.
Obama's $3.8 trillion budget relies on further tax increases on the wealthy, despite his having just won a $660 billion tax increase on top earners at the beginning of the year. Now he wants to limit deductions and institute the "Buffett Rule" that households earning $1 million or more must pay at least 30 percent in taxes. In exchange, Obama threw in something new to ostensibly appeal to Republicans -- slowing the growth of Social Security and Medicare through revising benefit calculations and reimbursement rates. In reality, that allows him to reinforce that he's only doing it to "compromise" with the GOP, from whom he hopes to extract the aforementioned tax hikes.
The president claims $1.8 trillion in so-called deficit reduction over a decade, but all of the supposed deficit reduction is achieved through tax increases. As National Review's Veronique de Rugy points out, "$1.2 trillion of the $1.8 trillion number comes from replacing the sequester cuts" that are already in place. And his tax increases will likely add up to over $1 trillion -- nearly twice what he claims.
But not to worry, he says, "There's not a lot of smoke and mirrors in here."
On top of that, Obama's budget is not the "middle road" or "compromise" that his Leftmedia minions would have you believe. Under his plan $5.3 trillion will be added to the deficit over 10 years. Since he was off by $1.6 trillion on his first five-year projection, we'll pass on believing this one. Spending for FY2014 would be $170 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office's baseline (which by the way is also twice this year's sequester), $240 billion higher than Paul Ryan's House budget and even $80 billion higher than the Senate Democrats' budget.
Other lowlights include the following:
He trims defense spending growth by a further $100 billion over 10 years, bringing it to just 2.4 percent of GDP -- lower than any year since before World War II. That's a disastrous gamble that displays the commander in chief's contempt for his constitutional duty to ensure national defense.
His budget caps tax-free retirement savings because, as the White House explains, some people are putting away "substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement savings." He proposes to "limit an individual's total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year in retirement, or about $3 million for someone retiring in 2013." So Obama now gets to decide how much of your hard-earned money you can save for retirement?
He increases the cigarette tax to $1.95 per pack (from $1.01 now and $0.39 when he took office) to pay for preschool for all four-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families.
He adds new or increased spending on infrastructure, high-speed rail, green energy, college tuition subsidies, job training, and so on and so on.
We would list the cost of ObamaCare, but the White House worked diligently to so spread and bury the burden that it's becoming difficult to identify. We do know that Obama admits the insurance exchanges will cost at least twice initial projections, and that's only counting the less-than-half of states that are participating. That doesn't bode well for the rest of ObamaCare, though it's certainly in line with what we feared all along.
None of this is to say we expected better of Obama. He's a tax-and-spend statist through and through, and it will take a change of administration to get this nation back on the right course.
There were rampant rumors that the mainstream media would not mention the NRA while covering this weekend's big "NRA 500" in Texas. Could the press have deemed the pro-gun group's sponsorship of the race was too controversial? TheBlaze looked into the rumors and compared media coverage of this race with other NASCAR events. See what we uncoveredHERE.
MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry on Saturday strongly reaffirmed the sentiment behind her recent promotional ad for the network in which she declared that children are part of the collective. Addressing the outcry on her show Saturday morning, Harris-Perry said it would be "too easy" to simply dismiss that some people are just "haters." Watch the clip HERE.
After the Senate voted this week to begin debate on the new gun control bill, "Saturday Night Live" brought up Sens. "Joe Manchin" (D-W. Va.) and "Pat Toomey" (R-Pa.) to explain some of the compromise they worked out. But their "compromise" turned out to be a series of absurd provisions. Watch the show's opening segmentHERE.
Free report reveals: ED solution that works better than pills? Big Pharma "concerned" 11,395 men have downloaded this special report revealing the simple solo activities you do at home for fixing ED. Nothing you have to take. Click to start reading in seconds before they make us take it down.
Josh Hamilton's bestselling biography details his return to baseball after falling into a life of drugs and alcohol. Take a swing at this inspiring story of rebirth and redemption (for just $3.79) right HERE.
The recent announcement from the Associated Press that it was dropping the term "illegal immigrant" or "illegal" to describe people residing in the U.S. against the law was met with strong reaction, particularly on Fox News. On Friday, TheBlaze's Jon Seidl noticed the network slipped the term "undocumented" - rather than "illegal" - onto the screen during "America Live with Megyn Kelly." See what our eagle-eyed colleague caught and tweeted out to the worldHERE.
Neighbors in a village on Spain's Canary Islands called the authorities worrying what might be inside an abandoned house. What the police found was a nearly 22-foot wasp nest thought to house millions of the stinging insects. See the photos that have many in TheBlaze newsroom shudderingHERE.
Speaker Pam Stenzel presents the consequences of premarital sex with a pro-abstinence edge in her assemblies at many schools. Earlier this week, Pam spoke with students at George Washington High School and Riverside High School in West Virginia. While administrators and many parents were fine with the program, some parents and students have reacted quite negatively to the presentation, one calling it "slut shaming." Is Ms. Stenzel's approach to teen sex too strong? Watch a typical speech Pam StenzelHERE.
A Florida police sergeant has been fired after he brought paper targets resembling slain teen Trayvon Martin to shooting practice. Port Canaveral Police Sgt. Ron King was leading a training practice on April 4 when he brought out two targets resembling Martin - a silhouette carrying iced tea and Skittles, which the teen was said to be carrying when he was shot and killed. Watch the local television coverage of this storyHERE.
Shocking surveillance video appears to show a Nebraska bus driver punching a passenger over and over before dragging him off the bus and abandoning him on the side of a road. See the video of the now-fired bus driver attacking a passenger HERE.
Did you know that it's against the law to swear at players or officials at sporting events in Massachusetts? If you did not know that, it is also likely that you were unaware that picking up seaweed at night on the beaches of New Hampshire is illegal (but only at night). Learn about the 48 other strange laws from across the country in the very clever video seen HERE.
A school district in Jacksonville, Fla., said Friday it will review and investigate what happened after a father charged that his fourth-grade son was instructed to write that he was �willing to give up some of [his] constitutional rights� as part of a classroom activity. Get the latest update on the story that's dominating TheBlaze.com HERE.
Students in some Albany High School English classes were asked to participate in the unthinkable this week as part of a persuasive writing assignment. The objective? Prove why Jews are evil and convince the teacher of their loyalty to the Third Reich in five paragraphs or less. See the actual lessonHERE.
On Friday, the White House released President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden�s tax returns. See the five very interesting things we noticed in the tax returns of the two most powerful people in AmericaHERE.
Ten Congressmen took to the floor of the U.S. House on Thursday to shed some light on the trial of Kermit Gosnell, an abortion doctor who stands accused of murdering seven newborn infants (allegedly cutting their spines with scissors) and one grown woman. Watch Rep. Chris Smith's powerful speech HERE.
Editor�s Note: This article deals with extremely-disturbing themes and subjects. Please be advised. The details emerging from Dr. Kermit Gosnell�s murder trial are so gruesome that, based on the descriptions, one would assume they are fictional scenes from a horror movie. However, the reality is that the court case, which continues to expose the details of the alleged murders of at least seven babies, is, according to witness testimony, anything but a concocted tale. Learn moreHERE.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) may be new to Congress, but he�s making a splash with a new bumper sticker sure to get the left all riled up. Stockman, who apparently refers to himself as the �most conservative member of Congress,� is not afraid to wear his conservatism on his sleeve or the bumper of his car. See the stickerHERE.
The mother of a first-grade boy shot dead inside Sandy Hook Elementary School sat in for President Barack Obama in his weekly address, choking back tears as she begged Americans to act on gun violence. Watch Francine Wheeler's emotional request for the Senate to act on the proposed new gun legislationHERE.
The United Veterans Memorial & Patriotic Association is fighting a New York town for the right to fly the Gadsden flag bearing the phrase, �Don�t Tread On Me.� The veterans group had flown the flag, used by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps since 1775, at the New Rochelle Armory, but the city council claimed it was an offensive Tea Party symbol and voted to have the flag removed.HERE.
It seems like a lopsided match-up, goose versus gorilla, but things aren�t always as they appear. In a YouTube video which has already been viewed more than 40,000 times, a goose and a gorilla go head-to-head. Watch the surprising end to this bird vs. beast match upHERE.
Just last week we brought you a story about how YouTube and viral videos are helping people start careers in the entertainment industry through non-traditional methods. Now, the Norwegian Internet sensation seems to have made it into the NFL for his �kickalicious� skills. Meet Harvard RuglandHERE.
Dean Cain is best known for his iconic role as Superman in �Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,� among other television and film appearances. Of late, though, it seems the actor�s conservative views on issues like gun control are making headlines. On Wednesday, Cain extended his political involvement when he issued a very simple statement on Twitter. See what he wroteHERE.
On the heels of Maryland�s decision to enact tough new gun laws, the ironically nicknamed state (the �Free State�) will now impose a so-called �rain tax� on its residents.The �storm management fee,� passed by the state legislature in 2012, will go into effect following a decree from Democrat Gov. Martin O�Malley. Learn the history of this legislation and see what's included in the "rain tax" HERE.
Appearing on Glenn Beck�s show on TheBlaze TV Thursday, Penn Jillette revealed that MSNBC host Lawrence O�Donnell actually wants to meet Beck. If you can believe it, O�Donnell also reportedly told Jillette he and Beck have a lot in common. Watch the clip from last night's showHERE.
With all of the recent attention focused on the topic of gun control, we wanted to know more about your feelings on the topic of the proposed changes to the Second Amendment. We invite you to participate in our latest poll on the Senate gun bill. You are also welcome to propose questions of your own (we reserve the right to approve or reject any question). Take the poll HERE.
Alexander Heit�s final text cut off in mid-sentence. Before he could send it, police say the 22-year-old University of Northern Colorado student drifted into oncoming traffic, jerked the steering wheel and went off the road, rolling his car. Heit died shortly after the April 3 crash, but his parents and police are hoping the photo of the mundane text on his iPhone will serve as a stark reminder to drivers. See the photo of these "last words"HERE.
The latest horrific revelation to surface in the trial of an unlicensed doctor performing illegal abortions in Philadelphia are beyond shocking. On Thursday, a woman who is now 22 years old, talked of assisting in the killing of babies that were still alive after being aborted. Get the rest of this chilling storyHERE.
On Thursday night, sporting a graying beard and his signature camouflage hat, rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent dismissed the Senate�s gun control bill as a �feel-good measure� that won�t stop any shootings. Towards the end of his interview on CNN, Nugent recommended that Attorney General Eric Holder be arrested for gun trafficking. Watch the segment HERE.
All 15 Republican members of the Colorado State Senate stood together to jab at their state's new laws by wearing T-shirts from Glenn Beck�s 1791 clothing line. The shirts read, �The Gun Debate � Settled Since 1791.� See the photo and learn how it was organized HERE.
Wilkow! -- He refers to himself as "an individual patriot first, conservative second, and Republican third." Watch Wilkow!6pm ET -- only on TheBlaze TV.
Look, we know this doesn�t really qualify as �news," but sometimes it�s nice to forget about some things like America�s $16.8 trillion national debt, nearly 7.6 percent unemployment and deflating dollar � even if it�s only for a little more than a minute. Watch it HERE.
This week, USA Network launched a new reality program. However it�s not what you might think. Rather than featuring bickering, cursing and other edgy aims at entertaining the masses,�The Moment� will take an entirely different tone. Hosted by former football great Kurt Warner, the program will be inspirational in nature, giving nine participants a second change to pursue their dream job. TheBlaze spoke recently with Warner to learn more about his role in the show. Check out our interview with Warner and see highlights from the showHERE.
The "tweetfest" inspired critical reflections by liberal journalists, mainstream media coverage, and an unprecedented groundswell of citizen action aimed at breaking through a media blackout.
In response to the #Gosnell Twitter campaign, a "pro-choice" reporter has offered a frank apology for neglecting the abortionist's grisly murder trial.
Video: Sheriff Joe Responds To Assassination Attempt
Apr 13, 2013 01:42 pm
Sheriff Arpaio sticks to his guns!! Related posts: Assassination Attempt Against Sheriff Joe Arpaio I can only imagine who was behind the attempt...... Continue... Sheriff Joe On Obama's Forged Identity Records Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks out about the importance of local...
Apr 13, 2013 01:39 pm Americans don't have a lot of information about Hawaii, other than the Hawaiian Ice and the presidential windsurfing. It was easier for Obama to run his campaign out of Chicago, where none of Hawaii's communist past could haunt his campaign. Hawaii may have been a US territory, but Moscow controlled the labor. When Hitler invaded [...]
"Don't Tread On Me" deemed offensive? Related posts: DHS Set To Disarm Veterans It's no secret that the Department of Homeland Security considers... The Skinny Kenyan Gives Congress A Raise So Obama just didn't give Congress a raise; he ordered...
Apr 13, 2013 01:25 pm With the repeal of the Clinton era "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy allowing gays to quietly serve in America's armed forces, the politically correct goons in the Department of Defense are working to silence any opposition to the gay agenda. Military Chaplains are being silenced. Soldiers are being taught to equate Christians with extremists and [...]
If you have a roof or driveway, you just might pay a rain tax! Related posts: Oregon To Jail Rain Water Collector, Force Condemned Murderer To Go Free Oregon is indeed a strange place. Somewhere, George Orwell is... An Obama Joke We Just Had To Share With You I found this quite funny. I hope [...]
Apr 13, 2013 01:10 pm Human Rights activist Pamela Geller was scheduled to speak at the Great Neck Synagogue on April 14th until the synagogue's officials caved to the bully tactics of Islamic bigot Habeeb Ahmed and others who relentlessly threatened and browbeat them should they go through with her speaking engagement. Ahmed's kind loath open dialogue and ruthlessly vilify [...]
The no-fly list was first implemented after the attacks of September 11. According to reports, the list contains approximately 21,000 individuals, 500 of whom are US citizens. Organizations such as the ACLU have called the list ineffective and useless when it comes to protecting travelers. Related posts: Reality Check: 1 On 1 With President Obama, [...]
Apr 13, 2013 12:45 pm Touré is able to reach literally dozens of viewers via his position as an MSNBC host. In that capacity, he seems to find a way to interweave the inherent racism of conservatives into any story that crosses his path. Before he held such a prominent position among the leftist elite, though, the reporter cut his [...]
Apr 13, 2013 12:40 pm New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" organization was revealed last fall to include a long list of mayors who, because of their convictions, were no longer eligible to own weapons themselves. Now another embarrassment has surfaced for the organization. According to a report from the Second Amendment Foundation, Mayor James Schiliro, of Marcus Hook, [...]
Video: Over 100,000 Sign Petition In Support Of German Homeschooling Family!
Apr 13, 2013 12:36 pm
Our government wants to deport these people. So much for America being the "land of the free"... Related posts: States Don't Need To Petition To Leave The Union You might have heard stories this past week about states... Whitehouse Petition Calls For Obama To Disarm Americans The petition created on the White House's "We the [...]
A "Fairy" Is A Mythical Creature, "Gay" Means Happy, And A "Fag" Is A Cigarette
Apr 13, 2013 12:33 pm Sigh. Once a sportswriter, always a sportswriter, I guess. I just saw that Rutgers University fired its head basketball coach after three seasons, ostensibly because of some practice videos, aired on ESPN, that showed him pushing some of his players and calling them homosexuals. Perhaps in stronger language than that. (There were subtitles.) Now, far [...]
In his latest video, singer Remy wonders why rapper Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce were chilling in a country that has imprisoned rappers as well as done a whole lot of other bad things. Related posts: Lawmaker Demands Answers On State Dept. Phony 'Punishments' After the so-called Benghazi Accountability Report we were told "punishments"... Obama's [...]
Apr 13, 2013 12:14 pm For the first time in 17 years, a new set of science guidelines for the nation's government-operated school system has been released. This time, the Next Generation Science Standards include pointed and opinionated lesson plans designed to silence any debate by those who question the facts surrounding man-caused global warming. Naturally, leftist environmental extremists are in [...]
The Historic Neil Abercrombie 'Search And Rescue' Mission
Apr 13, 2013 12:09 pm Author's Note: The following is taken from page 114, Chapter Eleven - Three At Least Plausible "Proofs" - Oh Really, O'Reilly! While this is a satirical swipe at the obvious absurdity of this entirely unnecessary charade, it is meant to illustrate the absolute farce of not being able to locate (or produce - in reality, not 'virtual' reality) [...]
Apr 13, 2013 11:49 am The GOP Establishment is moving at warp speed to reload itself to attract a more liberal voter than what was once considered its base. The term "libertarian" is being bandied about, but perhaps "liberal-tarian" is more accurate. Establishment Republicans don't want to appear liberal. Seeming openly socialist is the last thing they want - at [...]
Apr 13, 2013 11:47 am WASHINGTON - Sometimes, congressmen just want to have fun. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said he wasn't flirting with singer Cyndi Lauper earlier this week when he tweeted to her that he "couldn't believe how hot" she was. The tweet Tuesday - and its deletion 21 minutes later - were all part of a joke designed [...]
Apr 13, 2013 11:43 am Following last week's announcement that the Associated Press was adjusting its Stylebook and dropping the use of the term "illegal immigrant," USA Today issued a memo last night that largely followed the AP's example. From: Coon, William Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 6:16 PM To: USAT ED Virginia Staff; USAT ED Field Staff Subject: Change [...]
Apr 13, 2013 10:49 am WASHINGTON - A conservative senator is proposing to greatly broaden the background check system for firearms purchasers but require no records of the transactions as the Senate braced for votes on amendments to gun control legislation next week. The plan by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was one of several proposals Republicans were discussing in preparation [...]
Uncle Joe Biden recently mocked Americans who were concerned that the government was trying to take away their Second Amendment rights, referring to us as the "black helicopter crowd." Apparently, Uncle Joe didn't get the memo that the government is already confiscating guns. The Veterans Administration has sent out tens of thousands of letters to [...]
Apr 12, 2013 01:37 pm Earlier this week, I explained how the latest Obama budget would impact the wallets of Social Security recipients. Now, I want to explain how several other new Obama tax hikes will impact you in the near future. In the just-released budget, there's a mountain of new taxes the size of Everest. President Obama is a guy who [...]
Video: Assassination Attempt Against Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Apr 12, 2013 01:31 pm
I can only imagine who was behind the attempt... Related posts: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Betrayed? The latest attack comes from his own Maricopa County, Arizona... Sheriff Joe Arpaio: Joe's Laws Sheriff Joe Arpaio talks to PolitiChicks.tv about the unique way...
Apr 12, 2013 01:29 pm Dear Benghazi Survivors, I know that there must be around thirty of you, if you are still alive. I hope that you are all still okay and that those who were injured are healing. I am asking one of you, or perhaps more than that, to come forward and let us all know what really [...]
She was speaking recently at a funeral and couldn't help herself... Related posts: The World's Greatest Welfare Recipients: Barack And Michelle Obama! As most of the taxpayers in America are upset with... Michelle Compares Obama To Biblical Figures Michelle Obama, speaking at an AME Church conference in Nashville,...
Apr 12, 2013 01:15 pm There is some very good news from Wisconsin. Republican Governor Scott Walker is winning his war with the state's public employee unions. When Walker stepped into the political ring to battle his state's powerful government workers' unions, no one gave him much chance of surviving, let alone winning. Walker's efforts have been startling. He has [...]
Video: Obama Sounds Like A Complete Idiot W/out His Teleprompter!
Apr 12, 2013 01:09 pm
Personally, I think that he has a number of serious mental issues as a result of his drug usage... Related posts: Obama Energy Policy Is A Complete Failure Gas prices are rocketing at the pump and Obama claims... Chuck Hagel, Like Obama, Is A Complete Joke! Unfortunately, Hagel will become the next Secretary of State; [...]
Student Claims Forced Participation In Anti-gun Propaganda
Apr 12, 2013 01:04 pm America's college campuses are notoriously hostile toward traditional values; and conservative students, fairly frequently, are faced with the proposition of publicly denouncing their own views or possibly failing a class. Such was the case in the classroom of Midwestern State University at Provost professor Jennifer Yucus, according to a complaint filed by one of her [...]
What's changed, Mr. President? Related posts: Smoke And Mirrors Like a sleight-of-hand-artist on a busy street with a briefcase... GOP Warned To Knock Off 'smoke And Mirrors' Tea party voters will be "unforgiving" should their elected lawmakers...
Apr 12, 2013 12:55 pm "I believe granting liberty to gay people advances a compelling government interest, that such an interest cannot be adequately advanced if "pockets of resistance" to a societal statement of equality are permitted to flourish, and hence that a law that permits no individual exceptions based on religious beliefs will be the least restrictive means of [...]
A Texas bill criminalizing airport pat-downs is back! Related posts: Texas Nationalist Movement President Outlines Secession Goals On Hannity Following the election, there's been a petition on the White... Obama Defunds Texas "Women's Health" Program, Media Blames Texas Obama administration officials in the Department of Health and Human...
Loyal To The Left, Jim Wallis Supports Gay Marriage
Apr 12, 2013 12:40 pm In June of 2010, Reverend Jim Wallis was asked if he believed abortion and homosexuality were sins. Christian radio station GM Mike Le May got the answer loud and clear: Wallis shouted at him, called him a "right-wing Kool-Aid drinking Glen Beck follower," and hung up the phone. I documented the divisive controversy that led [...]
The latest dishonorable act from Democrats: Related posts: Senate Democrats Raise Violence Against Women Act Senate Democrats are daring Republicans to vote against a bill... Democrats On Track To Lose Senate Because Of Obama He's short on popular support, ideas, and money and now...
Apr 12, 2013 12:30 pm U.S. Senator Ted Cruz recently visited California and was among the featured guests at the Lincoln Club of Northern California's spring seminar. He spoke of his vision for America which stands in striking contrast with Barack Obama's. Senator Cruz was the youngest Solicitor General in Texas; trained at Ivy League Schools (Princeton and Harvard) on the [...]
The NRA gives us a brief update on how the Senate has commenced their efforts to disarm America... Related posts: NRA-ILA Grassroots News Minute 03-29-2013 Mayor Bloomberg is up to no good again...... Continue to... Akin Says GOP Bigwigs 'kill Grassroots Heart' Of Republican Party Ever since Republicans failed to win the Senate majority last...
Surprise! North Korea Might Have Nuclear Ballistic Missiles After All!
Apr 12, 2013 11:35 am Remember how Vice President Joe Biden, grinning and rolling his eyes like a madman, assured America during the 2012 vice-presidential debate that there was no reason to worry about Iranian nukes, because the intelligence community would know the very instant they were ready to deploy one? Within a couple of days, Biden was hiding under [...]
Video: Christian Filmmakers Going Into Business For Themselves
Apr 12, 2013 11:26 am The producers of some of today's most popular Christian movies are making a career change - consulting for would be filmmakers. But don't expect their string of spiritual hits to grind to a halt. Related posts: Lesbians Vs. Christian Business Owners The Christian owners of a New York farm where marriage... America's Judeo-Christian Baseline America [...]
High Court Weighs Taking Up New Case On Gun Rights
Apr 12, 2013 11:23 am WASHINGTON - A day after the Senate voted to begin debate on new gun control measures, the Supreme Court is expected to consider a new appeal aimed at loosening state restrictions on firearms. The justices are meeting in private Friday to discuss an appeal of a federal court ruling that upheld New York's strict licensing [...]
Apr 12, 2013 11:18 am WASHINGTON - The first hurdle cleared with deceptive ease, the Senate turns to the heart of the battle over curbing gun violence next week when it considers a proposal to expand required federal background checks to gun shows and online firearms sales. In a bipartisan 68-31 vote Thursday, senators rejected an effort by conservatives to [...]
Ryan: Abortion Opponents Should Find Common Ground
Apr 12, 2013 11:16 am Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2012 and an abortion opponent, said Thursday that anti-abortion activists should try to build a broad coalition and find common ground with supporters of abortion rights as a way to advance their agenda. Ryan, R-Wis., said in a speech to the Susan B. Anthony List that [...]
Apr 12, 2013 11:03 am The rumor flashed across the Internet last winter: the Obama administration is going to use a United Nations arms treaty to get around the Second Amendment and ban all guns. In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings and the renewed push for "gun safety" (the current politically correct term) the rumor was [...]
Readers of the New York Times on the morning of Sept. 10, 2001, found a front page lead on how congressional leaders were in talks about economic stimulus and below-the-fold stories on school dress codes and the morning television ratings races. The summer of 1950 was just another post-war summer, and on June 23 the Indians' Luke Easter hit the longest ball in Cleveland Stadium history, 477 feet, into the upper deck at Muny, the "mistake on the lake," Section 4.
The 60 Plus Association, the acknowledged conservative alternative to the liberal AARP and home to 7.2 million senior citizen activists, today cited the implementation of Obamacare as the cause for the nation's failure to create new jobs, with the Department of Labor noting only 88,000 jobs were created in March. This comes as 496,000 Americans have left the labor force, making the percentage of Americans actually working the lowest since 1979.
Are Such Contortions Signs Of Deception?
[Video] Watch Michelle Obama Eat Her Own FaceThe lady apparently just couldn't help herself...
Shocking Photo: Empty Media Benches At Baby-Killer Gosnell Trial Life NewsA shocking photo of empty benches at the trial of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell is making the rounds today and it exemplifies the lack of media coverage and attention to the case.
Town Deems American Flag Offensive: Orders Removal Washington ExaminerOne council member compared the flag to the rainbow flag used to symbolize gay pride, according to local news website Talk of the Sound. Another has compared it variously to the Nazi flag, a Mickey Mouse flag and graffiti.
UN Panel Declares Jesus Was Homosexual America's Conservative News It's a rather audacious claim, but does anything that comes out of the United Nations these days shock anyone anymore.
Sean Smith's Mom: Obama Didn't Follow-Up on Personal Promise; Asks Congress: 'Please, Please Help Me Find Out Who is Responsible' By Terence P. Jeffrey CNSNews.com Patricia Smith--the mother of Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, who was murdered by terrorists in Benghazi seven months ago today--says that President Barack Obama and other administration officials did not follow-up on promises they made to her personally when she traveled to Washington, D.C. last September to meet the return to the United States of her son's casket.
Anti-Christian Attacks In Egypt Facilitated By US?
Islamic Attack On St. Mark Cathedral Allowed By Egyptian Forces In US Supplied Armored Vehicles By Raymond Ibrahim RightSideNews.com Egypt's Coptic Christians frequently accuse State Security and police of overlooking Muslim attacks on Christians and their places of worship, especially monasteries and churches.
Cyprus Looting & Socializing the Losses: The Global Banksters Who Redefined Theft Into "Haircut" By Marinka Peschmann CanadaFreePress.com Nobody's bank deposits are immune from the Cyprus confiscation model "haircut" to recapitalize the bankers' financial institutions by taking/stealing your money if the banks become insolvent, which is just a nicer word for bankrupt.
This morning on ABC's This Week, Senators Jeff Sessions and Chuck Schumer discussed immigration. The host was reasonably even-handed, and Sessions asked Schumer a good question: will he persist in supporting the Gang of 8's proposal-Schumer is a member of the Gang-if reputable economists say it will depress the wages of lower-income Americans?
Needless to say, Sessions doesn't get an answer. Instead, Schumer spews out five minutes or so of double-talk. He makes three main points: first, there is no reason to criticize the amnesty in the Gang's plan, because what we have now is de facto amnesty for 11 million illegals. This is known in the logic business as a non sequitur. It is true that we currently have a de facto amnesty; this is because the Obama administration, and to a lesser extent prior administrations, have refused to enforce our immigration laws. The solution is not to make the amnesty official, but rather to start enforcing the law, especially against employers who hire illegals.
Schumer's second point is that having once granted amnesty-actually, this will be the second time-there will be no more illegal immigration. Why not? Because it will be illegal, apparently. But Schumer knows perfectly well that the Obama administration will be no more interested in enforcing the immigration laws next year than it has been for the last four. The real effect of a new amnesty will be to stimulate more immigration, both legal and illegal.
Schumer's rejoinder to the blindingly obvious fact that allowing another influx of low-skilled workers (guest workers, new illegals and relatives of those who will now be legal) will hurt Americans who compete for the same jobs is that unions favor the Gang's plan. Why, Chuckles asks innocently, would unions favor something that would lower their members' wages? Because union bosses don't care about their members' wages, they care about getting more members, which puts money in their pockets. Illegals who can't now join unions will be able to, once they are legalized.
Here is the segment:
Will most viewers recognize how lame Schumer's arguments are? Probably not; nevertheless, I think most people do understand that we are being sold a bill of goods on immigration.
Matt Latimer, a disillusioned former speechwriter for George W. Bush, claims in the Washington Post that Margaret Thatcher "was for turning after all." But Latimer fails to point to any specific instance in which Thatcher turned away from a core principle.
He comes the closest when he cites Thatcher's famous statement that Mikhail Gorbachev is someone with whom the West "can do business." But here Thatcher was simply recognizing, sooner than almost anyone else, that Gorbachev was for turning. Thatcher did not yield anything to the Soviet Union; she basically accepted its surrender.
Latimer's piece isn't really about Thatcher, though. It is an attempt to misuse Thatcher to make a point about the alleged unwillingness of the Republican Party's to entertain and appreciate "thoughtful dissent." That, I imagine, is why the Washington Post published it.
But Latimer's analysis of Republicans isn't much more persuasive than his discussion of Thatcher. He asserts that the GOP is "allerg[ic] to spirited but civil disagreement." Yet its last three nominees for president all disagreed with significant aspects of the conservative orthodoxy Latimer believes the Party ruthlessly enforces. George Bush deviated through his compassionate conservatism; John McCain through his stance on a range of issues, most notably tax cuts and immigration; and Mitt Romney through Romneycare.
Yet the GOP nominated all three, and conservatives stood fairly solidly behind each in the general election. There was some balking, to be sure. But Latimer was among those who balked, to the point that, if I read his book (Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor) correctly, he declined to vote for McCain.
Given that decision, and his ferocious attack on certain Bushies, it's odd to see Latimer complaining about the pillorying of Republicans by fellow Republicans. It's also odd to see Latimer complaining about those who hold up Reaganism as a guide to "the needs and priorities of the 21st century GOP." In a post for Power Line, he criticized Bush for viewing Reaganism as obsolete and for attempting to redefine the Republican Party. In his book, Latimer is an anti-pragmatist; in his Thatcher piece, he's all about pragmatism.
Looking ahead to 2016, we find that the two men generally considered frontrunners for the Republican nomination both deviate significantly from conservative orthodoxy. Marco Rubio does so on immigration; Rand Paul on foreign policy, immigration, and some social issues.
Both have been criticized for these positions and both have fired back. Occasionally, this has led to rhetorical excess, but that's to be expected in a vigorous debate over vital issues.
The key point is that Rubio and Paul remain popular among Republicans despite their dissenting views on key issues, and both receive invitations from skeptical conservative talk show hosts to advocate these views. The debate may be imperfect, but by modern political standards it is healthy.
Some of Latimer's complaints make no sense. He argues that Thatcher's statement following 9/11 that no new order can replace the disorderly conduct of human affairs would have caused her, had she been a Republican Senator during the Bush years, to lose her primary. But to my knowledge, no Republican Senator has lost a primary for taking such a view. Moreover, the Bush administration was, if anything, too tolerant of dissenting Republican Senators facing primary fights (see Arlen Specter). In the post-Bush era, Republican Senators have lost primaries due to their views on domestic issues, not foreign policy.
Latimer also complains that Chris Christie "still suffers ostracism from national Republicans for daring to praise work with Obama." Yet, says Latimer, Ronald Reagan periodically praised Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy.
But Reagan, once he became a Republican, never praised an incumbent Democratic president on the eve of an election involving that incumbent. It's one thing to dissent from this or that traditionally conservative position. It's another knowingly to boost the prospects of a left-liberal president just before the election.
But did Latimer see defeating Obama as a priority? His book suggests that, at least in 2008, he did not.
Following up on Steve's post on liberal hypocrisy, below is the 2003 video clip of then state senator Barack Obama stating his well rehearsed position in favor of abortion rights and against proposed Illinois legislation supporting infants born alive but requiring medical support. This past September Ramesh Ponnuru reviewed Obama's record and concluded:
During Obama's [2008] presidential campaign, pro-lifers argued that so extreme was his devotion to abortion that he was willing to support a right to infanticide. This charge is absolutely true. He believed that certain infants - those at an early stage of development - should not have legal protection, and he believed it because he thought it would undermine the right to abortion.
Ponnuru's exegesis of Obama's position on abortion is timely once again in light of the Gosnell trial revelations.
I know, a true catalogue of liberal hypocrisy would run longer than War and Peace, before breakfast. But sometimes you need to take note of especially egregious instances.
So notice, for example, that while liberals are demanding increased background checks for gun purchases, Obama's nominee for secretary of labor, Tom Perez, opposes allowing employers with federal contrasts to use background checks for new prospective employees. Ken Masugi is on the case in the Washington Examiner. Of course, there's an obvious remedy for this problem: a company can require that every new employee buy a gun as a condition of hiring. (Or at least make every new employee work one day's shift on security, which might also trip a background check requirement.) Problem solved!
Meanwhile, Paul mentioned here the other day the non-coverage of the Gosnell abortionist murder trial here the other day, perhaps the most blatant example of a media double-standard since the Watergate era. It appears, however, that the conservative blogosphere has shamed some of the mainstream media into changing course. John Nolte at Breitbart has the details.
But this does provide an occasion for an overdue note on a related aspect of Republican political malpractice. Liberals and the media are still dining out on Rep. Todd Akin's famous face-plant about "legitimate rape" that, in conjunction with Richard Mourdoch's similar mis-step in Indiana, didn't just cost the GOP two winnable Senate seats, but might have cost them the Senate and the presidential election as well. The competent answer to that question in a political campaign, of course, would have been to go on the attack, with a line of reasoning that goes something like this: "I notice that you pro-abortion reporters so in the bag for the abortion industry that you have to default to the most extreme case in order to defend your friends, and never ask 'pro-choice' politicians about the extreme cases on their side. Please tell me how many times you or anyone else in the media has ever asked Barack Obama why he voted in favor of infanticide when he voted against Illinois's 'Infants Born Alive Protection Act,' the same kind of statute that is at the root of the prosecution of Dr. Gosnell in Philadelphia that you're also ignoring right now."
I am not aware of any reporter that at any time ever asked Obama why he supports infanticide. The FactCheck.org people have to go to great contortions to try to defend Obama's position, but are utterly unconvincing. The federal version of the Infants Born Alive Protection Act passed the House of Representatives with only 15 No votes, which means it was only opposed by abortion extremists. But for the media, "abortion extremists" only exist on the right.
The film 42, released nationally this weekend, is a conventional Hollywood biopic in the heroic mold. The film is tightly focused on Jackie Robinson's epochal 1947 season that broke baseball's color line. Despite its conventional form, the film is inspiring and distinctive in a number of respects that justify attention.
We went to see the film in a suburban St. Paul theater last night and enjoyed it immensely. After seeing it I wanted to say that 42 is a 10 and leave it at that. It's an old-fashioned kind of movie that leaves the audience wanting to applaud, as ours did last night. As such, it is not lacking in the flaws that Joe Morganstern picks on in his Wall Street Journal review. But the Times's frequently acerbic A.O. Scott is more indulgent and, in my view, closer to the mark.
The film is not only old-fashioned in the Hollywood sense. It is old-fashioned in its depiction of the virtues, demonstrating the excellence of character that formed an integral part of Robinson's triumph. This was a man.
I should hope that the film inspires viewers to turn to the true story of Jackie Robinson in the desire to separate fact from fiction. There are lots of good books about Robinson, of course, but the appropriate companion to the film is probably Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy.
The film lavishes attention on the famous incident involving Phillies manager Ben Chapman's racial taunting of Robinson in May 1947. Does the film overdo it? Tygiel quotes Harold Parrott: "At no time in my life have I heard racial venom and dugout abuse to match the abuse that Ben sprayed on Robinson that night. Chapman mentioned everything from from thick lips to the supposedly extra-thick Negro skull...[and] the repulsive sores and diseases he said Robinson's teammates would become infected with if they touched the towels or the combs he used." Robinson himself wrote in 1972: "I have to admit that this day of all the unpleasant days of my life brought me nearer to cracking up than I have ever been." The film simplifies the abuse, but it probably isn't overstated.
The film also recreates the staging of the incident's resolution, with Robinson posing for an uncomfortable photograph with Chapman in the service of the higher interests involved. Robinson subsequently commented: "I can think of no occasion where I had more difficulty swallowing my pride and doing what seemed best for baseball than in agreeing to pose for a photograph with a man for whom I had only the lowest regard."
The film gives almost equal attention to Branch Rickey, played by Harrison Ford. Ford hams it up royally. He provides a striking contrast with Chadwick Boseman, who plays Robinson. Boseman leaves no doubt of the pride and rage that Robinson had to keep under wraps. The New York Times's Tyler Kepner briefly discusses Boseman's preparation for the part here.
The script is interesting. It seems to me to have a substantially higher fidelity to character and history than the average biopic. Beyond that, the script manifests Christian elements of the story. Rickey is portrayed as a sincere Methodist, proclaiming "God is a Methodist." And Robinson himself is something of a Christ-like figure. Eric Metaxas chides the filmmakers for omitting the Christianity of the protagonists, but it is subtly present, or so it seems to me.
In bringing the era of segregation to life, the film awakens profound feelings of pride and shame that are never far from the surface of our racial ordeal. The film shows how wrong it is to treat men differently based on the color of their skin. The film's morality seems to me to represent another old-fashioned piece of the story that, unfortunately, we have overcome.
Any port in a storm: the Obama administration would rather talk about anything other than the economy. Understandably. So it's one damn thing after another. Michael Ramirez notes the administration's most recent preoccupation:
Here is something I don't understand: liberals are often revealed as vile, vulgar hatemongers-not all of them, of course, but far too many-yet they never seem to pay a penalty at the polls. Why is that?
Margaret Thatcher's death has been the latest occasion for the Left to show its true stripes. All across the U.K., there have been demonstrations-vulgar at best, and violent at worst. In Bristol, lefties celebrating a Thatcher "death street party" started fires, destroyed property and battled police:
This evening in Trafalgar Square, liberals have turned out for a long-planned celebration of Thatcher's death:
"We've been waiting a long time for this," Richard Watson, a 45-year-old from eastern England wearing a party hat, said. "It's an opportunity of a lifetime."
As a huge effigy of Thatcher, with a hook-nosed and toting a handbag, made its way down the stairs in front of the National Gallery, the crowd erupted into cries of "Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Dead! Dead! Dead!" and sang lyrics from the "Wizard of Oz" ditty "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead."
Here in the U.S., the last similar display from the Left was the Occupy Wall Street movement, but liberal violence and general hatefulness have a long and consistent history. Recall, to take cite just one of many examples, the liberals who attacked buses containing delegates and dropped cement blocks on cars from a highway overpass during the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul. It is notable that violent leftists are never denounced by Democratic Party politicians. On the contrary, as we have seen most recently with Kathy Boudin, they find them well-paid jobs as professors when they can. And it is not hard to understand why liberals tend to be so angry; nearly every communication that emanates from the Democratic Party is a hateful, over-the-top smear against Republicans.
So to repeat: I don't get it. Why aren't more voters repelled by the constant parade of vulgarity, hate and violence that characterizes modern liberalism?
So it's Saturday, and I'm still in transit back out to the Left Coast after three splendid and full days with my peeps at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University (much more on this in a couple of days), but one thing about long flights is that it's a great time to catch up on the best memes/pics/cartoons of the week. And so here they are!
Barack Obama is the kind of president the founders sought to protect us against. In Federalist 1 Publius observes, "of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."
Obama is not "commencing" a demagogue. He's been there for a while. Today Obama calls on a suffering Newtown mom to give the president's weekly radio address. This continues Obama's gun-control campaign that Jacob Sullum and the New York Post have characterized as "Abusing dead children."
In the address this morning, Newtown mom Francine Wheeler pleads: "Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy."
The White House speechwriters don't give Mrs. Wheeler any help in drawing a line from any proposed reform to the prevention of her tragedy, because there of course there is none. The White House has simply chosen to exploit Mrs. Wheeler's tragedy for its own petty partisan purposes by means of a few of the demagogic arts.
We have been following the story arising from the NAS report by Peter Wood and Michael Toscano on Bowdoin College. This past weekend I collected relevant links for interested readers here. Since then Bowdoin President Barry Mills has responded here. Wood and Toscano have in turn responded here and the Bowdoin Orient has rounded up responses in an article by Linda Kinstler here.
Yesterday the Bowdoin Orient published a tactful response to the report by our friend Jean Yarbrough. Yarbrough is the Gary M. Pendy Professor of Social Sciences at Bowdoin. Professor Yarbrough's response to the report is notable in several respects and certainly the most noteworthy response to the report so far, of interest to all of us who seek to preserve a domain of humane learning for our children and grandchildren.
Folks, you have to know how to read a letter like this. Professor Yarbrough is not only one of Bowdoin's most distinguished teachers, she loves the school and wants to make it better. She writes from inside the asylum, acutely aware of its deficiencies but wanting to overcome the resistance to being heard as she intends by her audience. The letter is an exercise in diplomacy. It must be read with care to be understood properly. Understood properly, it is devastating.
The letter is eleven paragraphs long. Sitting in the center is paragraph six beginning: "Critics no doubt will object that in resisting the push for diversity I want to return to the good old days when Bowdoin was more white, all male and largely Christian. I do not." If you read nothing else, please attend to Professor Yarbrough's words here. This is the heart of what she has to say.
Professor Yarbrough's letter is in any event worth reading in its entirety on its own moving terms. I am therefore taking the liberty of republishing Professor Yarbrough's letter verbatim without further comment. Professor Yarbrough writes:
I write in response to the editors' request for my opinion of the NAS report with regard to the government department and to the report in general.
First, although the NAS study purports to be an "ethnography" of Bowdoin over the past 40-plus years, it fails to provide a comprehensive answer to the question "What Does Bowdoin Teach?" As others have noted, the report makes much of the fact that history does not require (or even offer) a course on the American founding, but that does not mean that Bowdoin students are denied the opportunity to study this subject. As the report finally gets around to acknowledging (footnote 1155), the government department offers a survey of American political thought that treats the founding in depth (the NAS likes survey courses!), and has done so for the last 25 years.
Second, the report calls attention to many of the narrow and/or ideologically charged first year seminars on offer, but it passes over more traditional seminars without comment. The government department regularly offers a number of such classes, including "Human Being and Citizen" and "Fundamental Questions: Exercises in Political Theory," both of which introduce students to the great books of political philosophy. What's more, every major must take at least one course in political theory to complete the requirements for the major, ensuring that Bowdoin graduates in government (the largest major on campus) will have some familiarity with classic texts. On a related note, at least five government courses assign The Federalist Papers. Although the report generally exempts the government (and economics) departments from criticism, it seems less interested, even by its own lights, in what Bowdoin does well.
This said, much of what the NAS report describes is, I am sorry to say, spot on. First, the report traces the steady retreat from the core texts of Western civilization and their replacement with a much more ideological and multicultural curriculum. (This politicization ought to come as no surprise. It was exactly what in 1962 the "Port Huron Statement" put out by Students for a Democratic Society advised radicals to do.)
Second, the report calls attention to the shallowness of the College's understanding of diversity, which is literally no more than skin deep. As a recent chair of the government department, I have seen the lengths to which the administration is willing to go to identify and recruit such candidates. Every faculty search must now include a member of the Diversity Committee, whose main purpose is to ensure that the members of the department give every consideration to diversity hires. These committee members, being drawn from other disciplines, usually have no knowledge of the field, though that does not deter them from weighing in during the selection process, sometimes quite vociferously. Where such diversity is concerned, the administration actively pushes departments to cast the net more widely and to be mindful of even unintentional bias. What's more, it has redefined positions to increase the likelihood of attracting diversity candidates, which in part explains the shift in the curriculum mentioned above.
Critics no doubt will object that in resisting the push for diversity I want to return to the good old days when Bowdoin was more white, all male and largely Christian. I do not. As the first in my family to attend college, I take great pleasure in sharing my love of Plato and Aristotle, Tocqueville and Lincoln with my students, especially those who, like me, would not have been included in the Bowdoin of old. Encountering these books changed my life, and taught me to think seriously about nobility and human excellence, freedom and justice. I am not alone. W.E.B. du Bois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk, "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed to Truth, I dwell above the veil." Far from being the preserve of "dead white males," the great books have offered a broad array of diverse political and philosophical arguments, emancipating and enriching the minds of those who have the opportunity to study them.
Conservatives, therefore, have no monopoly on the great books. And they do not at Bowdoin. As one of my former students, a self-described rebellious undergraduate and a Democrat wrote to me today, the study of such books is neither an inherently liberal nor conservative cause. Yet the number of courses that engage the Western canon, and do so without reference to the tired trilogy of race, class and gender, is declining.
Third, the NAS report draws attention to the absence of political and intellectual diversity in the academy. Although the administration pays lip service to these concerns, they are not high priorities. In fact, when I raised the matter with a member of the administration while chair, I was told that the College did not have any known socialists either, as if there were a paucity of opinions on the left! If the administration were convinced that the pervasive left-wing tilt of the faculty posed a problem, it could authorize new positions in fields that might attract more conservative scholars, for example, military history or military strategy. In addition, it could make greater efforts to ensure that the overwhelming majority of its liberal faculty does not exhibit any bias, unintentional or otherwise, when conducting faculty searches or granting tenure. As things now stand, the mere hint of conservative leanings weighs against a candidate.
Nor am I as confident as some of my colleagues that they can make up for this deficit by presenting opposing views respectfully. I was not at the faculty meeting where Stephen Meardon observed that faculty chuckled at the very mention of the NAS report, but I was at the 2010 convocation where President Mills observed that conservatives resist sending their children and grandchildren to Bowdoin because they fear they will become alienated from their roots. There was certainly chuckling then.
I freely grant that, for a host of reasons, there are far fewer scholars on the political right, and that not all of them would meet Bowdoin's rigorous academic standards. But it seems to me that Bowdoin too easily satisfies itself that the absence of such opinions among the faculty poses no serious pedagogical problem. Ten years ago, when the United States went to war against Iraq, the College held a panel discussion, but there was no one on the stage who was willing to defend the American decision. And this near-unanimous leftward tilt holds for every major political issue of the day. How can Bowdoin students be well informed if they are presented only with liberal opinions? I am not suggesting that there needs to be proportional representation of opposing views, but in a country where political opinion is nearly evenly divided, the current political imbalance of the faculty does our students no favor.
Although I do not agree with all the findings of the NAS report, I believe that it highlights serious problems with the current state of education at Bowdoin and at elite institutions in general. The question the report raises is: at a time when college costs are prohibitively expensive, are we offering our students the best liberal arts education that we can? President Mills has offered his initial response to the NAS study. My hope is that the administration, the faculty, and the student body-to say nothing of the alumni who generously support the College-will take the report as an opportunity to engage in a thoughtful examination of Bowdoin's educational mission. As I wrote in my April 22, 2011 letter to the Orient, I dearly love this college, am honored to teach here, and will do everything in my power to work with President Mills to make it better.
I'm not sure how widely it was known that Jonathan Winters, whom Robin Williams thought the best comic of his generation, was a conservative. In any case, I sometimes used to show students in my classes on the American Founding the early scene from "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World" where the whole gang tries to deliberate about how to divide the loot fairly when they finally got to the site where the loot was hidden, and how it could illustrate . . . the "great compromise" of the constitutional convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. (By the way, hat tip here to Prof. Ralph Rossum of Claremont for suggesting this idea to me.) The obvious point being: fairness and compromise are not easy to accomplish, since the treasure hunters quickly fall out into a Hobbesian war of all against all to race for the loot. The highlight of the scene in many ways is Winters answering Sid Caesar's remark that the cash loot would be tax free. Winters: "What do you mean tax-free? Everyone's got to pay taxes!"
Of course, my real purpose is screening the scene was to expose students to some classic culture, since the cast of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World" was the creme of American comedy from that era-superior to many of today's comics-and students should know about these great figures. Not to mention the last screen appearance of Spencer Tracy.
Unfortunately there isn't a YouTube video of that scene available. But there is this wonderful clip of Winters roasting Governor Ronald Reagan from the 1970s:
On Wednesday, proponents of amnesty and a path to citizenship for illegal aliens held a protest on the Capitol grounds in Washington, DC. I stumbled into it on my way to the nearby Library of Congress.
Mark Krikorian describes the protest as modest (in size, I assume he means). I guess that's fair. The crowd certainly wasn't small, but it paled in comparison to recent gatherings such as Glenn Beck's and the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert event.
The other big difference between those rallies and Wednesday's was the manufactured feel of the immigration protest. Most of the folks I saw were part of groups of a few dozen, each member wearing a group t-shirt (e.g., mentioning a union). Many seemed to have been bussed in for the event. Indeed, I saw quite a few busses unloading protesters.
There's nothing wrong with, or necessarily inauthentic about, a bussed-in protester. I can still remember hundreds of busses unloading protesters (nearly all of them African-Americans and many wearing suits on a sweltering August day) at the great civil rights march on Washington in 1963). But those protesters didn't have the air of being rounded-up for the march. Many of the folks I saw on Wednesday gave me just that impressed.
My impression is partially confirmed by the Media Research Center, which was on hand to talk with some of the protesters. One protester, carrying a placard about Marco Rubio, was asked if she knew who Rubio is. "No," she answered, "my social worker gave it to me."
Mark Krikorian is probably correct in believing that the social worker in question is a government employee suppled to the protester by the taxpayers of America. This raises plenty of interesting questions, including this one, asked by Krikorian: Does anyone think the person who gave this protester her sign is part of a profession that will rigorously enforce GOP-crafted restrictions on welfare access by the "provisional" amnesty recipients?
But I want to raise a different, though not unrelated question. Does anyone see future conservative voters in a sea of immigrants that takes its cues from "civil rights" organizers, union bosses, and left-wing social workers? Or do you see, as I do, millions of new voters who, like waves of immigrants before them, will vote en masse as directed by bosses whose allegiance is to the Democratic party?
Politico reports that Marco Rubio is prepared "to go all in to support sweeping immigration legislation, offering himself up as the public face of the bill." This isn't much a surprise. In all likelihood, Rubio has been prepared to be the front-man in the push for amnesty and path for citizenship for illegal aliens from the get-go. His sponsorship of reprehensible efforts to demonize critics of amnesty have shown him to be every bit as much of a ruthless pro-amnesty ideologue as Chuck Schumer, for whom he is fronting.
In other news that won't shock, Politico notes that there will be no meaningful hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the comprehensive reform package. Why? Because, as Politico puts it, Chairman Leahy "rebuffed" Rubio in his bid for extensive hearings."
But Rubio, as the linchpin of this deal, could have insisted on hearings as a condition of his support for the bill. Had Rubio "rebuffed" Leahy, the Democrats would have no choice but to yield. But Rubio backed off.
As a result, this most consequential of legislative proposals will receive only cursory committee review. Given the strength of Rubio's bargaining position, we must conclude one (or both) of two things: (1) Rubio didn't really want meaningful hearings or (2) Rubio is a lightweight who is easily rolled by the Dems.
Politico reports that, in place of Senate hearings, Rubio says he "wants to launch his own public hearing process of sorts to allow Republican senators to question expert witnesses about the plan." Could this possibly be any more lame? While Republicans scream, generally, about the need for regular order, Rubio concocts his own special order in which "experts," presumably selected by him, promote his plan to Republican Senators.
Conservatives have only themselves to blame for the fact that Rubio may be in a position to sell out the position most conservatives hold on immigration. These days, we tend to fall in love with attractive young politicians whose only claim on our affection is the ability to flatter us with a good speech and a nice story about themselves that fits our narrative (or, in Rubio's case, a story about his father, with parts that aren't true).
Having elevated another one of these largely untested young things to high prominence, we now must cope with the "monster" we created. And this time, the future of the Republican party as a conservative force hangs in the balance.
A recording of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell meeting with his campaign staff on February 2 was released to David Corn at Mother Jones. Corn was last seen bringing us Mitt Romney's meditations on the "47 percent." Corn has already turned that scoop into a pamphlet-length ebook titled, logically enough, 47 Percent. For the Democrats, it was 100 percent gold.
This time around, Corn fetched fool's gold and seemed not to notice the difference. He labored mightily to depict the proceedings on the McConnell recording as a scandal. In the meeting, Senator McConnell and his staff can be heard committing politics, exploring weaknesses in the possible candidacy of Ashley Judd. Corn presented the meeting as something of a scandal: "McConnell and aides weighed using Judd's mental health and religion as political ammo."
Why, yes, the McConnell team had gone so far as to comb through Judd's memoir, All That Is Bitter & Sweet, looking for the good stuff and laughing out loud. How low can they go? Corn's heroes would never do anything like that!
In unreleased parts of the recording, McConnell's team may even have noted that, unlike her mother and sister, Judd can't sing a note! They may have been heard compiling reviews indicating that since 1999's Double Jeopardy Judd's films have stunk!
Senator McConnell deftly directed attention to the question of who had recorded the meeting. He decried the Nixonian tactics of his political opponents and called in the FBI to investigate.
The FBI is making progress. In the latest installment of the saga, Louisville public radio station WFPL reports that the McConnell meeting had been taped by leaders Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison of the Progress Kentucky super PAC, according to a longtime local Democratic principal who heard them bragging about their hijinks. The Democrat was apparently seeking to shield the party from the impact of the denouement. According to the WFPL report:
On Feb. 2, McConnell opened his campaign headquarters in the Watterson Office Park in Louisville and invited trusted GOP activists and select media outlets to an open house. The event lasted roughly two hours. Afterward, McConnell and several campaign advisors held a strategy session in an office meeting room.
Morrison and Reilly did not attend the open house, but they told Conway they arrived later and were able to hear the meeting from the hallway.
"They were in the hallway after the, I guess after the celebration and hoopla ended, apparently these people broke for lunch and had a strategy meeting, which is, in every campaign I've been affiliated with, makes perfect sense," says Conway. "One of them held the elevator, the other one did the recording and they left. That was what they told to me from them directly."
Other sources have corroborated this series of events to WFPL. The meeting room door is next to the elevators on that floor. McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton has told multiple media outlets the door was shut and locked on Feb. 2. But the door has a vent at the bottom and a large gap underneath.
"Apparently the gentlemen overheard the conversation and decided to record it with a phone or recording device they had in their pocket. Could've been an iPhone, could've been a Flip camera or something like that," Conway say.
Sources tell WFPL the portion of the meeting that was recorded came at the end of the strategy session.
Conway is reportedly talking to the FBI. Morrison is blaming Reilly for the recording. Previously jubilant Kentucky Democrats are running for cover.
What about David Corn? As of update 4 to his post, Corn is still awaiting Senator McConnell's response to the substance of Corn's report. How does the song go? "Mama, He's Crazy"! I think it can safely be said without laughing that Senator McConnell regrets he won't be facing Ms. Judd in the elections of 2014.
James Taranto has been following the affair on Twitter and derives an edifying judgment of public policy: "So post-Watergate 'reforms' led to the creation of super PACs, which are now committing Watergate-like crimes. Brilliant."
Returning from a business trip to Washington, D.C., tonight I was delighted to find Senator John Thune waiting to board the 7:15 p.m. flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul at Reagan National Gate 21. As I said hello, Senator Thune could not have been warmer.
I asked him about his trip home. If I understand correctly, he said he was going home for the induction of his father, age 93, to the South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame. He added that his father's induction is attributable in part to his play on the University of Minnesota basketball team. I'm afraid the recognition may be overdue.
His father was also awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service as a naval fighter pilot. I believe that recognition was more timely.
I asked Senator Thune if he was at the White House last night for the meeting with President Obama on the budget. He said he was. I asked if he would comment on the meeting for Power Line readers. He graciously let me fire up my iPhone and record his response in the video below. Sincere thanks to Senator Thune for his patience and his candor.
They've been protecting pedophiles for years and getting away with it.
They've hidden behind the silence of the young victims, and they've been able to count on powerful people in government and the media turning a blind eye.
That's all about to change as the predators' protectors become the prey ...
Why hasn't this illegal abortion clinic been shut down?
Kermit Gosnell's Atlanta house of horrors isn't the only outrage being perpetrated by the abortion industry.
Check out THIS illegal clinic ... loads of health-code violations ... the physician and director barred by name from operating ... still putting women at risk.
'Evangelicals could be put on watch list, denied guns'
The head of the Family Research Council is looking at "inflammatory rhetoric" by Army officials who've called evangelicals, Catholics and orthodox Jews threats to America and Congress' efforts to require background checks for gun purchases, and he warns it's time to join the dots.
Will the government create a watch list? Will you be on it?
An Amish leader found guilty of forcibly cutting the hair and beards of some of his co-religionists in an internal dispute is sentenced to 15 years in prison for committing federal "hate crimes."
A pretty harsh sentence, you say, but not really your problem.
Oh, are you in for a surprise. If the feds can do this to the Amish, they can trump up hate-crime charges against anyone.
Now we know why this Pennsylvania member of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" wants to keep firearms out of the hands of young people.
And we also know why the underage boy he tried to force to perform a sexual act wishes he had had a gun ...
Forensic profiler: I know what Obama's gun plans are
A leading forensic profiler has dissected Barack Obama's recent statements calling for new gun laws and he says he knows where Obama wants to go with gun control.
Before 1956, this federal program didn't exist ... manufacturing jobs formed the backbone of the U.S. economy and American workers dominated the world by their productivity and work ethic.
In 2013, that federal program is still around ... and out of control.
If you're putting your time in at your grind of a job, this will make you furious ...
Finally. On Wednesday, President Obama presented his proposed budget for the 2014 fiscal year. Setting a new record for tardiness, the budget was presented 60 days late.
The Heritage Foundation wasted no time. Since the budget was released, our policy analysts have already published their thoughts and analysis on The Foundry.
North Korea can already hit Hawaii, parts of Alaska, and California. It can also hit U.S. forward-deployed troops in South Korea, Japan, and Guam...While the Obama Administration does not believe that North Korea is capable of hitting the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, the U.S. has a history of underestimating North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.
American troops and bases are also located throughout the region, including along the Demilitarized Zone that serves as a border between North and South Korea.
"The U.S. has already responded to the threats-but more commitment to missile defense is needed," Heritage's Amy Payne argues. Unfortunately,"diplomacy doesn't work with Kim Jong-un," suggesting we need to impose tough sanctions instead of endlessly talking.
"Americans are taking notice" of this threat, Payne explains. "CNN reports that 'more than four in 10'Americans in a new poll say 'they see the reclusive nation as an immediate threat to the United States...That's up 13 percentage points in less than a month.'"
While we work to resolve the crisis, the United States and our allies must prepare for the worst.
This week, The Heritage Foundation mourned the passing of Lady Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister and Patron of The Heritage Foundation. A great champion of individual liberty and freedom, her death will be mourned by all who support principled conservative values.
Lady Thatcher was a conviction politician, and believed firmly that without American leadership, this world is a far more dangerous place. And, in order to protect and advance her legacy in the United States, she established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at Heritage in 2005. Deciding to found the center in Washington, rather than London, proved her immense faith in American global leadership.
Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint was spotted this week moving into his new office at Heritage. He took the reins last week from Ed Feulner, who served as president since 1977.
Heritage Work of Note
Ed Feulner built The Heritage Foundation from a scrappy startup in 1973 into the powerhouse it is today. Conservative historian and Heritage scholar Lee Edwards tells the story of how Feulner built Heritage in the book "Leading the Way."
Edwards and Feulner recently sat down with Heritage members to discuss the book and his legacy. That interview will air on C-SPAN 2's Book TV on Sunday, April 14 at 6:45 pm. Get more information about the interview on Booktv.org and purchase your copy of Leading the Way.
The Heritage Foundation Google Plus Hangout takes place today, April 12th at 12pmET. Friday's guests will include Lee Edwards, Heritage Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought and author of "Leading the Way" and Heritage Vice-President of Marketing Genevieve Wood.
To watch the hangout, you can visit our Google Plus page at 12pmET: https://plus.google.com/+TheHeritageFoundation. The Hangout can also be viewed immediately after the interview in the same stop indefinitely.
New research suggests fracking does not cause earthquakes, as opponents of the energy extraction technique have claimed. The studies went on to say the energy released during a fracking event is equivalent to that caused by a person jumping off a ladder.
In fact, his spending increases and advertised spending cuts cancel each other out-leaving only a massive tax increase.
The President cancels sequestration's spending cuts-therefore raising spending-by the same amount that he reduces spending. When that's done, all that's left is a $1.1 trillion tax hike.
The President increases spending by $1.1 trillion by cancelling sequestration. Sequestration, the automatic spending cuts adopted in the Budget Control Act of August 2011, is already in effect. Thus, cancelling these reductions in spending increases spending by $1.1 trillion over 10 years.
The President reduces spending by $1.1 trillion. The President lists a number of additional spending reductions based on a December offer to Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH). These total about $1.1 trillion and are completely offset by the cancellation of sequestration.
The President raises taxes by $1.1 trillion. The official total tax increase in President Obama's budget is available in the Treasury Department's "Green Book." Treasury scores the total net tax increase from all President Obama's tax policies at more than $1.1 trillion over 10 years.
So President Obama's spending cut claim doesn't hold up, and Americans get stuck with a $1.1 trillion tax bill. Real math hurts.
Know a Methodist?
The PA Coalition for Responsible Government has been advocating for Governor Corbett to stand up to Obamacare and refuse to expand Medicaid in Pennsylvania. Our rationale is that, if not reformed first, the cost makes this expansion unsustainable and if enacted it will reduce the funding for other welfare and educational "requirements" and potentially bankrupt the state. The Methodist Church has recently launched an effort to influence Governor Corbett to expand Medicaid in PA. The Methodist Church is not the only church lobbying Governor Corbett to expand Medicaid as proposed in Obamacare in Pennsylvania, but the most obvious to us, as several leaders of the PA Coalition happen to be Methodist.
Know a Methodist? Send them the information below and ask them to contact their regional Bishop and Governor Corbett's office and let them know that the Methodist petition does not speak for them. The Governor's office number is 1-717-787-2500 between 8:30 AM 5:00 PM
Recently the United Methodist Church launched a program called "Cover the Commonwealth."
It urges United Methodists to lobby Governor Corbett to expand Medicaid in Pennsylvania. (This is part of the Obamacare expansion that to-date the Governor has refused to adopt.)
It asks United Methodists to sign a petition with the following language: We support health care that is ....
INCLUSIVE: Health care is a right and a shared responsibility that is grounded in our common humanity. AVAILABE: Health care must contribute to the common good by being available to everyone, especially those who cannot afford it. ACCESSIBLE: All persons should have access to health services that provide necessary care and contribute to wellness. ACCOUNTABLE: Our health care system must be accountable, offering a quality, equitable and sustainable means of keeping us healthy as individuals and as a community.
If you know a Methodist, please ask them to contact their Bishop to let them know that they DO NOT speak for them. Please be respectful, these are persons of God that happen to be misguided in what the proper role of government in our daily lives should be.
The three regional Bishops for the Commonwealth are:
Bishop Thomas Bickerton, Pittsburgh Area ------ Phone 724.776.1499 and email at umbishop@wpaumc.org Bishop Peggy Johnson, Philadelphia Area ----- Phone (484) 762-8233 or pjohnson@epaumc.org Jeremiah Park, Harrisburg Area --- Phone: (717) 766-7871 extension 3100 and email at bishop@susumc.org
You might want to recommend the following for your Methodist friends and make sure that they reference the petition to expand Medicare in Pennsylvania.
As a United Methodist I have the following questions:
(1) Why is the United Methodist Church promoting a program that does not meet the "accountable" criteria? Explain to me how this program will be paid for? Are you advocating dropping the tax exempt status of all churches, including the United Methodist Church to provide the necessary financial resources? If God's people are no longer going to care for the sick, why the tax exempt status?
(2) What Biblical basis do you have for turning the people and especially the poor over to a secular government for charity? I seem to recall Samuel warning the people not to turn to governments of men and I cannot recall Christ ever appealing to Rome to feed, clothe, and care for the poor. There is a good reason. It never has and never will work.
(3) What basis do you have for asking the government to take income and assets from one group by force of law and give to another? Is the commandment "thy shall not steal" no longer relevant? There is another commandment against coveting thy neighbor's property. Is that commandment likewise no longer relevant?
(4) Why is the United Methodist Church fraudulently advocating an economic system known for its failure to provide for the poorest among us? Why is the UMC supporting a system that removes God as it concentrates power and exploits the poor?
(5) Is there any reason that I should not disassociate myself from this cause and attempt to persuade my fellow Methodists to do likewise?
Urgent Action
roy beck
Is your job story (or that of a friend) as important for Congress to hear as the story of an illegal alien?
DEAR FRIEND,
Your response to this request truly may be the deciding factor as to whether Congress ends up passing the giant amnesty bill to be introduced on Tuesday.
Are you unemployed, underemployed or in a job with wages depressed for years by the oversupply of labor created by immigration -- or is a relative or friend? Well, your/their stories are invisible to the power elites and the politicians backing the amnesty bill of Marco Rubio and his Senate Gang of Eight.
They believe America has a big labor shortage and needs millions more foreign workers.
Why?
Because they don't see you.
They only see the corporate lobbyists demanding more cheap foreign labor, and the 11 million illegal aliens -- like the ones on the Capitol lawn last week -- demanding amnesty and work permits.
You or your friends and relatives in economic hardship are THE FORGOTTEN in th is whole debate, thus far.
Our top priority here is to get your stories in front of the Senators who will still take your side if they are forced to look at enough of you and realize what the Rubio Amnesty might do to you.
Nothing about your story will be shared except as you give us permission inside the survey. (Even if you don't want the story shared publicly, we need to at least tabulate that you have a story.)
Without thousands of Americans stepping forward with their stories of hardship, the only stories that Congress will hear are those of illegal aliens and corporate lobbyists.
When Sen. Rubio (R-Fla.) went on all the TV talk shows this morning, he was representing nearly all the power elites of this country who have FORGOTTEN you in their rush to globalize the American labor market so that workers have to compete directly with the world wage averages.
He sounded mighty confident that he and the power elites will win on this.
But we at NumbersUSA feel the American people still have a very good chance to stop this monster amnesty. It is going to take all of us to do it, though.
Take our interests survey. Let us know what you're interested in so we can customize actions and other information to meet your needs.
The Goldberg File By Jonah Goldberg
April 12, 2013
Dear Reader (including those of you still languishing behind the veil of ignorance),
So earlier this week MSNBC released one of its "Lean Forward" ads, this time with a woman named Melissa Harris-Perry.
Before we get to all that, a word about the ad campaign itself. In one sense these ads are like the question, "You want extra?" from the masseuse at a shady Vietnamese massage parlor -- proof that all pretense at propriety is exactly that, pretense. This is supposed to be a news network. Moreover, it is supposed to be a news network that constantly boasts of its professional and philosophical superiority to Fox News (and it's true; except for ratings, influence, quality, and profit MSNBC kicks Fox's butt). And yet, they run testimonials to state power with a frequency that rivals North Korean TV.
But in another sense these ads are the "extra" itself -- a rather sad and perfunctory attempt to satisfy urges that barely rise above the masturbatory. The self-love oozes from the screen as the hosts' inner-15-year-olds realize this is their chance to prove they're as great as their favorite social-studies teacher told them they were!
Thanks to the magic of Hollywood, they preen for the cameras with an almost post-coital glow as they deliver their little sermonettes that amount to pointless verbal onanism. Hey, look. There's no-necked Ed Schultz at a diner, looking like he's having one last cup of coffee before he has to work up a sweat burying the corpse of a dissident union official still moldering in the trunk of his ten-year-old Coupe de Ville. And there's Rachel Maddow (looking a bit like that aforementioned dead union official) trying to give her Stakhanovite commitment to infrastructure projects a romantic hue.
All Your Children Belong to Us
And now there's Melissa Harris-Perry. By now you've heard of or seen the ad, but just in case here it is. In short, she thinks the idea that your kids are, well, yours is outdated and counterproductive.
Rich Lowry, praise be upon him, offers a fine summary of what Harris-Perry is getting at here. Actually, no disrespect to the guy who signs my paycheck (who is not only a powerful man, but a handsome one) but Harris-Perry herself was more than clear enough about what she's after. The thing is only 30 seconds long, very highly produced, and straight to the point.
This is important because Harris-Perry is now simultaneously insisting she won't apologize and insisting that she didn't say what she so obviously said. In the ad she's talking about the role of government, government investments, and ridiculing the idea of "private" ownership of kids. "We have to break through," she urged, "our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families." Now she claims she was talking about civil society and voluntarism?
As the guy who took Obama to his first stable said when the president was about to step in some equine feces, "Oh, that's horses***."
The Wayback Machine
Like Sisyphus said on day 12,092 of his sentence, "forgive me for getting a little frustrated here."
The whole point of her commercial was to explain, in the condescending tones we usually expect from baristas with two graduate degrees, This Is How The Smart People See Things. And, on that level, I am utterly unsurprised she was surprised by the controversy. The notion that we need to solve the "problem" of private ownership of children is an ancient idea among progressives. The whole reason the ad made it on air is that Harris-Perry doesn't know anyone who thought it was controversial.
Lots of folks have been citing Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village, (which I've actually read for reasons that have to do with original sin and the tragic nature of the universe) but the more relevant text is actually Clinton's address to the United Methodist General Conference in 1996. "As adults we have to start thinking and believing that there isn't really any such thing as someone else's child . . . For that reason, we cannot permit discussions of children and families to be subverted by political or ideological debate."
This quote can be found in Liberal Fascism -- along with many, many, pages on this eternal progressive dream of grabbing the kids. For instance, from page 326:
Since Plato's Republic, politicians, intellectuals, and priests have been fascinated with the idea of "capturing" children for social-engineering purposes. This is why Robespierre advocated that children be raised by the state. Hitler, who understood as well as any the importance of winning the hearts and minds of youth-once remarked, "When an opponent says 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already . . . You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing but this new community.'" Woodrow Wilson candidly observed that the primary mission of the educator was to make children as unlike their parents as possible. Charlotte Perkins Gilman stated it more starkly. "There is no more brilliant hope on earth to-day," the feminist icon proclaimed, "than this new thought about the child . . . the recognition of 'the child,' children as a class, children as citizens with rights to be guaranteed only by the state; instead of our previous attitude toward them of absolute personal [that is, parental] ownership-the unchecked tyranny . . . of the private home."
But, as that aforementioned Vietnamese masseuse likes to say, wait, there's more. Clinton's line actually gets closer to the point I make in The Tyranny of Clichés, out in paperback at the end of the month. ("We knew that was coming" -- The Couch). In Tyranny, one of my main arguments is that liberals are -- what's the right word? Oh, that's right, lying when they say they aren't ideological. Well, here's Hillary Clinton blithely telling the world that we need to get beyond the antiquated idea that you have more claim on your kid than anyone else and, then, in the same breath insisting that anyone who disagrees is being subversively "ideological" or "political." Think about that. It's like saying, "We as a country must move beyond the idea that the avant-garde of the proletariat as represented by the Politburo doesn't have the uncontestable right to invoke prima nocta and steal the virtue of your maiden daughters," and then claiming, without missing a beat, that any objections to this eminently reasonable and pragmatic point of view amounts to nothing more than political or ideological subversion. (Am I going to get any credit for that Leninist-Braveheart mash-up?).
Seriously, according to Clinton, you are a subversive if you think your kid is yours. And let's be clear: The collective ownership of the "village," that Clinton, Harris-Perry, et al. have in mind, is ownership by the state, guidance by the state. Mussolini's definition of fascism was the idea that everything is within the state, nothing outside the state. For Clinton & Co. everything is within the village; nothing is outside of it.
Anyway, I don't want to go all Red Dawn here ("Wolverines!" -- The Couch), but I'm pretty sure we have a Second Amendment precisely to recognize the fact that my kids are mine.
Moreover, it really needs to be pointed out that as a matter of policy and pragmatism, the idea that collective ownership of kids is smarter, better, or more enlightened than private ownership of kids (i.e. traditional parenting) is incandescently stoopid. Of course, the government has an obligation to step in when there's criminal abuse or gross irresponsibility. But there's no way, bureaucrats can do a better job of caring for kids than actual parents can. As I say in pretty much every speech I give: The government cannot love you. And, by extension, it sure as Hell can't love your children, never mind love them more than you do.
Lowry, in his philosopher-king wisdom, beat me to one of my favorite stories about Phil Gramm. He once told a woman, "My educational policies are based on the fact that I care more about my children than you do."
The woman, in full Melissa Harris-Perry mode, responded, "No, you don't."
Gramm shot back, "Okay, what are their names?"
The Horror in Philadelphia
One reason the jocularity in this "news"letter is restrained is that this has all been a prelude to discussing the Kermit Gosnell case. The sheer vileness of the whole story is hard to get your head around and it's certainly hard to make with the yuckety-yucks knowing that in a few paragraphs you're going to be talking about a den of barbarism where educated adults cut the spines of live babies and rationalized it with the Orwellian abracadabra phrase "reproductive health." And the Iron Maiden, I suppose, was all about ensuring good posture.
My friends Kirsten Powers, David Freddoso, and Mollie Hemingway have already spelled out what should be obvious to all: The press is outrageously ignoring this story. My own theory, as I explained last night on Special Report, is that they are embarrassed by it. Partial-birth abortion is supposed to be a myth concocted by pro-lifers to scare people away from "reproductive health." If then-state senator Barack Obama had his way, Kermit Gosnell wouldn't be on trial for murder, he'd more likely be on trial for some serious health-code violations or, perhaps even more likely, he'd be getting an award from Planned Parenthood.
Getting Past the Idea that It's Someone Else's Fetus
The most remarkable thing no one has remarked upon, as far as I can tell, is the disconnect between the Melissa Harris-Perry view about socializing children and what I think we can call the Melissa Harris-Perry view about privatization of snipping the spines of babies. If we all own everyone else's children, then Kermit Gosnell killed -- barbarically slaughtered, actually -- Harris-Perry's babies. Why isn't she angry about that?
One of intellectual liberalism's favorite justifications for "social justice" is the so-called "original position." This thought experiment is at the heart of John Rawls's arguments for an interventionist state. Imagine you are a soul, amongst many other souls, waiting for a body in the real world (soul is my word). Now imagine you had a say in how society would be organized and designed. But here's the hitch: Your discussion of what would constitute the best society must be held behind what Rawls calls a "veil of ignorance." In other words, you have no idea whether you will be born black or white, rich or poor, gay or straight, healthy or weak, etc. Since you don't know what card you'll draw in the great game of life, you'll want the game to be as fair as possible.
While I have problems with this that aren't all that relevant to this discussion (Hint: The whole idea that we can "design" societies in this manner is one step removed from immanentizing the eschaton) what is infuriating is that Rawls abandons this entire framework in order to celebrate abortion rights. In Political Liberalism, Rawls says in effect that women's equality trumps both the social need for children and the necessity of respecting human life.
Now, I don't know about you, but if I was standing in some metaphysical waiting room, hoping for my one shot at a life on earth (and in Rawls's view, any life at all), before I had my fingers crossed in the hopes of landing a life as a rich, handsome, and smart guy with a great sense of rhythm, I would first hope that maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't blow my one shot in Kermit Gosnell's "clinic" getting a few seconds to take in the splendor of a urine- and blood-soaked hell-hole before he grabbed his scissors.
The pro-life view, contrary to a billion versions of TheHandmaid's Tale, is not statist. It is anti-statist. For the religious, the pro-life view holds, at least in part, that every life belongs to God, not government. For the more secular, it holds that the government is not qualified morally or technically to decide which human beings count as human beings and which do not.
Philosophically and practically, the progressive view that children belong to us all isn't pro-life, but it is obviously and thoroughly anti "choice." In the Harris-Perry view, a woman can't simply choose what she should do to her baby, nor can the doctor. It's up to all of us. And who knows, maybe we need more workers for the salt mines? Maybe the Social Security trust fund needs more dues. Maybe the army needs cannon fodder, or the medical schools need spare parts? The point is that in the fully realized progressive vision it's not your decision to make. If all your children belong to the state, so do all your fetuses.
As I mentioned above, The Tyranny of Clichés is coming out in paperback on April 30. I don't want to debase myself, but I would also really love to pay off my second mortgage. So, balancing these two desires, let me just say: Please, oh please, oh please buy it. It's less than ten bucks on Amazon if you pre-order it today. If it helps to rationalize it, consider it a cheap subscription price to the G-File. Heck, if it helps rationalize it, think of it as the Necronomicon. Anyway, if everyone (allegedly) reading this "news"letter bought a copy today, it would become an instant No. 1 bestseller and guarantee that I will be able to continue producing these high quality G-Files well into my dotage. Did I mention that Mark Hemingway wrote that The Tyranny of Clichés "might be the best and most fun-to-read primer on the tenets of conservative politics since P. J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores."
Okay, enough with all of that.
The other night in the greenroom for Red Eye, Joe DeVito and I were talking about a lot of weird things. One of them was how perhaps the Internet's most dubious achievement was letting sexually weird and deviant people realize they are not alone. I don't mean gay people, or transgendered, or any of that. I mean people like this. (Warning: Yuck.) In the old days, it would be very hard to find a date who'd totally be in to putting on a Dora the Explorer costume and having sex with a dude in a Cookie Monster outfit. Now, that's one Craig's List ad away.
Similarly, before the Internet Age, I sincerely doubt the Chinese would have gotten so into putting pantyhose on dogs.
Speaking of things Cosmo would never, ever, do -- he would never leave with a burglar.
The Couch was particularly intrigued with this, but given the conversation about weird sexual desires, I find it a little troubling these people are out there.
And lastly, here's the video "MVI_3406.AVI" -- which sort of says it all! It's funnier if you turn on the captioning.
NRO Digest - April 12, 2013
Today on National Review Online . . .
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Democrats should agree to entitlement reform, and the GOP should offer up some loophole revenue.Call to Regular Order.
JAMES C. CAPRETTA: Obama's budget embodies his statist governing philosophy and his indifference to the urgent need for entitlement reform. A Budget to Reject.
RICH LOWRY: If the president thinks his new budget proposal will fly, he is monumentally out of touch. Obama's DOA Budget.
JOHN FUND: Ohio governor John Kasich is alienating much of his conservative base. Kasich Veering Left.
ANDREW STILES: Senator Jeff Sessions raises concerns over negotiations for comprehensive immigration reform. Sessions vs. the Gang of Eight.
JONAH GOLDBERG: For talking about race, Brad Paisley and Rand Paul are taking their lumps. The Conversation Starters.
YUVAL LEVIN: The idea that Obama's budget would serve as the basis for some kind of grand-bargain talks now looks preposterous. The President's Budget.
MICHELLE MALKIN: Temporary Protected Status rewards countless line-jumpers with permanent residency and taxpayer-subsidized benefits. Amnesty Never Dies.
ROBERT VERBRUGGEN: Very few people who fail background checks are prosecuted, and that's how it should be. Re: Prosecuting Gun Criminals
ANDY MCCARTHY: The small number of prosecutions for illegal gun purchases highlights the injustice being done to the innocent. Re: Re: Prosecuting Gun Criminals.
See a roundup of wasteful spending stories on CNSNews.com's Wa$te Watch
COMMENTARY:
Who's More Demeaning Than Brad Paisley? By L. Brent Bozell III After many decades in which tens of thousands of young black men were gunned down by other young black men, how can it be said that country music is the genre that's terribly insensitive to what's happening on this war front? This country is sick and getting sicker. Don't blame Brad Paisley and LL Cool J.
Who Is Winning the Gun War? By Patrick J. Buchanan One need not be paranoid to get the sense that what gun controllers saw in Newtown was not only an atrocity but an opportunity - to advance toward their ultimate goal of overturning Heller and disarming America.
Object Lesson: 'Temporary' Amnesty Never Dies By Michelle Malkin Does America lack "compassion" and "humanity" for uninvited foreigners? While open-borders activists rail against "injustice" and demand new "pathways to citizenship," official U.S. policy rewards countless line-jumpers with permanent residency and taxpayer-subsidized benefits. Check out the "Temporary Protected Status" program run by the Department of Homeland Security.
Spies and Compromise By Rich Galen Who bugged Mitch McConnell's office? A compromise on gun control? And on immigration, it's all over but the bill-drafting?
Columnist J.D. Mullane posted a shocking but not all that surprising photo from the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. The photo shows nearly every reserved media seat empty. Why would the media go out of their way to avoid such a shocking story? Here's the story the MSM fails to report on.
Indoctrination: 4th grader taught giving up rights for security is ok
How would you feel if your child came home after another day in their 4th grade class only to find they were being taught it was totally OK to give up individual rights and liberties in exchange for "safety"? That's exactly what happened to one parent, as reported by TheBlaze. Glenn reacts on radio today.
"Would the world be better off if a billion Muslims became Christians?" Penn Jillette answers Glenn previewed tonight's TV show featuring a fascinating conversation between Penn Jillette, Glenn, and Rabbi Lapin. One of the most thought-provoking and politically incorrect questions was posed to Penn by the Rabbi: "Would the world be better off if a billion Muslims became Evangelical Christians?" Check out Glenn's preview and don't miss TV tonight!
Hilarious moment: Glenn realizes Stu hijacked his Twitter account
All morning, unbeknownst to Glenn, Stu hijacked his Twitter account in order to promote the Wonderful World of Stu, but more importantly, to relentlessly make fun of Glenn. Check out some of the best tweets mocking Mr. Beck through his own Twitter account HERE.
The Wonderful World of Stu is back TOMORROW at 10:30pm ET! Tired of those greedy capitalists and their evil capitalist ways? Stu's not! He loves capitalism, and he'll show you some of the good things we have in America because of it. He takes on progressives and liberals by dismantling their phony statistics and misleading claims. The Wonderful World of Stu is the perfect mix of humor and news that drives the left crazy and leaves the right laughing out loud. TOMORROW, April 13th, at 10:30pm ET, don't miss a brand new episode of the Wonderful World of Stu!
Gun control bill going through, no filibuster
Despite promises that the latest gun control bill would be filibustered, Republicans ended up standing down when it came time to put up or shut up. What caused the sudden lack of spine? What's the deal with conservatives like Pat Toomey caving? Glenn responds on radio today.
Which celeb is standing up for the Second Amendment?
Not everyone in Hollywood is a flaming liberal, apparently. There are a few common sense folks out there who are willing to speak out even though the "loving left" movie makers aren't too tolerant of opposing views. Who came out voicing support for their right to bear arms? TheBlaze.com has the story.
LIMITED TIME OFFER: Subscribe to TheBlaze TV and get Glenn's new book FREE!
Purchase TheBlaze TV Plus Annual Subscription for $99.95 and get a FREE copy of Glenn's upcoming book CONTROL - delivered to you on its release date (April 30th, 2013)! Don't miss out on this special offer.
Pat vs Glenn in battle for least manliest man award Earlier this week on radio, Pat and Glenn shot some hoops demonstrating just how bad Obama is at basketball. Somehow this great spectacle devolved into a bickering match between the two over who was shooting baskets through more pain. It was a sad spectacle that ended with Pat attempting to play ball with meat mitts on. It's too bizarre to explain any further, but the video is epic. WATCH
Penn Jillette reveals which MSNBC host wants to sit down with Glenn? Last night, TheBlaze TV featured a great conversation between Glenn and Penn Jillette, one of the more thought provoking people in America today. Glenn asked him to give thoughts on a variety of topics that you just wouldn't hear anywhere else. Among the revelations - which MSNBC host wants to have a private conversation with Glenn? Find out that and more HERE.
You've made Pat & Stu the #2 podcast on iTunes in less than a week! If you haven't subscribed the Pat & Stu's free podcast yet, go HERE and do it now! The latest show will be waiting for you to listen on demand every day. You can also subscribe to Glenn's podcast HERE.
Colorado Undersherriff who witnessed Homeland Security call Christians a threat speaks to Glenn
One of the big stories on TheBlaze this week was how Homeland Security was giving local police training sessions describing Christians who 'take the Bible literally' a group that should be monitored closely. What has life been like for the whistleblower since? Glenn interviews him on radio today.
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OK....when they look at you like you have a tin foil hat on your head......take some of this information with you. It is 126 pages. I have not read through the entire document (YET) but what I have read is enough to blow off the top of your head. I have highlighted some stuff. KIPP (Charter Schools) has a CHARACTER REPORT CARD on Page 39. So for now start on page 39 and work your way through to page 45. Remember 
Glenn: Help us get in millions of home
American Policy Center has recently released a booklet that explains everything you need to know to start fighting back against sustainable programs both locally and nationally. The booklet is called Special Report: Agenda 21 and How to Stop It and is available in the APC store for only $5.95.
Shock Photo: Media AWOL on Gosnell abortion trial
