912 Patriots of Lower Bucks - Your Daily Updates ALL in ONE Place!
May 13, 2013
Quote:
"Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe."
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Last Spring, dozens of Tea Party groups reported the IRS was not only holding up applications for tax-exempt status, it was also asking aseries of intrusive questionsthat clearly violated the groups' right of free association. At the ACLJ, we ultimately represented 27 Tea Parties from 18 states and began the painstaking process of resisting, group by group, the IRS's demands. To date, 14 of our clients have been approved, eight are pending, and none have been denied.
The IRSdeniedtargeting the Tea Parties, and some on the Left ridiculed the Tea Party's claims, passing off the IRS inquiries as "standard" and "much ado about nothing." Today, however, theAssociated Pressreported the IRS now admits targeting conservative groups and is very, very sorry:
The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.
Lerner said the practice, initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati, was wrong and she apologized while speaking at a conference in Washington.
While I appreciate the honesty, "sorry" is just not enough. Where is the compensation for hundreds of hours of attorney time? Where is the compensation for thousands of hours spent by Tea Party groups compiling tens of thousands of pages of documents?
Mark this day well: The Obama Administration's IRS just admitted targeting conservative organizations in the months before a presidential election.
And to think, through Obamacare we dramatically expanded IRS power. A chilling thought.
Glenn Beck's Withering Response to the IRS Admitting It Targeted the 9/12 Project, Conservative Groups
The Blaze | Erica Ritz | May. 11, 2013 11:07pm
Glenn Beck issued a response Saturday to the Internal Revenue Service's shocking admission that it has unfairly targeted conservative groups, pointing out that he and his news organization have been reporting on the issue for over a year.
"In February 2012, TheBlaze first reported what the IRS now admits to - that they unfairly targeted conservative groups including the 9/12
project. It is nice to see everyone else playing catch-up and finally asking the same questions that TheBlaze started raising over a year ago," Beck's statement read.
As early as February 14, 2012, TheBlaze's Mike Opelka published a story titled: "Is Obama Using the IRS to Silence Opposition Voices?"
TrentoVision 5.9.13 - Navy SEAL Extortion 17 EXPOSED - Obama Failures
Watch these Navy SEAL Team VI families and other family members as they reveal the Obama Administrations culpability in death of their sons in the fatal helicopter crash in Afghanistan following the successful raid on bin Laden's compound. This is a powerful and riveting briefing that included some of America's most significant military leaders.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog11 Comments
Lady Macbeth may have been one of literature's most famous villains, but at least she had the guilty conscience to eventually try and wash the blood off her hands. Even if by then it was much too late.
It is doubtful that Hillary Rodham Clinton will start hallucinating bloody spots on her palms during the book tour for her upcoming 14-million-dollar book or compulsively washing her hands during the 2016 campaign.
If she does make it into the White House, it is even more doubtful that she will wander it at night in a nightgown crying out for the blood that can never be washed away.
Lady Macbeth may have cried out, "Here's the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Araby will not sweeten this little hand." But the black perfumes of today's Araby are more than enough to sweeten a multitude of appeasements and cover the blood that flows out from them.
Real life villains are closer to Richard III than Lady Macbeth, offering to trade their stolen kingdom for a horse to the very end, rather than seeking some intangible repentance in a fit of remorse. They are more likely to ask what difference it makes; the solipsistic query of the sociopath to whom the feelings of others are abstract things.
The Benghazi hearings featured more hypocritical and trite eulogies than anything Richard III could have imagined. Congressman Elijah Cummings told witnesses that "death is a part of a life." A fact that they were surely unaware of. His colleague, Eleanor Holmes Norton asked, "What's the big deal here?"
"We had Benghazi I with Susan Rice, now we're having Benghazi II with Hillary Clinton. Enough Benghazi," Norton declared. It's not quite "Out, damned spot!" or "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" and more "What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?"
The latter is a timeless villain's truth, whether in a fictional 11th century Scottish castle or in the all too real 21st century Capitol Hill.
For Lady Macbeth, power was not a sufficient defense against conscience. A thousand years later, in Foggy Bottom, Capitol Hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; there is no conscience, only power. The arrogance of an Obama, a Clinton or a Norton comes from their confidence that none can call their power to account.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog5 Comments
HEARTS AND MINDS
The Benghazi hearings sucked most of the oxygen in the room on the right, which is why the press conference on the next day by SEAL families and military experts on the Seal Team Six attack got little attention from the conservative media.
Those that did write about it focused mainly on the Muslim prayer, but not on the bigger issues involving the Rules of Engagement. And those issues, believe it or not, are bigger than Benghazi.
Let's begin with Charles Strange, the father of Navy SEAL Michael Strange, calling out Biden and the administration's Muslim appeasement in true Philly fashion.
I just wanted to inform you of a few things going on...
My friend Michael Heise was visited by the FBI over facebook comments. This is a reality check, a wake up call, why is the FBI visiting activists homes? Intimidation? How long before they come for you? He was talking about the Federal Reserve & Gun Rights on his page. If they can target him for speaking about that, they can target
you.
They have files on activist leaders as well as protest organizers, so believe me. They are watching us all the time. 1984 is here, and my answer to that is 1776. We need a modern day revolution. I do not mean to scare you, but I do mean to prepare and encourage you to stand up and continue to fight against this "police-state" and unconstitutional government.
"Open Carry March on Washington,"
Everyone must read this. OPEN CARRY MARCH ON D.C on Independence Day 2013 will be the beginning of the peaceful revolution. 1776 is Rising. Will you join us in the fight for our independence from our elected tyrants and global elites that want to destroy our U.S. Sovereignty and create a one world government?
Radio host and activist Adam Kokesh plans to lead an armed march from the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia all the way to the White House and back.
According to a Facebook event posted by Kokesh, titled "Open Carry March on Washington," he plans to lead a peaceful march July 4th "across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge." On Monday, Kokesh joined Alex on his nationally syndicated radio show to discuss what the march aims to peacefully accomplish:
Cable provider Comcast is actively supporting Obama's radical leftist agenda to fundamentally transform America.
The news programs at NBC and MSNBC, run by Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, reflect total agreement with the Obama agenda. These "news" organizations even adopted the Obama re-election campaigns "Forward" slogan. Is this what Comcast subscribers and American voters need?
Brian Roberts has close ties to Obama - he was selected to serve on the President's Jobs and Competitiveness Council, he hosted an intimate reception for the President at his vacation home in Martha's Vineyard during last year's election campaign, and he openly supports ObamaCare.
On May 15, Let's show up and protest Comcast at their annual shareholder's meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If you've been waiting to tell MSNBC boss Brian Roberts that the government doesn't own your kids, like they claimed in a recent commercial, now is your chance! RSVP here to lend your voice.
When: May 15 starting at 8:00 AM Eastern
Where: The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Perelman Theater 300 S. Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19102
We will leave from the Doylestown Parking lot at 6am
If we get enough interest we will get a bus. Please respond to thekitchentablepatriots@gmail.com
BUCKS COUNTY TEENAGE REPUBLICANS
DICK MORRIS
LIVE IN DOYLESTOWN
THURSDAY, MAY 16TH, 7:00PM 115 N BROAD STREET $20.00 GET YOUR TICKETS NOW WWW.BCTARS.COM
Join freedom-loving activists in protesting the liberal agenda of Comcast outside of the Kimmel Center in Center City Philadelphia during the Comcast Shareholder Meeting!
May 15th 8:00 - 10:00 am
Protest outside of the Kimmel Center! Bring your signs and your voices! Let Comcast know you are not going to stay silent about their liberal agenda!
Comcast employees contributed nearly $80,000 directly to Obama for America and roughly $200,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint account benefitting both the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee, through the first half of 2011. President Obama has recently spent time with top Comcast executives, attending an intimate fundraiser at the home of Comcast executive vice president David Cohen in Philadelphia in June and a private "social reception" at the Martha's Vineyard estate of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts earlier this week.
Shalom ZOA Members, Friends and Supporters of Israel,
Philadelphia is having a parade to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Israel's re-establishment on May 19 and ZOA will be one of the groups taking part.
March with ZOA through the streets of Philadelphia. Display your Israel pride and ZOA pride. We will have special T-shirts for the occasion.
The parade will wend its way through the heart of Center City from the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, stepping off at 11 a.m.
This is a great opportunity for young and old - and all of those in between - to come out to celebrate Israel.
If you've always wanted to take part in a parade but never had an opportunity, this is your chance! Let's show Philadelphia that support for Israel is stronger than ever!
The annual Israel Independence Day Festival will take place after the parade inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center at 11th and Arch Sts. ZOA will have a booth at the festival, and we will need volunteers to help us.
Please RSVP about participating in the parade either by email or phone - 610-660-9466.
If you are able to volunteer during the festival from noon to 5 p.m. (for all or part of the afternoon) please let us know as well.
Thank you.
See you on May 19!
$25 OFF Bus if you register before April 22 $25 OFF Participation if you register before April 22
On Thursday, May 30, the organization Friends of Israel will celebrate its 75th anniversary of helping Jews and the Jewish State of Israel with a gala in Voorhees, N.J. We hope you will attend their reasonably priced dinner as a show of support and unity.
As you will note, this Christian Zionist group began its mission 10 years before Israel was re-established. They were originally known as "The Friends of Israel Refugee Relief Committee." To this day they continue to be advocates for Israel throughout the world and lead an annual mission to Israel. Though this group is international in scope, it is based in South Jersey.
Friends of Israel leadership have attended our Philadelphia ZOA Gala each year and last year we honored its immediate past executive director, William Sutter, and his wife, Annette. We see Bill (who is still quite active) and his successor, Jim Showers, at nearly every pro-Israel event in the region. They truly are, as their name indicates, "friends of Israel."
Tickets are just $45. The event takes place at The Mansion on Main Street, on May 30, beginning at 5:30 p.m.........
Kosher meals are available
Please call me at our Office for all of the details at 610-660-9466. I hope you will be able to attend.
Thank you,
Steve
THE UNION LEAGUE PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE and
PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM CENTER
present
Michele
Bachmann
United States House of Representative for Minnesota
Friday, June 7, 2013 at 11:30 AM (EDT) at the Union League of Philadelphia.
WITH TRADITONAL VALUES, STRONG CONVICTIONS & FAITH IN OUR CONSTITUTION, HEAR MICHELLE BACHMANN'S VISION FOR OUR NATION.
In 2006, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann became the first Republican woman to be elected to represent Minnesota in the U.S. House of Representatives. As a self-proclaimed "Constitutional Conservative" she is committed to fixing Washington's broken ways by advocating for America's adherence to the Constitution. As a believer in the traditional values upon which this country was founded, Bachmann consistently defends America's religious liberties and the importance of family as the first unit of government. As the federal government continues to grow under the current administration, Bachmann was honored to establish the Tea Party Caucus in July 2010. She is proud to stand with the Tea Party to call for lower taxes, renewed focus on the Constitution and smaller government.
Reception: 11:30 am * Luncheon/Speaking Engagement: Noon
Price: $50.00 inclusive
For additional information please call 484-380-2549 or log on to www.phillyfreedom.org.
Announcing the 2013 National Conference
& Legislative Briefing!
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.
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
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.
The critically-acclaimed film, The Third Jihad - Radical Islam's Vision for America educates about the nature of radical Islamic ideology. Law enforcement agencies across the country have used the film in their counter-terror training.
Understanding the threats of terror is the first step in preventing deadly attacks.
Please consider supporting our efforts
"This fantastic documentary is both entertaining and educational" - Dove Foundation
Rev. C.L. Bryant's documentary Runaway Slave has been a runaway hit! The film recently won the Crystal Dove Seal, and has been making waves across the country.
Runaway Slave is the story of C.L. Bryant, a former NAACP Chapter president who realized that the Democrat Party and progressive movement was hurting Africa-Americans and keeping them stuck on the government dole. Rev. Bryant discusses the impact of progressivism on the African-American community and how freedom works with a host of leaders including Dr. Alveda King, Herman Cain, Allen West, Dr. Thomas Sowell, and many others.
The Crystal Dove Seal award is given to films that are family-friendly and provide wholesome, educational content. Runaway Slave is an important movie for all audiences, and it has a message that should be heard if we want to achieve a society where character is king.
Congratulations to Rev. C.L. Bryant and the Runaway Slave team on their achievement!
House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R.-La.) (J.Scott Applewhite)
(CNSNews.com) - The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight has thrown down an investigative gauntlet to the Internal Revenue Service, demanding that the agency hand over by next Wednesday every communication in its records that includes the words "tea party," "patriot" or "conservative."
The committee is also demanding of the IRS that by next Wednesday it provide the committee with the names and titles of all individuals who were involved in targeting conservative non-profit groups for more intensive review of their applications for non-profit status.
The request follows a report this morning from the Associated Press that Lois Lerner, director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division, said at an American Bar Association conference that the IRS had targeted for special review applications of non-profit groups that included the words "tea party" or "patriot."
Welcome to 1984.The government that is supposed to govern by the consent of the people is now attacking those who seek to preserve the Constitution.Even as a number of non-profit organizations that aid and abet illegal aliens or Islamic terrorists are able to operate without any fear of investigation, we now know that tea party patriot organizations have been singled out for audits by high level officials at the IRS.
On Friday, it was all about "low-level employees" and was not "politically motivated."It must have been a random glitch in the system that forced these officials to target limited government educational groups.Now the AP is reporting that this witch hunt was approved at the highest levels and was going on for 2 years . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2.Jen Rubin's Hatred of Jim DeMint Brings Out the Full Stupid
If you ever wondered if the Washington Post bothers fact checking its bloggers, wonder no longer. They clearly do not.
Jen Rubin brings out the full stupid today to try to throw Jim DeMint under the bus.
It's very well established she hates Jim DeMint because he is . . . wait for it . . . a conservative. Rubin has a history of bashing DeMint for being a conservative while she, ironically, poses as a conservative voice at the Washington Post.
3.Eating Their Own: Teamsters Acting Like 'Parasite' Stealing Other Unions' Members
Wars between rival unions, though infrequent, go back more than a century. Now, as union membership continues its decades-long decline, union efforts to pilfer members from other unions seem to be making a comeback.
At the head of the pack is the infamous International Brotherhood of Teamsters. With efforts underway to lure workers at both US Airways and American Airlines away from their existing unions, the Teamsters are, once again, creating enemies in the union movement. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
4.Red state Dems' deafening ObamaCare silence
Leading Democrats have criticized the president's implementation of ObamaCare:
The Democrats' majority leader, Sen. Harry Reid, said last week that he agreed with Democrat Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, a Democrat architect of the law, who said about the ObamaCare implementation, "I just see a huge train wreck coming down."
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden expressed concern about what's going to happen with young people if their insurance premiums shoot up.
Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin told White House officials that he was concerned about big rate increases being sought by the largest health insurer in his state.
New Hampshire Sen Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire complained, "We are hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do not know how to comply with the law."
The criticism must have hit home because President Obama felt compelled to respond. In his most recent press conference he dismissed the criticism implying the Democrats' are complaining about nothing more than "glitches and bumps.". . . please click here for the rest of the post →
5.Sebelius and the ObamaCare shakedown
In the small, cold hours of a dreary Washington night, the Washington Post finds a poor little waif named Kathleen Sebelius trotting from the door of one luxurious health-care mansion to the next, begging for a crust of bread or half-eaten apple to help her sickly little brother, Boondoggle O'care, make it through the night after his evil Republican stepfather left him to die. . . please click here for the rest of the post →
6.Kennedy, Unhinged
If you shut your eyes for just a moment while reading this latest HuffPo piece by Robert Kennedy, Jr., you can almost hear the gobs of spittle smacking his monitor as he wrote. There's really nothing like the pungent aroma of blue blood at full boil.
As you may recall, Kennedy is an attorney, activist and Senior Staff Luddite with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He also serves as president of RiverKeeper, an anti-fracking activist group that has wisely and benevolently saved New York State from the ravages of shale gas jobs and prosperity.. . . please click here for the rest of the post →
The Bloody Hands of Barack Obama Stella Paul Let's pay tribute to some of our feckless president's many victims, and vow to honor their memory by holding him to account. More
Barack Obama and the End of an Era Steve McCann The re-election of Barack Obama is the high water mark and the end of an era. The focus of the nation will no longer be on bumper sticker platitudes. More
Marco Rubio's Theater of the Absurd John T. Bennett If amnesty passes, enforcement will be a joke, at least 11 million illegals will gain lawful status despite zero enforcement, and pro-amnesty conservatives will have nothing to show politically for their sell-out of working Americans. More
Pride in Low Standards May 12, 2013 Why is it that our media, celebrity and congressional liberals so proudly hold themselves to lower standards of decency than conservatives? More
In this photo provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, sample detonation cord and blasting caps is shown. (AP)
Around the same time the nation was transfixed on the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers last month, thieves on the other side of the country pulled off a little-noticed heist -- swiping 559 pounds of explosives from a federal storage facility in Montana.
As of Friday, not one ounce of it has been found
.
The incident, federal officials believe, was not terrorism-related. But it's the latest to raise security concerns in an age when authorities are warning about the desire of violence-bent terrorists to inflict mass casualties with bombs.
Rep. Steve Daines, Montana's only congressman, told FoxNews.com he's "deeply concerned" about the theft in his state and will be "closely monitoring" the investigation.
The explosives were stolen from a locked U.S. Forest Service bunker near Billings. Thieves took off with various emulsion-type explosives, cast boosters and detonating cord.
Speaking to a college audience on Friday, CBS News anchor Scott Pelley scolded the news media for what he said has been "a bad few months for journalism." Pelley continued, "We're getting the big stories wrong over and over again." Watch the network anchor's full remarksHERE.
The Associated Press has obtained a draft of an inspector general's report that contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner that only low-level workers initiated the pressure on conservative groups. The draft report claims senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011. Get the latest on this unfolding story HERE.
On Saturday, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi blasted what she called the Republican "obsession" with Benghazi, accusing the GOP of exploiting the attack to avoid talking about anything else. Watch the MSNBC segmentHERE.
Glenn Beck issued a withering response Saturday to the Internal Revenue Service's shocking admission that it has unfairly targeted conservative groups, pointing out that he and his news organization have been reporting on the issue for over a year. Get the full reportHERE.
The billionaire mayor -- who is waging a very public war on fat, salt, sugar, guns and more -- is not pleased with a new 36,000-calorie cupcake that was unveiled this week. But, is Mayor Mike offended by the calorie count in the cupcake or is it the fact that his frowning face was resting atop the mouth-watering masterpiece? Listen to his reaction when he learned of the oversized treatHERE.
A rare and hastily-planned spacewalk was required when an ammonia leak was discovered on the International Space Station. The astronauts removed the broken ammonia pump and replaced it with ease. Watch the video showing the the successful repairHERE.
In Dad Is Fat, Jim Gaffigan -- perhaps America's favorite G-rated comedian -- shares hilarious riffs on the perils and proud moments of parenthood and family life. Grab some great big laughs right HERE.
Before Bloomberg News cut off its reporters' access to the online activities of the company's 315,000 paying subscribers, their 2,400 reporters on staff had access to a broad range of data on user activities. One former employee has admitted to accessing the data terminals of Fed Chairman Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. See how Bloomberg is responding to the spying allegations HERE.
On a recent episode of "The Tonight Show," one couple was on the receiving end of a prank at the gas station. The husband was asked to sing a song for a free tank of gas. He delivered...but so did his wife. Prepare for laughter and watch the videoHERE.
The BBC is reporting that a 14-year-old British gymnast broke the world record for the most forward rolls in one minute. Watch the young man as he breaks the previous record of 69 rolls in one minute, held by American Ivan Spizizen,HERE.
On Thursday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a radio interview that "of all the great cover-ups in history" - including the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra and Watergate - Benghazi "is going to go down as most serious, most egregious cover-up in American history." Listen to Inhofe's commentsHERE.
As worries continue to grow that "Obamacare" will permanently stain President Obama's legacy, White House officials have been instructed to use college commencement ceremonies as an opportunity to praise the health care law. Will the President's inner circle heed this advice? Find out HERE.
Audio captured after a New Jersey Senate session on Thursday possibly features several Democrats mocking gun owners and talking about gun "confiscation." The hot-mic recording opens with what seems to be a female senator or staff member saying, "We need a bill that is going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate." Listen to the actual audioHERE.
A curious CraigsList post promoting a yard sale in Greer, South Carolina is gaining some attention. Perhaps it has something to do with the title -- "Help Get Godless Liberals Out of SC." The actual text of the ad appears to go beyond the norm in order to offend people of faith. See the postingHERE.
A partnership between Google, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME magazine has resulted in the first multi-decade, interactive time-lapse of the Earth showing how its surface has changed over nearly 30 years. Check out these fascinating, interactive time-lapse presentationsHERE.
"Gallon smashing" is a seemingly pointless act where a person pretends to fall, spilling gallons of milk they are carrying in the process. Someone then has to clean up the mess while those responsible for the spilled milk go home and upload the footage to YouTube.One recent attempt, posted on Monday, features one boy's gigantic "gallon smashing" failure. Watch the prank gone wrong HERE.
Jason Richwine, a co-author of the Heritage Foundation's report on a new immigration bill, has resigned amid controversy over claims he made about immigrants having low IQs. Richwine's inflammatory statements were part of a dissertation from 2009. Read all the detailsHERE.
It is well known that children have a different palate than that of adults, preferring sweeter foods. For this reason, parents timidly put a new food in front of their tot watching eagerly to see their reaction. Watch video that captured these faces after trying a variety of new foodsHERE.
OK, OK...so we're a day early with the Mother's Day wishes, but that's how we roll. Happy (early) Mother's Day to all the moms out there! And to show you just how much we care, we've wrapped up a special message from "Kid President" for you. Watch itHERE.
New emails obtained by ABC News show that the talking points used by Amb. Susan Rice on the Sunday shows on the weekend after the 9/11/12 terror attack in Benghazi underwent at least 12 edits � including revisions by the Obama administration�s State Department. Watch the report and get the specific details HERE.
On Thursday, Florida prosecutors unveiled shocking surveillance footage of a deadly police shootout that left the gunman dead and an officer seriously injured. The shooting happened outside a marijuana growhouse in Westchester, Fla. last July, but it�s the first time the footage has been made public. See the graphic clipHERE.
A few days ago TheBlaze reported that Defense Distributed, which is heading up the Wiki-Weapons project, had completed its initial goal of creating a fully functional firearm using only a 3D printer. It then posted the blueprints for this 3D printable design on its DEFCAD forum. On Thursday, Defense Distributed received a letter from the government that forced them to remove the plans for the printable guns. Read the note that shut down the Wiki-Weapons project (for the time being)HERE.
You've been warned that this substance can wreak havoc on your health. But Doctors report this shunned food "washes away" stubborn bladder infections, decreases tooth decay by 80%, cuts sinus and ear infections by 93%, and much more�
In the Fall of 2003, Marine Gen. James �Mad Dog� Mattis was preparing to deploy to Iraq. He received an email from someone asking about the importance of reading, or rather the argument that one might be �too busy� to read. He penned thoughtful response, and while the email made the rounds back then, it�s now doing so again in this age of viral media. We won't summarize it, get the entire emailHERE.
What?! IRS Formally Apologizes for �Targeting� Conservative Groups in the 2012 Election. The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. Check out this very surprising shift in IRS tacticsHERE.
The 800-page-plus bill for immigration reform, which the Senate has begun debating, carries a measure privacy advocates worry could lead to the creation of a biometric database of every adult in the United States. Learn about this �Identity Authentication Mechanism�HERE.
Rumor Check: Did you notice a surprising story on Facebook that claimed �Ducky Dynasty� patriarch Phil Robertson has been fighting A&E (the network that airs his show) regarding frequent uses of prayer and guns. Mainly, the story says that Phil has taken a stand against A&E in order to keep the two topics in the show. TheBlaze's #1 Duck Dynasty fan, Jon Seidl went right to the source and got the real story. Learn the truthHERE.
On Friday, Geraldo Rivera said that his sources tell him the U.S. was involved in a secret mission in Libya to arm the Syrian rebels, which was the reason for the initial secrecy about the attack in Benghazi. Watch the videoHERE.
Texas high school student Jeff Bliss was gathering his things to leave class, presumably because his teacher was sending him out of the room. But he wasn�t going to go out without continuing to voice his opinion about how he thinks the class should be taught. Watch the videoHERE.
As we recently learned on TheBlaze Blog, America has trust issues. Of course we�re referring to the results of the new poll in Reader�s Digest that showed the top five people on the �Most Trust� list include four actors and a poet. TheBlaze editors found this strange. So, we�re putting the question to YOU. Who do you trust to give you the truth? Take the poll HERE.
A letter allegedly written by Kitau, a science teacher at a Kenyan primary school, is being revisited as Barack Obama eligibility lawsuits make their way through court dockets in both Alabama and Florida. Born one month after Obama in the same Mombassa hospital, Kitau says this of the Obama, Mombassa birth certificate obtained by Lucas Daniel Smith: "I compared my birth certificate to the one that has been put online by Taitz (Atty. Orly Taitz) and mine is EXACTLY THE SAME." Kitau goes on to state that being a science teacher makes for natural skepticism, but "I went to an official registrar today and pulled up the picture on the web. They magnified it and determined it to be authentic." (1)
The Kitau letter has been challenged and even debunked as has the certificate obtained by Smith, but both documents need to undergo further investigation. The name of the registrar, the ... Continue Reading:Kitau Obama eligibility letter revisited
Michael Scott Speicher was a United States Naval Aviator and the first combat casualty of the Gulf War. He was declared missing in action asthere was no rescue attempt at the time he was shot down. There was much speculation surrounding anecdotal evidence about the aviator having survived, along with some reports that LCDR Speicher was being held prisoner in Iraq. But attempts to find the flyer were unsuccessful. In 2009, an Iraqi came forward and led US Marines to the location where Speicher had been buried in 1991. Speicher's remains were positively identified and returned to his family.
The fact that the remains of Michael Speicher were recovered underscores America's resolve to never stop the search for missing and fallen warriors. Analysts have always to consider sources-eyewitnesses are OK but physical evidence is better. Since 1991 anyone who served in the US military provided DNA ... Continue Reading:POWs, MIAs still being sought, Part II
When one American is not worth the effort to be found, we as Americans have lost. - Rolling Thunder Motto.
War is an ugly endeavor fought by brave warriors at the behest of national leaders. In the heat of battle soldiers are killed, wounded, captured or go missing. Prisoners captured during battle are at the mercy of the enemy. Despite laws created by gentleman's agreement in an international forum, history has shown that combatant nations have abused, tortured and killed prisoners captured on the battlefield. After World War II, Russia would declare a Prisoner of War (POW) a war criminal and hold them well beyond the end of hostilities. It has become a standard practice of Communist nations to hold prisoners long after wars' end, making the process of accounting for the dead or missing difficult if not impossible.
"It is customary to define psychiatry as a medical specialty concerned with the study, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses." But according to prominent psychiatrist and academic Thomas Szasz MD (1920-2012) "...this is a worthless and misleading definition." "Mental illness is a myth. Psychiatrists are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatments. In actual practice they deal with personal, social, and ethical problems in living." (1)
Szasz write that "...the notion of a person 'having a mental illness' is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization-namely that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of so-called psychiatric symptoms are basically similar to bodily diseases. Moreover, the concept of mental illness also undermines the principle of personal responsibility, the ground on which all free political institutions rest." (1)
Not surprisingly, these observations made Szasz few friends within his field, and his concepts ... Continue Reading:Meds aren't always the answer
Why discovering the truth about Benghazi matters-and it has to do with 9/11
by Guy Rodgers Executive Director
There's a lesson from 9/11 that MUST be applied to the Benghazi terror attack-and very few people are talking about it. Please take a few minutes to read this very important letter.
We know that terrorist attacks against America pre-9/11, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the attack on the USS Cole, emboldened Osama bin Laden.
He watched the weak and confused responses by our government to those terrorist attacks and concluded the United States government and its people didn't have the will to fight back against a larger attack.
He even alluded to this in one of his videos in the late 90's, when he made reference to the world watching to see who is "the strong horse."
Fast forward to Benghazi.
It should be abundantly clear by now to any reasonable observer that there were government decisions made prior to the attack that compromised security in Benghazi; there were decisions made during the attack that compromised the ability to rescue those under attack; and there were decisions made after the attack to alter the narrative to make it look like a video prompted the attack.
Even the "establishment media" has finally, finally, finally begun to take a closer look at this.
For instance, this short, must-see ABC News report, provides powerful evidence that it was people inside the Obama administration who changed the talking points about what happened in Benghazi-not the intelligence community as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed on November 28, 2012.
Here's one excerpt from that ABC News report:
In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it "could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?"
Nuland was referring to information from the CIA that was originally included in the talking points. The CIA clearly had concerns about previous al Qaida-related activity and how it could not "rule out" that al-Qaida related Islamists were involved in the attack.
In other words, Nuland was more concerned about the State Department getting a black eye for ignoring security warnings than it was about putting out the truth as to why those four men died.
In spite of all of these new revelations, there are those who still ask, "Why does it matter?" Even some ACT! for America members have emailed us asking why we keep focusing on this.
Here's why we won't let this go. It's because of the lesson America should have learned from 9/11.
9/11 happened in large part because American leadership displayed weakness, confusion, and a lack of resolve in responding to the terrorist attacks that occurred prior to 9/11.
Now, today, consider what jihadists around the world are watching:
An administration blaming a video for the Benghazi attack.
An administration desperately trying to keep the American people in the dark about what really happened-both before the attack and after the attack.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in testimony before Congress, blurting out "what difference does it make" regarding what really happened.
A compliant "establishment media" that failed to doggedly investigate this attack prior to last year's election, capped off by CNN's Candy Crowley, the debate moderator, jumping to Obama's side during his debate with Mitt Romney.
Secretary of State John Kerry recently saying "we need to move on to more important matters."
State Department career officials, such as Gregory Hicks, getting punished for trying to get the truth out.
Democrats in Congress attacking these whistleblowers from the State Department, and describing the investigation as a "witch hunt."
What message is being sent, loud and clear, to our jihadist enemies in America and around the world?
The same message of weakness, confusion and a lack of resolve that was sent prior to 9/11.
But this time it's worse, because not only has the response by this administration been weak and confusing, it has compounded that failure by attempting to cover up what really happened.
Are there Republicans in Washington who want to use this debacle for partisan, political purposes? Of course-just as there would be Democrats trying to do so if this happened on the watch of a Republican president.
But that's not why ACT! for America continues to press for the full truth to be brought to light.
Our reason is this:
THE JIHADISTS OF THE WORLD NEED TO KNOW, WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT, THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES WHO WILL NOT CAPITULATE IN THE FACE OF TERRORISM AND WHO ARE NOT CONFUSED ABOUT WHO THE ENEMY IS AND WHY THE ENEMY IS ATTACKING US.
THEY NEED TO KNOW THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN AMERICA WHO WILL NOT REST UNTIL WE HAVE A FULL ACCOUNTING OF WHY THESE MEN DIED, SO THAT AMERICA CAN TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION TO ENSURE SOMETHING LIKE THIS NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.
THEY NEED TO KNOW THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES WHO WILL CONTINUE TO DEMAND THAT OUR GOVERNMENT POLICIES RELATED TO JIHAD BE CHANGED TO ACCURATELY DEFINE WHO OUR ENEMY IS AND WHY THEY ARE ATTACKING US.
We cannot, as a nation, afford once again to send signs of weakness and confusion to the jihadist world, as we did before 9/11.
If we do, we are giving the jihadists of the world every encouragement to attack us again in a major way.
The "easy button" would be for ACT! for America to, as John Kerry said, move on to other matters.
But our mission to protect our national security-our very reason for being-and our responsibility to our fellow Americans, will not allow us to do that.
This is why, on Monday, we will issue a national ACTION ALERT to pressure House Speaker John Boehner to appoint a special select committee to finally and completely ferret out the truth-and issue recommendations regarding what must be done so that this does not happen again.
Rest assured, we will continue to fight for you, for your families, and for the well-being of this country we love.
There are three passings from the past week to note. The first is Alan Abelson, the long time "Up and Down Wall Street" columnist for Barron's. I never met him, but, as with any favorite writer, you came to feel almost like you knew him every Saturday morning when Barron's landed on the doorstep. He's the reason I first started reading Barron's more than 20 years ago. There was no one who could bring such ferocious wit to bear on mere financial news, with the partial exception of James Grant, who is something of an Abelson protégé, having begun his career at Barron's. Indeed Abelson's style is one of the models for some of my posts here on Power Line, though I flatter myself to suppose I can carry off the ironic wit that used to sparkle in nearly every paragraph of his great columns. Randall Forsyth offers a nice recollection of Abelson this week, with some examples of why he was incomparably great, and Barron's president Edwin Finn adds a few thoughts of his own.
Herb Romerstein
The second person who deserves notice is Herb Romerstein. Romerstein was one of the many unsung heroes of the Cold War, the long time senior staff member of the House Intelligence Committee, but much more beyond that. I met Herb when I was working for M. Stanton Evans (his co-author of Stalin's Secret Agents, noticed here on Power Line back in November) in the early 1980s. Herb was a repository of knowledge about Soviet intrigues against the West that the media and liberals willfully ignored. He published one of the first books about the contents of the Venona papers that confirmed Alger Hiss's guilt, among other things. Paul Kengor offers a worthy reflection of Romerstein at The American Spectator.
The third figure is Harry Neumann, the long time professor of philosophy at Scripps College. I studied some with Neumann in graduate school, and there was no one like him. He was perhaps the world's only open and honest nihilist. But he believed that nihilism should be faced directly, rather than sugarcoated with cowardly liberal sentimentality. As such he detested the modern left, who behave as through moral right and wrong are real (at least the politically correct forms of right and wrong, like the wrongs of sexism and racism) while their teaching implicitly undermines the ground of all moral judgment on every turn. The woodcut of Neumann here is stylized after one of his favorite pieces of art, Max Beckmann's 1922 self-portrait. Thomas Krannawitter offers a recollection and summary of Neumann, including this:
Professor Neumann helped students of politics understand the true, real, primordial ground of politics, always and everywhere. He helped students of philosophy understand the genuinely radical nature of philosophy. And he helped some understand the intrinsic, always problematic relationship between the two.
For a flavor of Neumann, see this article from Modern Age on "What Is Bigotry?" (PDF file).
I dropped by my old haunts at AEI in Washington last week, and stuck my head in Norm Ornstein's office with the intent of exchanging a few of our ritual jeers and heckles, but he was deep in phone conversation with his bookie or someone. Too bad, as he's done it again with his National Journal article on "The Myth of Presidential Leadership."
Ornstein writes in a typically clever way to defend Obama from the charge, popular among many liberals right now, that Obama is proving to be a poor leader. There is a large amount of schadenfreude to be had from the spectacle of liberals comparing Obama unfavorably to Lyndon Johnson, who, of course, liberals despised in the 1960s despite the fact that he delivered so much of their domestic policy wish list. But he "knew how to work the levers of Congress," or, in the words of one liberal on a recent TV talk show, LBJ knew how to back people up against the wall, while Obama (only belatedly) takes congresscritters for a round of golf. Lyndon we hardly knew ye! Talk about situational ethics.
On the surface, Ornstein would appear to be confirming a long held conservative critique of liberals as presidential hero-worshippers, as the primary reason too many Americans come to believe in the president as a miracle worker who will sooth our souls. It is from liberals that we hear Obama compared to "a God" (Evan Thomas) or described as a "lightworker."
This is not brand new to our time, of course; it has its roots back in the FDR to JFK era when leading liberals came to champion executive power as the prime motive force in American politics. My all-time favorite example of liberal president-worship comes from Herman Finer, an eminent political scientist in the Kennedy era at the University of Chicago, who wrote that "The presidency is the incarnation of the American people, in a sacrament resembling that in which the wafer and the wine are seen to be the body and blood of Christ." It is liberals who swoon before the vague slogan of "hope and change," all the while inflating the expectations of citizens of what they can and should expect from government, and especially the preisdent. I like to call it "fail-safe" liberalism, for even when a politician disappoints, the liberal mind sees the failure as a reason for still more political exertions and expansion of government.
Ornstein, as a devoted fan of Congress who has never quite drunk the liberal presidential Kool-Aid, might appear to be aligning himself with older conservative champions of Congress against the executive branch like James Burnham in his neglected classic Congress and the American Tradition, or Willmoore Kendall (especially his "Two Majorities" thesis). Kendall argued that what I call "executivism" in American politics has contributed to the decline in congressional deliberation; John Alvis gives a nice summary of this part of Kendall's argument here. Conservatives would do well to reacquaint themselves with Kendall's argument before they exaggerate their hopes for a lightworking knight of their own in 2016.
But naturally a closer reading-and really, you don't even need your glasses to see this-of Ornstein's latest shows that he is defending Obama against his liberal critics as yet another way of attacking those mean old Republicans in Congress who are thwarting Obama on every front:
I have grown increasingly frustrated with how the mythology of leadership has been spread in recent weeks. I have yelled at the television set, "Didn't any of you ever read Richard Neustadt's classic Presidential Leadership? Haven't any of you taken Politics 101 and read about the limits of presidential power in a separation-of-powers system?"
Comment: First of all-Ornstein watches TV? More to the point: Hasn't Ornstein taken note of how liberals, starting with Woodrow Wilson, expressed their hatred and contempt for the separation of powers, and done their best to dilute the principle for a century now with the rise of the administrative state that enfeebles Congress and weakens presidents? No wonder liberals (and the media, but I repeat. . .) are politico-constitutional illiterates when confronted with the Lightworker's shortcomings, or more generally just can't take it when they don't get their way every time the New York Times editorial page snaps its fingers. Anyway, to continue with the Norm Narrative:
But the issue goes beyond that, to a willful ignorance of history. No one schmoozed more or better with legislators in both parties than Clinton. How many Republican votes did it get him on his signature initial priority, an economic plan? Zero in both houses. And it took eight months to get enough Democrats to limp over the finish line. How did things work out on his health care plan? How about his impeachment in the House?
It seems to me the willful ignorance of history here is the omission of the fact that Clinton's "signal initial priority"-a tax increase-was not the one he advertised in his 1992 campaign, when he promised to cut middle class taxes rather than raise them. In the campaign, to the contrary, he promised to "end welfare as we know it," and when it came time finally to do that, he got lots of Republican votes. Ditto the NAFTA treaty, where Republican votes put it over the top. I still recall the outrage when then GOP House minority leader Dick Armey said at the NAFTA signing press conference, "So much for all this talk of 'gridlock.'"
Conversely, where was Ornstein when virtually no Democrats were willing even to discuss Bush's "signal initial priority" of his second term-entitlement reform? Or when almost no Democrat was willing to support his enactment of Medicare Part D in the first term, even though Democrats said they favored the goal of this effort?
Somewhere under that enormous pile of papers that the DC fire marshall hasn't cleared out on Ornstein's desk I'd like to think he has a copy of Kendall's "Two Majorities" essay from the early 1960s (collected in The Conservative Affirmation in America). If he does his remedial reading, he'll see why virtually none of his complaint about mean obstructionist Republicans is brand new. Such as Kendall's statement of what he calls
the unexplained mystery of our politics: the fact that one and the same electorate maintains in Washington, year after year, a President devoted to high principle and enlightenment, and a Congress that gives short shrift to both; that, even at one and the same election, they elect to the White House a man devoted to the application of high principle to the most important problems of national policy, and to the Hill man who constantly frustrate him. More concretely: the voters give an apparent majority mandate to the President to apply principles "x, y, and z," and a simultaneous (demonstrable) majority-mandate to Congress to keep him from applying them. And the question arises, Why, at the end of a newly-elected President's first to years, do the voters not "punish" the congressmen? Are the voters simply "irrational"? Our political science has, it seems to me, no adequate or convincing answer to these (and many kindred) questions. (Emphasis Kendall's.)
Nor has Ornstein got one here. I'm going to break my rule of jargon and suggest we have a "Normative" problem here (heh.) In other words, Republicans in Congress are doing what the Founders had in mind with the separation of powers and countervailing ambition. When you strip away the clever posturing, Norm's argument reduces to this: Just think what a great leader Obama would be if Republicans would just roll over and become Democrats! This is base-stealing that would amaze Rickey Henderson. Strong letter to follow.
P.S. Special bonus Kendall immigration debate edition. Here's Kendall, from the same early essay, with a short squib on immigration policy that also shows there's nothing new under the sun right now:
The Legislature insists upon perpetuating the general type of immigration policy we have had in recent decades. The Executive would apparently like to bring our immigration legislation under, so to speak, the all-men-are-created-equal clause of the Declaration of Independence.
Last month Time's Joe Klein decried the Obama administration's "incompetence" implementing Obamacare. This month Klein expressed relief in an "Exclusive" report.
In his "Exclusive" Klein praised the administration for streamlining the complex 21-page online Obamacare application to a mere three pages. Klein called it "a spiffy, new three-page application for individuals (find it here)" (footnote omitted). He added: "There will be a seven-page application for families (11 including the appendix), but even that one will be far better designed than the initial effort (find it here)."
Obama bragged about the new, improved version at his 100-days press conference: "We put together initially an application form for signing up for participation in the exchanges that was initially about 21 pages long. Immediately everybody sat around the table and said, 'Well, this is too long. . . . Let's streamline this thing.' So we've cut what was a 21-page form now down to a form that's about three pages for an individual, a little more than that for a family."
In "New, improved, exclusive!" I quoted my daughter Eliana's NRO post explaining how, Klein and Obama to the contrary notwithstanding, the supposedly new, improved Obamacare application remained essentially the same as the 21-page version. In a Wall Street Journal column this past Friday Grace-Marie Turner takes a look and corroborates Eliana's findings:
The much-derided 21-page application was for families. It is now down to 11 pages, thanks to a trick. Eight pages in the longer application called for filling in information for four additional family members. The new form cuts these pages but says that if you have children, "make a copy of Step 2: Person 2 (pages 4 and 5) and complete." The work required of the applicant remains the same.
Turner adds this:
Then there's a 61-page online application form that is in the draft stage but hasn't been officially released. This is the drill-down version of the three-page and 11-page printed documents. It has all of the if-then questions the government may need to have answered before it can determine if an applicant is eligible for subsidies.
For example, this online form has nine pages of questions and instructions to determine what a family is and how everyone is related. It announces that it is "governed by complex logic in order to ask the fewest number of questions possible." Twenty-eight different options for family relationships will be displayed in drop boxes, including first cousin, former spouse and collateral dependent.
The family application (the paper version and the online draft) assumes that someone in the family has a job that offers insurance. There are two pages the applicant must complete on that front.
One question asks: Does your employer "offer a health plan that meets the minimum value standard*?" Following the asterisk is an explanation of how to make that determination: "*An employer-sponsored health plan meets the 'minimum value standard' if the plan's share of the total allowed benefit costs covered by the plan is no less than 60 percent of such costs (Section 36B(c)(2)(C)(ii) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986)."
But back to the new, 11-page form. It contains a strong warning not in the earlier, 21-page draft: "I'm signing this application under penalty of perjury . . . I know that I may be subject to penalties under federal law if I provide false and or untrue information." That threat may unsettle applicants already not sure they're correctly answering complicated questions. If they don't, the consequences could be costly....
Turner concludes on a note that will continue to resonate:
Given the complexity of the questions, many people will need help with the application. So there is a handy Appendix C that allows the applicant to "choose an authorized representative" who can gather information and sign "your application on your behalf." You need to be very sure you can trust this person with the required confidential information (Social Security numbers, income, etc.). Many of those providing help will be footsoldiers in ObamaCare's newly formed army of hourly-paid "navigators."
But this being an Obama administration undertaking, the new application will provide a Web link to "complete a voter registration form."
The story of the Obamacare application is perfectly representative of the thoroughgoing dishonesty that has permeated the Obama administration's peddling of Obamacare. It is also perfectly representative of the media's service as the Obama administration's handmaiden in peddling the administration's falsehoods.
Two of my all-time favorite books on historical subjects unraveled the fraught controversies deriving from cases involving Communist spies. In Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, first published in 1978, Allen Weinstein settled the case referred to in the subtitle. Random House published an updated edition in 1997 and the Hoover Institution has just issued a third edition (the one linked above) in honor of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the book's publication.
Was Hiss a Communist spy engaged in espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union while working as a high-ranking State Department official? Weinstein began working on the book under the illusion that Hiss was innocent but found otherwise as he conducted his research. Early in the book Weinstein even takes the reader inside the Communist cell to which Hiss belonged.
The Hiss case propelled Richard Nixon to fame through his dogged work in the congressional hearings held by HUAC, and the left never forgave Nixon or anyone else involved in the case. Belief in Hiss's innocence amounted to an article of faith on the left, which promulgated a conspiracy theory behind Hiss's prosecution with more twists than the Copernican (aargh! sorry) Ptolemaic system. Weinstein's book should have put an end to it, but Ron Radosh recalls what happened next in his salute to the new edition of the book:
Much of the opposition to Weinstein...derived not from the facts uncovered by his work, but from the need to demonize his findings lest the public realize that there really was an internal Soviet apparatus seeking to discover our nation's top secrets. And primary in that effort was the Nation, which editorialized that Weinstein had "misquoted and misrepresented" sources and written "false history." Weinstein, added the Nation, had "aligned himself with those Cold War intellectuals who presumably sleep better at night secure in the knowledge that there was an internal Communist espionage menace."
Allen Weinstein withstood those attacks, and with grace and firmness. Now a new generation has the chance to acquaint itself with a work that changed our view of the past and made history.
Every word of these paragraphs applies equally to Radosh and Radosh's experience with his own book The Rosenberg File: A Search For Truth (written with Joyce Milton, originally published in 1983, republished in an updated second edition by Yale University Press in 1997). The innocence of the Rosenbergs amounted to an article of faith on the left, an article of faith shared by Radosh when he undertook his research on the book. Research disabused Radosh of his faith in the Rosenbergs' innocence. Radosh and Milton settled the question of Julius Rosenberg's guilt for all with eyes to see. The book resolved the case against the Rosenbergs in a manner that time has only further served to corroborate and amplify.
Radosh and Milton discussed the backlash to their book on the left in their introduction to the 1984 Vintage paperback edition. In his memoir Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left, Ron elaborates and even notes how Vintage killed interest in the paperback edition it had just published.
Ron also cites, among other things, an accusatory front-page review of the book by Victor Navasky in the Nation, for which he had frequently written, and the review of the book in the Guardian by Columbia University professor Eric Foner. Ron sized up Foner in a National Review book review: "In Foner's eyes, to be opposed to Communism is in fact to be an apologist for an American Empire."
In the video below, which I shot with him in California earlier this year, Ron brings the Rosenberg story up to date.
On May 12, 1963, Mickey Lolich made his major league debut for the Detroit Tigers. He pitched two scoreless, hitless innings of mop-up relief against Cleveland Indians, striking out the first two batters he faced - Max Alvis and Sam McDowell. He was 22 years old.
Lolich went on to win 217 games, 207 of them for Detroit. And in 1968, he won three World Series contests.
Nineteen sixty-three was something of a lost season for the Tigers. They won only 79 games, compared to 85 the previous year and 101 in 1961. However, they "blooded" several key members of the championship team they would field five years later.
Third baseman Don Wert debuted the day before Lolich. Outfielders Gates Brown, Willie Horton, and pitcher Denny McLain would be called up later in the year. 1963 was also catcher Bill Freehan's rookie year, although he had played in four games in 1961.
All of these Tigers played key roles in the 1968 championship drive, and McLain was that season's major league MVP. But Lolich stole the show during the World Series, pitching three complete game victories, including Game 7. All told, he worked 27 innings against St. Louis, allowing only five runs.
Game 7 was a contest for the ages. Lolich pitched it on only two days rest. His opposite number, Bob Gibson, had also pitched a pair of overpowering complete game victories in this Series, and was gunning for his eighth complete game World Series win in a row.
Gibson and Lolich both pitched shut-out ball for six innings. Detroit broke through for three runs in the seventh, thanks to a fly ball by Jim Northrup that center-fielder Curt Flood, a great outfielder, misplayed into a triple.
Lolich needed no further support. Detroit won the game 4-1. Both Lolich and Gibson went all the way.
Lolich was nearly as sharp in his only other post-season series. In the 1972 AL playoffs, against the eventual champion Oakland A's, Lolich started two games, pitched 19 innings, and allowed just three earned runs. Both of his games went into extra innings. All Lolich had to show for them was a loss and a no-decision.
So Lolich's final post-season totals are: five starts, a remarkable 46 innings, eight earned runs, and a 3-1 record. I work that out to be a 1.56 ERA.
Lolich's amazing innings per game count in the post-season is emblematic of his ability to finish what he started. From 1969-1975, the portly left-hander never completed fewer than 13 games in a season, and he completed more than 20 games three times. For his career, Lolich completed nearly 40 percent of his starts.
The post-season aside, Lolich only had two truly outstanding seasons: 1971 (25-14, 2.92 ERA, with 29 complete games and 376 innings pitched) and 1972 (22-25. 2.50 ERA). In 1968, Lolich was 17-9 with a 3.19 ERA. But that was the "year of the pitcher," and his ERA was only average in that context. In fact, Tiger manager Mayo Smith removed Lolich from the starting rotation for a few games in August after he was roughed up in three consecutive starts.
Take away Lolich's two great seasons, and you have a good, durable pitcher who, thanks to the 1968 World Series, made baseball history. Add the great seasons back in and you have a very good, durable pitcher who made baseball history. And either way, you have one of the baseball's most vivid personalities from the 1960s and 1970s.
Team Obama has come up with its excuse for converting the Benghazi talking points into a false narrative. It was a purely bureaucratic matter, you see. The CIA and the State Department disagreed about what happened, and the White House simply wanted to make sure the talking points represented all viewpoints.
The White House has been suggesting this excuse for a few days. Today, the Washington Post's "fact-checker", Glenn Kessler, tries to inject it into the mainstream.
It's not much of an excuse, of course. The White House's proper role when it presents talking points to Congress, which had requested them, and to the public via appearances by its agents on talk shows, is to state the truth, not to make various bureaucracies happy. If the CIA and the State Department disagreed, the administration should not have included State's spin merely because that's what Hillary Clinton wanted.
This notion is so basic that it casts serious doubt on the White House's "deference to the State Department made us do it" explanation - an excuse that, it should be noticed, won't warm the heart of Hillary Clinton. In all likelihood, Team Obama endorsed State's spin because it presented the version of events that best suited the president's campaign purposes.
But the problem for those who want President Obama to take a major hit is twofold. First, it's not clear that Obama himself was in the loop, and if he was, it will be difficult to prove.
Second, the CIA appears not to have put up much of a battle with the State Department. If State demanded changes and the CIA's position was basically "whatever," then it becomes more difficult to accuse the White House of insufficient regard for the truth in resolving the dispute, such as it was, between the two agencies.
If Obama is going to take a major hit over Benghazi, it will have to be for his response (or lack of one) to the attack while it took place. He can also be criticized for not having ordered that the military be prepared in advance to rapidly respond to events in this dangerous region, but this charge isn't likely to resonate beyond conservative circles.
As for what Obama did or didn't do during the attack, there is still more to be learned. As things stand now, though, it looks difficult to show that there was some action Obama could have ordered after the attack commenced that would have changed the outcome.
This isn't to deny that Obama should have selected one or more of his military options. As I argued here, he should have; for no one knew when the Benghazi attack began how long it would last or whether it would spread to Tripoli.
However, I don't see the administration taking a major hit for failing to employ measures that would have succeeded only in a counter-factual scenario. The way things look now, I expect Obama to skate past Benghazi.
As I have arguedelsewhere, though, Hillary Clinton's chances of skating are less promising. And unlike Obama, she may be running for high office in a few years.
You may have wondered, as I did, why the IRS suddenly announced yesterday that it was guilty of harassing conservative groups, especially Tea Party groups. The answer now appears clear: the agency was trying to get out front of a story that was about to break.
Politico reports that next week, the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration is expected to release a report on a nearly yearlong investigation into the political abuse of the IRS. According to Politico, the inspector general's report will contradict the IRS's anticipatory spin in several respects:
A federal watchdog's upcoming report says senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups in 2011.
The disclosure contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who repeatedly assured Congress that conservative groups were not targeted. ...
That report says the head of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups learned that groups were being targeted in June 2011. It does not say whether Shulman was notified.
So the harassment of conservative groups began much earlier than the IRS told us yesterday, when the agency's spokesman said the improper conduct occurred "during the 2012 election." As I wrote yesterday, I was skeptical about that since I had heard of the targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS well before the 2012 campaign season.
It now appears that this is one more scandal that the Obama administration managed to keep quiet until after November's election. One wonders how many more skeletons will come tumbling out of the closet, now that Obama is safely re-elected.
STEVE adds: The line of defense I heard last night on NBC Evening News (the chief network apologist for Obamaworld, which is why I watch it) downplayed this outrage by saying it was committed by career IRS employees, and not political appointees. But this should be regarded as much worse than if political appointees did it, as it shows once again that "career employees" and the permanent bureaucracy have chosen sides. And it's not the side of the American people.
I wrote here about buying a new handgun, a SIG Sauer P938. The P938 is a 9 mm. pocket pistol, suitable for carrying. I got the Nightmare version:
I was traveling on business last weekend, so today was my first opportunity to take my new gun to the range. My son and I shot for an hour this morning; we took all five of our pistols, but focused mainly on the new P938. We used Blazer 115-grain ammunition.
So how did the P938 perform? Beautifully. We put around 150 rounds through it without any issues. My friend who owns a gun shop near the Twin Cities and who sold me the gun told me that it is very accurate. Of course, by far the largest variable in the accuracy of any firearm is the shooter. That said, we did find the P938 to be exceptionally accurate for a gun with a 3" barrel. I took this picture of one of my better groups:
Actually, it was by far my best group, shot at 19 feet. It was almost perfect, until I choked on my last shot, which you can see low and to the left.
So we had a great time as usual. I also bought a holster, in this style, so I am ready to begin carrying.
This week, Sir Alex Ferguson surprised the soccer world by resigning as the head man at Manchester United. During his remarkable 26 years at Man U, he led the club to 13 English championships and two European ones.
At age 71 Ferguson was known to be close to retirement. But few expected he would retire this year.
Almost immediately, Man U ended speculation over his replacement by naming David Moyes, Everton's long-time manager. This announcement wasn't a shock. Moyes is generally considered Britain's second best manager, behind Ferguson. And it was known that Fergie admires his fellow Scotsman.
On the other hand, I'm sorry to admit, Moyes has no experience managing a club approaching the magnitude of Manchester United. At Everton, his mission, at first, was just to avoid a relegation scrap. He accomplished this with such aplomb that his mission became finishing in the top six, or so, ahead of all clubs that don't spend freely. This too, he generally accomplished.
At Man U, however, the mission will be to win the Premier League title and to challenge for the European Champion's League crown. Moyes has very limited experience, and less success, competing in Europe.
Thus, the consensus is that Man U would have been better served by a foreign manager with lots of European experience. And many believe that Moyes will be in over his head.
I've been singing Moyes' praises for years on Power Line. While the Man U job is a big step up, I think he is a good selection.
Will he deliver a major trophy nearly every year, as the United fans will expect? Unlikely. Will he deliver one every other year, as they will demand? That's a tall order too.
United has an aging core of stars and a number of outstanding young players (e.g., Phil Jones, Tom Cleverly, Chris Smalling, and Danny Welback) who haven't quite established themselves as capable of leading the team to trophies. And in-his-prime star Wayne Rooney, with whom Moyes clashed over Rooney's departure from Everton, is probably on his way out at United.
Without the addition of one or two stars in their prime, there could be a slight down period ahead for Man U regardless of the manger. And if the core of young players doesn't deliver, Man U could be in trouble, relatively speaking.
But I wouldn't underestimate Our Davey's ability to make it all work at Old Trafford, though not at the same level Sir Alex did.
What Moyes' departure means for Everton will be the subject of an upcoming post.
If you want to see just how befuddled the Obama administration is by the Benghazi scandal, watch Jay Carney twist in the wind when asked the simplest of questions about his previous misrepresentations:
I offer three conclusions: 1) Carney, apart from the fact that he looks like a teenager who has been summoned to the principal's office, is utterly inept. 2) The Obama administration is unused to being questioned by reporters. 3) On the merits of the Benghazi scandal, the administration is dead in the water.
The IRS has admitted, and apologized for, targeting conservative political groups for audits:
The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
"That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
"The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added.
We actually knew about this. Some time ago, we started getting calls and emails from Tea Party groups saying that they were being audited by the IRS, and had learned that other Tea Party groups were likewise in the crosshairs. We had also heard about the IRS asking for donor lists, presumably so that they could audit the donors as well. The IRS says the improper audits occurred during the 2012 campaign, but we had heard about them prior to last summer or fall.
The IRS claims that "the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias." That last point is risible. Of course it was motivated by political bias. Ms. Lerner says further that "no high level IRS officials knew about the practice." That, too, seems extremely doubtful. If I knew the IRS was auditing Tea Party groups, how likely is it that no senior agency officials had heard about it?
Congress should investigate this, obviously. By Congress, I mean the House of Representatives. There is zero chance of the Democratic Senate investigating anything related to the Obama administration. (See David Gelernter's essay posted immediately below.) Come to think of it, this may be one more reason why Obama is so single-mindedly devoted to winning back the House in 2014: the way his administration's scandals are multiplying, an all-Democrat Congress provides insurance against having to leave office via helicopter.
Obviously President Obama and Hillary Clinton are on trial-not before a court, but in the minds of thoughtful people everywhere. It appears (given the limited evidence we have so far) that they were grossly negligent before Benghazi, criminally incompetent that night of the attack, and then that they aided and abetted a conspiracy to lie about the murders-all for the obvious political reasons and because Obama and Clinton (and nearly all their leftist friends) believe that Americans are stone-stupid. But the real trial deals with other suspects.
It is the Democratic Party that's on trial today; and to a lesser extent, America's mainstream media. For Democrats (and especially Democratic senators) it is put-up-or-shut-up time: are they Democrats or Americans first? Obviously their first instinct was to defend the Democratic administration. Republicans would have done the same. But starting with the Hayes story on the Rice propaganda points (and the neo-Soviet process that turned them from truth to lies), and then the Issa hearing Wednesday (and a recent ABC news piece focusing again on the phonied-up talking points), no honest observer can fail to suspect this administration of doing unspeakable things. It is Congress's duty to find out the truth.
How would Republicans act if a GOP administration were under this sort of cloud? We know exactly how. It was the radically partisan Edward Kennedy who proposed that a senate select committee investigate Watergate-but in February 1973, the Senate voted unanimously to create that committee. Republican Senator Howard Baker was vice chairman, and asked the key question: "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Which Democratic senator will ask that question today, now that the issue isn't breaking-and-entering but lying about four murders, including the murder of an American ambassador? Which cabinet member will be Eliot Richardson and resign rather than continuing to be part of a coverup? Will John Kerry rise to the challenge?
Of course Watergate was a shot-in-the-arm for the American left, which has run US culture (run it into the ground) ever since the Cultural Revolution that turned the country upside down during the post-World War II generation. Will the bottomless arrogance and incompetence of the Obama administration-and the rising tide of Benghazigate-energize American conservatives the same way? Probably. But today we are investigating four brutal murders that were intended precisely as an act of war against the United States; and the Democratic party is on trial for its life. The rest is small potatoes next to that.
Steve Hayes takes a detailed look at the scenario that led to the scrubbing of the CIA's Benghazi talking points to delete terrorism references and focus on the "non-event" video. Hayes' rendition is consistent with what we've been saying for some time now - the State Department pushed for the talking points to be changed to cover up its pre-Benghazi malfeasance and the White House concurred, presumably to help re-elect Obama.
The CIA sent out the original, valid talking points on Friday evening to top Obama administration officials. Forty-five minutes after receiving them, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed concerns about their contents, particularly the likelihood that members of Congress would criticize the State Department for "not paying attention to Agency warnings."
The quick response by a Clinton functionary shows that Clinton and her top advisers had planned ahead and were prepared to push for a revisionist story.
CIA officials responded with a new draft, stripped of all references to Ansar al Sharia. But this wasn't enough for Hillary Clinton's team. Thus, Nuland responded with an email stating that the changes do not "resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership." (emphasis added)
Team Obama's high-level national security adviser Ben Rhodes must have recognized that the State Department's goal of avoiding congressional criticism was consistent with Obama's political goals. Thus, he told those in the email group that Nuland had raised valid concerns. He added that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council's Deputies Committee the following morning. The Deputies Committee consists of high-ranking officials at the agencies with responsibility for national security-including State, Defense, and the CIA-as well well as senior White House national security staffers.
The State Department representative at the meeting was Jake Sullivan, deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton. As we have said, it is virtually inconceivable that Clinton was out of this loop.
The outcome of the meeting was that Sullivan, Rhodes, and Mike Morrell, deputy director of the CIA, edited the talking points. The bogus talking points used by Susan Rice were the product of that scrubbing.
Morrell's involvement apparently is the basis for claims by Jay Carney that the CIA "redrafted" the talking points. But, as Hayes points out, the CIA would not have edited its finalized talking points of its own volition. Moreover, Hayes reports that CIA director David Petraeus promptly expressed unhappiness about the scrubbed talking points in an email to his legislative director. He complained (internally only) that the talking points had been stripped of much of the content his agency had provided.
The talking points were changed from accurate to inaccurate because (1) the State Department's "building leadership" pushed for the changes in order to avoid criticism for its failure to respond to warnings about the situation in Libya and (2) it suited Team Obama's political purposes to accede to the changes. Unless Clinton has compromising photos of President Obama, it's that simple.
On May 10, 1963, Tony LaRussa made his major league debut at the age of 18. Playing for the Kansas City Athletics, LaRussa appeared as a pinch-runner for Chuck Essegian.
Pinch-running would be LaRussa's role for the next three months. It wasn't until August 15 that he recorded his first plate appearance, after coming on as a "caddy" for Jerry Lumpe in a rout of the A's by Detroit. He flied out against Hank Aguirre.
LaRussa experienced very little success as a player. His lifetime batting average, over the course of 132 games and 176 at bats in six seasons, was .199. His OPS was .491. He never hit a home run.
Even Mario Mendoza, for whom the Mendoza Line - baseball measure of batting futility - is named, managed to hit .215 for his career.
But LaRussa went on to become one of baseball's all-time great managers. In 33 years, his teams won 2726 games, which ranks third on the all-time list.
His teams made it to the World Series six times, winning three. They won their division 13 times.
LaRussa was a true innovator. For example, he is credited (correctly, I think) with developing the now-standard formula for using the modern "closer" - the relief pitcher who appears late in close games.
For many years, the bullpen ace was expected to pitch up to three innings (more on rare occasions). He could enter the game at any crucial junction of a close contest, and frequently did so in the midst of an inning. Indeed, the reliever trudging in from the bullpen with men on base (warm-up jacket over his shoulder) was one of the signature sights of baseball when I was growing up.
The bullpen ace would often enter the game with the score tied. Sometimes he might even enter if his team was a run behind.
Under La Russa's formula, much of this was relegated to baseball lore. With very few exceptions, his ace reliever - starting, I believe with Dennis Eckslerly in Oakland - entered the game only under a precise set of circumstances. His team had to be ahead, but by three runs or less. There couldn't be runners on base; indeed, it had to be the beginning of an inning. And almost always that inning was what would be the final one, if the reliever could hold the lead.
Does this formula make sense? It never did to me. For example, a top reliever seems more valuable pitching, say, the ninth inning of a tie game than pitching the ninth inning of a game his team leads by three runs. And a reliever's value seems highest when he is bailing out a pitcher who loaded the bases with, say, one out.
It also seems desirable to preserve the flexibility to bring in a bullpen ace in the eighth inning with a one run lead. Or to stay with a strong, effective starter or "set up" reliever for the ninth inning, rather than bringing on the closer.
Bill James identified and modeled the effectiveness of all the approaches to using relief pitchers (including not having relief specialists at all) that have been used in the last 100 years, or so, of baseball history. As I recall, he found that the approach used several iterations ago is superior to what I'm calling the LaRussa formula.
Yet as far as I can tell, use of the LaRussa formula is essentially universal. Why? Maybe other studies have contradicted James' findings. Maybe considerations such as promoting relieve longevity and/or attracting free agent relief pitchers to one's team militate in favor of the status quo approach.
But I suspect that the desire to avoid being second-guessed is a major factor. The more that managers can make their job formulaic, the fewer tough judgment calls they must make. And the fewer judgment calls they make, the less criticism they are likely to receive.
But I'm pretty confident this wasn't La Russa's reason for using his approach. He has always struck me as a fearless innovator. It's those who mimic him whose courage I question.
This American Crossroads video does a good job of laying out, in a simple and understated way, the basic facts of the Benghazi cover-up, in light of Wednesday's hearing. If you have friends who haven't been following Benghazi and don't know what the fuss is about, it wouldn't be a bad idea to email it to them:
Whether the Benghazi lies make a difference depends in part on whether you intend to run for president on a platform that includes an allegedly successful term as Secretary of State, and a prominent role in an administration that claimed to have put al Qaeda out of business. So it isn't hard to see why Hillary would like for the rest of us to move on, as the Democrats like to put it.
Michael Ramirez, however, doesn't think it will be easy for Hillary to leave the Benghazi scandal behind:
If there was ever a moment in time when the American people could collectively glean knowledge from a "teachable moment," the Obama Administration's handling of the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi is surely one.
Accompanying the families of these dead Navy SEAL special operations servicemen will be retired military experts verifying their accounts of how and why the government is as much responsible for the deaths of their sons as is the Taliban.
Sixty-two percent of the Republican members of the House are now co-sponsoring a bill that would authorize a special committee to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi.
If Morsi and the Brotherhood are "moderates"-or, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper once described them, "largely secular"-why do the most vile "radicals" fully support them?
In the weeks after 9/11, photographs circulated within the Muslim world of the N.Y. skyline, its normally dominant WTC replaced with photo-shopped mosques, identifiable by their prominent domes and minarets.
On Monday, May 13th, 2013 the London Center for Policy Research will inaugurate its activities with a dinner honoring Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter.
Did you know that if everyone who visited our FSM website this year donated just $1, we would easily exceed our annual budget?
Your gift will be an investment in freedom.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, The Family Security Foundation relies upon the thoughtfulness and (tax-deductible!) generosity of visitors like you.
"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
When it became clear last fall that the CIA's now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.
ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.
White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.
That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.
"Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC's best assessments of what they thought had happened," Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. "The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word 'consulate' to 'diplomatic facility' because 'consulate' was inaccurate."
Here's the kicker: "In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it "could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned . . ."
Hey, why would they want to accurately inform the public if it might result in criticism from Congress, right?
The Middle East, Suddenly Armed to the Teeth with 'Game Changer' Missiles
Perhaps the Middle East will be quiet in the coming days, but if it isn't . . . well, maybe this is a factor:
The chief of Hezbollah has said the the Lebanese Shia armed group is ready to receive "game-changing" weapons from Syria, just days after Israeli air strikes on Damascus reportedly targeted shipments of advanced Iranian weapons bound for the group.
Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech on Thursday, said the shipments of new types of weapons would serve as the Syrian reaction to Israel's air strikes.
"The resistance [against Israel] is prepared to accept any sophisticated weaponry even if it was to break the equilibrium [in the region]," he said in a speech.
Apparently this is the hot phrase all over the Middle East:
Israel launched air strikes on targets in Damascus early on Sunday morning that shook the city and lit up the horizon.
Western and Israeli sources said its aim was to take out "game-changing" Iranian missiles destined for Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, as Secretary of State John Kerry attempts to keep the Syrian bloodbath from spreading any further, the Russians are tweaking him, letting slip that they're shipping new arms to Syria, right after he asked them to help calm things down:
Secretary of State John Kerry today stood by his renewed push with the Russian government for the Assad regime and Syria's opposition to negotiate a political solution to end the conflict, now going into it's third year.
Speaking at a news conference in Rome, Kerry addressed a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday that Russia was preparing to sell missiles to the Syrian government, saying he expressed his general disapproval of Russian support to the Assad regime during his meetings with President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier this week.
"We've made it crystal clear that we would prefer Russians not supply assistance. That is on record. That hasn't changed," said Kerry, who added that the United States believes the shipment of missiles would be "potentially destabilizing with the respect to the state of Israel."
But he also acknowledged that there are countries supplying weapons to the rebels, and stressed that he wants to focus on what the United States and Russia can accomplish towards helping both sides reach a political solution soon.
He said he remained encouraged by the Russians' cooperation and by what he described as a public backing-away from their specific support for Assad.
I feel actually pretty good that John Kerry is our secretary of state. Oh, I don't think he'll thrive in the job; in fact, I think he'll fall flat on his face. But he's wanted to do this job for so long, and been so certain that he knew how to play this role perfectly, that it's fun to see him run headlong into reality.
"It would be a game-changer," a senior Western diplomat said of the reported decision to offer the missiles to Assad. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details of the reported offer remain classified, speculated that Moscow could be seeking leverage ahead of talks on a possible political settlement to the Syrian crisis.
You would almost think the "Game Changer" was a particular type of missile, wouldn't you?
Russia was heavily criticized in 2007 when it signed a deal to sell S-300 batteries to Iran for $800 million. Russian officials eventually terminated the contract, citing new U.N. resolutions banning the export of advanced missile systems to Tehran.
"After discussions with us, they did decide not to provide the missiles to the Iranians," recalled Dennis Ross, who was a senior Middle East adviser to the Obama administration in 2010, when Russia halted the missile sale to Iran. "If they proceed now, it hardly signals that they are prepared to walk away from Assad."
I just envision Kerry in his office, hitting the "reset button" over and over again, like an impatient man at an elevator.
An Argument You Might Expect, from a Voice You Probably Didn't
Raise your hand if you foresaw David Frum lodging this complaint about the current immigration-reform effort:
Unless you posit that the newly legalized immigrants will dramatically outperform the existing immigrant population, you will reach a result very like that of the Heritage Foundation: that the taxes paid by the newly legalized will not begin to equal the costs of their Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other benefits. . . .
Let me put this in boldface: Heritage's cost estimates are driven not primarily by welfare, but by healthcare. Every newly legalized immigrant, no matter how ambitious and hard-working, will get old. When he or she gets old, he or she will qualify for Medicare. Medicare is very, very expensive, and getting more expensive all the time. Fewer and fewer Americans -- whatever their ethnic origin -- pay enough in taxes to cover their predicted future health care costs. Inevitably, Medicare is becoming a more redistributionist program. People on the left get this point when they scoff at the imputed Tea Party slogan, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Why do they forget the point when they speak of immigration?
Those who claim that bringing in a lot of low-skilled, low-income workers into our social safety net will actually pour money into the safety net have to answer one question: In what country, anywhere, are the poorest citizens net-payers into the government's fisc?
It's ludicrous. It is no knock on poor people -- no slight to their humanity -- to note the obvious fact that the poorer a person is, the less he pays into the government (lower taxes, if any at all) and the more he takes out of it (needing more frequent use of welfare, foodstamps, unemployment insurance, and, of course, Medicare and ObamaCare).
You are either stupid or lying if you claim that adding 20 million fairly poor people into our social safety net is actually a net fiscal winner for the US taxpayer and treasury.
Maybe this version of immigration reform is the compassionate thing to do, or the morally right thing to do, or the politically necessary thing to do. But it is just about impossible to argue that it is the cost-effective choice for a country that has a lot of worsening fiscal problems looming just over the horizon.
Common Worries About the Dwindling Sense of Common Good
Yesterday's point about the sense of the common good waning in the face of public idiocy and irresponsibility seemed to hit a nerve.
Here's a Campaign Spot reader who tried to help out, and found himself growing cynical:
For several years I worked in inner-city church ministry. I assisted minority families, helped their children with homework, watched kids while parents went to the hospital, took their children trick-or-treating, attended their kids' high school football games, etc. I'm not giving myself a pat on the back -- I genuinely loved the work. I worked mostly with teens and pre-teens. Working with adults would require the slightest amount of commitment on their behalf, a commitment zero percent of them were willing to give (unless, of course, we offered a free meal).
I know it's anecdotal, but two incidents stand out in my mind as turning points. One was the week before Thanksgiving. I worked hard to collect food for needy families so they could enjoy a nice Thanksgiving meal. I gathered all the groceries and headed downtown to a home that was in disrepair. The roof was caving in, the foundation was cracked, it hadn't been painted in who knows how long. A typical inner-city home. When I walked inside there's five young ladies, three of them pregnant. They've got a 72 inch plasma on the wall and they would hardly look up form their brand-spanking new iPhones to tell me where to put the groceries. When they directed me to the kitchen, there were several other Thanksgiving packages other churches had sent. I couldn't believe it. I left the groceries on their porch -- I figured the least they could do was carry the groceries in themselves.
A second story, I'll be more brief. Whenever a young lady in our ministry would get pregnant (usually around 15 or 16), she'd be lauded as a hero. The other girls saw pregnancy not only as an excuse to get out of high school permanently, but the government checks start rolling in. And they actually say that to each other, "When you gonna start collecting?" And the more babies they make, the more money they get. Who knew baby-making was a source of revenue? They do, apparently.
One observation: dysfunction begets dysfunction. A young person surrounded by adults who make bad decisions is likely to make more bad decisions.
Drew M. grew irritated with Pete Wehner, feeling that his post blurred the lines between private efforts to help the less fortunate and government-based efforts: "Conservatives are very much involved in Burke's 'little platoons.' On the whole however we are not interested in signing up for a crusading army of government mandated and funded 'obligations and attachments.' To conflate the two is the kind of cheap rhetoric one would expect from the statists."
ADDENDUM: Heh. Thursday night, a guy at a bar in Dallas asked Kristina Ribali if she knew about this group called FreedomWorks; they helped get Ted Cruz elected.
Ribali, of course, is the Director of New Media at FreedomWorks.
NRO Digest - May 10, 2013
Today on National Review Online . . .
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Obama has backed himself into a corner with Syria. Pink Line over Damascus
IMPROMPTUS: Jay Nordlinger concludes his series on a book filled with nourishing ideas. This Is Important (Part V)
JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR: The Chinese government is retaliating against family members of the heroic blind lawyer who escaped to America. Chen Guangcheng's Family Under Attack
Daily Email - May 10, 2013 Top StoryAdmiral James Lyons (Ret.) Calls Benghazi Hearing "the tip of the iceberg" By Roger Aronoff | May 9, 2013 "Revelations at Wednesday's Benghazi hearings in Congress were "just the tip of the iceberg," said Admiral James Lyons (Ret.). I caught up with Admiral Lyons, the former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations, at a press conference in Washington today, and asked him a few questions. From the AIM Blogs NYT Public Editor Says Fox News Has Helped Foment Criticism of Times' Benghazi Coverage By Don Irvine | May 9, 2013 Guest ColumnsThe MSM and Benghazi: Will Their Coverage Harm Obama Administration? (Updated) By Ron Radosh | May 10, 2013 We are in the midst of an unfolding and growing scandal, which even the New York Times has been forced to admit in an online report which raises serious doubts about the administration's spin after the embassy attack. Indeed, they emphasized in their headline the demotion of Gregory Hicks for daring to tell the truth - [...]
Operation Smear Benghazi Whistleblowers By Michelle Malkin | May 9, 2013 It's on. As the White House grapples with a growing backlash over its Libya lies and lapses, President Obama's apologists are gearing up for battle. Put on your hip-waders. Grab those tar buckets. Get ready for Operation Smear Benghazi Whistleblowers. Capitol Hill hearings this week on the deadly 9/11 consulate attack by jihadists will feature [...] AIM Newswire To Infinity, and Beyond? NASA paying Russia $70 million per astronaut
It looks as though after eight long months, the wheels might have finally come off the Obama Administration's coverup of the September 11th anniversary attacks in Libya. To justify lies told for over a week about a spontaneous protest, the White House has consistently insisted they had relied on CIA talking points that only the intelligence community had drafted and revised.
Standing on the shoulders of the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, ABC News's Jonathan Karl has obtained 12 different versions of these now-infamous CIA talking points, and what he found proves beyond any doubt that the White House and State Department not only knew from the beginning that al-Qaeda was involved in the attack, but that the administration (mostly State) removed all "references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack."
A report in the Egyptian media published on September 10, 2012, said demonstrators would be converging on the U.S. embassy in Cairo not to protest a movie, but to apply pressure and demand the release of Islamist terrorists who have been tried in American courts and/or are held in American prisons. The Central Intelligence Agency was aware of this threat.
At the rate things are going, it shouldn't be too many more months before everyone will have to admit that ObamaCare's 30-hour full-time employment definition is on track to permanently alter the nature of work and employment in America - and not for the better.
Secretary Kerry has joined decades of his predecessors, buying into the latest version of the 30-year old illusion that we can make a deal with the Tehran regime if only we deal properly and humbly with them.
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) re-emerged on the Hill today for the first hearing on the Boston bombings to remind Congress that "the outrageously false narrative of violent Islamist extremism" is a threat to America that is growing unchecked.
Special Report: Alexander on Benghazi -- Need to Know...
May 10, 2013
Editor's Note: In today's edition, Mark Alexander provides concise analysis on what you need to know about Benghazi. Don't miss the rest of the Digest after this special report.
"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." --Thomas Jefferson (1785)
Amid all the media saturation regarding the 2012 assault in Benghazi, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attack on our own soil in 2001, there are some important developments you need to know.
Those developments fall into two categories:
First: Who within the Obama administration knew what, and when, and who told our Special Forces operators to stand down and not respond? The answer to this question is crucial, because it allows us to determine what motivated that stand-down order. In addition, the answer might shed some light on where the president was after 5 p.m. on September 11, when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey informed him that our embassy was under attack and that our people were fighting for their lives. That we still don't have any idea what the commander in chief was doing during this crisis tells us all we need to know about our shamefully incurious mainstream media.
Second: Who within the administration changed the narrative talking points about the Benghazi attack, why, and under whose direction? The CIA immediately (and correctly) asserted that it was a terrorist attack, so why did the Obama administration tell the American people that it was a protest in response to an utterly obscure YouTube video that was deemed offensive to Muslims? The answer to this question is crucial for determining who in the administration advanced the fraudulent narrative in order to provide Obama political cover ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
As to the first question regarding the stand down order, here is what we do know:
Regarding the stand down order, questions raised about what could have been done to save Americans in Benghazi are legitimate, but hindsight is 20/20, and second guessing military commanders on the ground, or at the Pentagon, should be done with all due respect.
If the response team was ordered to stand down because they would have arrived too late, or because the response could have escalated into a much larger conflict resulting in the deaths of the responders, or both, that is one thing.
For months, liberal elites and their media allies have mocked conservatives for caring about the Benghazi scandal. But watching three grown men -- a Marine, a security expert and a career Foreign Service officer -- moved to tears by this gross injustice has evidently moved some in Big Media to care enough to start asking questions.
In addition to today's revelations (see next item) is the fact that other major networks are starting to compete for stories. Other than Fox News, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS has had the field almost entirely to herself. Attkisson is an award-winning journalist who did some good reporting on Operation Fast and Furious.
But she has been fighting with CBS over Benghazi. Politico reported this week, "CBS News executives see Attkisson wading dangerously close to advocacy on the issue... Attkisson can't get some of her stories on the air."
That is a perfect marker of the media's mindset, which has almost turned into a mental disorder. The pro-Obama censors at CBS are accusing her of "advocacy" for daring to question the administration. That is exactly what a free press is supposed to do!
We expect the independent, free media to hold those in power -- whoever they are -- accountable to the people. Our Founding Fathers believed so much in a free press that they put the right to free speech in the First Amendment!
Obama White House Ordered Political Edits To Talking Points
Now Jonathan Karl at ABC News has joined Attkisson and Fox with breaking news this morning that the Obama White House ordered the CIA talking points to be altered for political reasons.
According to Karl, "ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited."
Now, we already know that the talking points were edited, but a bit of history is useful here. Consider what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in late November about the talking points:
"Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the [intelligence community's] best assessments of what they thought had happened. The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word 'consulate' to 'diplomatic facility'..." [Emphasis added.]
Did you get that, my friends? Weeks after key congressional leaders were demanding Susan Rice's resignation for making false statements, the White House was still insisting that there was only a "single adjustment" to the talking points.
Earlier this week, Carney stated that any changes were purely "stylistic and nonsubstantive." Really? It took "12 different versions extensively edited" to make nonsubstantive stylistic changes? The CIA must have some really poor writers!
Karl's sources tell him that it was Victoria Nuland, the State Department's spokeswoman, who insisted that all references to terrorism be stripped out of the talking points. In one of her emails to the White House, Nuland writes that the CIA's information about terrorists and Al Qaeda, "could be abused by members of Congress to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that?"
Here a top State Department official is making a political argument, knowing that the Obama campaign is vulnerable on this issue. The White House clearly understood the danger. From Jonathan Karl's report:
"In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. -- three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows -- Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department's concerns needed to be addressed."
So now the White House is ordering the CIA to change the talking points! General David Petraeus, then Director of the CIA, wasn't happy about it, but he followed his orders.
Again, it is too early to assess the fallout from these revelations. This news is breaking on a Friday, as many families are heading out of town for college graduations and getting ready for Mother's Day.
House Republicans are promising more hearings, and there is serious talk of bringing Hillary Clinton back to Capitol Hill for additional testimony -- this time under oath.
The evidence of a scandal is beyond dispute. Ron Fournier of National Journal writes today that it is "unseemly" for any White House to try to finesse a tragedy, adding that Obama's credibility has been damaged.
Victoria Nuland should resign immediately, as should Jay Carney and Ben Rhodes. I hope more journalists will realize there is a real story here of government corruption and cover-up.
In news that shook the political world, the IRS admitted what we knew all along: It targeted conservative groups before the 2012 presidential election. We've been at the forefront of the fight, representing 27 groups in 18 states. Today represents a crucial victory, but now the fight for accountability begins.
After spending hundreds of hours defending conservative groups from the IRS, we're not stopping now. We're pressing forward, demanding answers and accountability. Support our successful, ongoing work today.
Richard Grenell, Foreign Policy expert and media critic, reveals that both ABC and CBS presidents have siblings that work for Obama at the White House on his National Security Council, and he believes that the lack of coverage on the Benghazi hearings this week can be directly attributed to that:
So really it comes as no shock to find out, as the Daily Caller reported, that CBS executives are upset with Sharyl Attkisson over her coverage of the Benghazi scandal, because their president's brother is complicit in the scandal because he works for Obama on the NSC.
JIHAD IN CANADA: THIRD MUSLIM IN PASSENGER TRAIN BOMB PLOT DISCUSSED BACTERIA PLOT TO KILL '100,000 PEOPLE'
The police are super busy in Toronto, threatening Rabbis and making sure that I am not allowed speak about this very thing. Do these jackbooted keystone clowns really believe that by stopping me from speaking about Islamic jihad, that Islamic jihad will stop?
Last week I was on a Canadian radio show (I forget which one), and when I referred to this plot as jihad, the host stopped me and said, "we don't know that." The host implied that I was being a bombthrower by calling it an Islamic attack. The level of denial and delusion is stunning.
In this article, The National Post describes the Muslim terrorist as Tunisian. Tunisia is not Ahmed Abassi's motive. He was a devout Muslim who was a master's student in chemical engineering. This is Islamic jihad. Period. Why won't they say it? This Muslim talked about killing 100,000 people. Bam.
These jihadis had "overseas training and plotted to engage in terrorist activity in the West."
He wanted to remain in the United States, and that if he was living in the United States he would be willing to carry out terrorist operations in the United States...
It is important to point out that this plot was thwarted by an FBI informant. This is how hundreds of jihad plots over the past 12 years have been stopped. This is the very program that Hamas groups like CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSU are aggressively agitating to stop. And they met with some measure of success. The FBI knew about the Boston jihad bombers, but didn't monitor or surveil them.
"Third suspect related to alleged VIA Rail terror plan discussed bacteria plot to kill '100,000 people': documents"The National Post (hat tip Nicola)
Who do these people think they are? Related posts: Hot Mic: Reporters Overheard Mocking NRA, Praising Code Pink Reporters waiting for the daily State Department press briefing were... CAUGHT ON TAPE: Routine Traffic Stop Ends In Trooper Conducting 'roadside Body Cavity Search' I don't care that these people are in law enforcement...this...
A Terrible Fraud Perpetrated On The American Public
May 11, 2013 01:30 pm No government activity is more notoriously fraudulent than budgeting. The system is a farce. Take the sequester cuts, for example. If you listen to the media, Congress, agency heads, and even the president, you might get the impression that the budget is being cut. This couldn't be further from the truth. In gross and real dollars, [...]
They also admit it makes the White House look terrible... Related posts: New Push For Answers On Benghazi-Gate It's good to know we are not alone in demanding... Benghazi-Gate: Help Denied, People Died Americans at the Benghazi consulate begged for help while being...
If You Are Waiting For The Government To Help You...
May 11, 2013 01:17 pm Last weekend, I was sitting in front of this computer, getting ready to write an editorial when the screen changed and an official-looking notice came up from "Internet Security" telling me that my computer had been infected with some virus and that for $29.95, I could get rid of it. Of course, the only virus [...]
Video: Obama On Obamacare: 'You're Benefiting From It, You Just May Not Know It'
May 11, 2013 01:15 pm
Oh really, Mr. President?! Related posts: Former Obama Adviser Says ObamaCare Uncertainty Is Driving Up Premiums It is unbelievable that the same Obama advisers that sold... The Lies That Grew Up To Be Obamacare The lies before and after the passage are monumental. This...
May 11, 2013 01:07 pm Where are Obama's Woodward and Bernstein? We, as a society, are 40 years beyond the time of the Watergate Scandal. The information age, whether for good or bad, is upon us. The 24 hour news cycle is part of our lives. The lifespan of a story today, even important stories, are normally only a few [...]
Video: Hey Illegals: Is This What You Were Looking Forward To?
May 11, 2013 12:54 pm
"The Political Port" has a question for all illegals... Related posts: Breaking: Obama Just Legalized 800,000 Illegals Today Ready to vote, illegals? This is likely a new low... Crimes Of The Illegals "If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and...
May 11, 2013 12:47 pm BENGHAZI: Why have Hillary and Barack lied and covered up so vigorously for so long? Obviously, there is something terribly damaging being concealed. The truth, in their estimation, would be more damaging that the appearance of impropriety. Better to be seen incompetent than be judged criminal. One theory claims it was a staged kidnapping to [...]
Students Coerced Into Participating In Anti-fracking Assembly
May 11, 2013 12:44 pm Middle school students in one school outside of Denver, Colo. were recently confronted by a couple of in-your-face environmental extremists known as the Earth Guardians. The duo presented a rap song called "What the Frack," which claims that hydraulic fracturing "poisoned the water, poisoned the air, [and] poisoned the people." Evidence backing up the activists' [...]
May 11, 2013 12:42 pm One thing that I am certain of after listening to this week's bits and pieces of the left's insane excuses and specious suppositions for the tragedy called Benghazi-Gate is that Michael Savage was 100 percent correct when he coined the phrase "liberalism is a mental disorder" in his 2005 book of the same name. And [...]
Video: Boykin: America On The 'Precipice Of Total Destruction'
May 11, 2013 12:39 pm
Jerry Boykin warns America is on the brink of collapse at The Awakening 2013... Related posts: 3 Star General Explains How Progressives Are Like Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, And Marx Jerry Boykin, 3-Star General and Executive Vice-President of the Family... The Organized Destruction Of America Through Political Correctness Being a man in my mid-forties, raised in [...]
POWs, MIAs Still Being Sought By Dedicated American Force
May 11, 2013 12:33 pm When one American is not worth the effort to be found, we as Americans have lost. - Rolling Thunder Motto. War is an ugly endeavor fought by brave warriors at the behest of national leaders. In the heat of battle, soldiers are killed, wounded, captured, or go missing. Prisoners captured during battle are at the mercy [...]
Video: Congress FINALLY Investigating DHS Ammo Stockpiling
May 11, 2013 12:26 pm
For months now, we have been talking about the massive ammo buys by the U.S. government. But Congress is now investigating... Related posts: Holder Finally Speaks Truth And Tells Congress Obama Goal To Ban Guns Eric Holder, the top law enforcement officer in the nation,... Ammo? What Ammo? A report from Paul Joseph Watson at [...]
Oklahoma Students Fight To Keep Ten Commandments In School
May 11, 2013 12:23 pm Hundreds of Christian students in an Oklahoma town have decided to fight back against a national association of atheists and agnostics who say they want displays of the Ten Commandments removed from local public schools. Fox News reports that the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an organization that targets displays of Christian faith in schools, told school [...]
May 11, 2013 12:20 pm Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi should "preclude her from holding higher office," according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Paul told a crowd of supporters in Iowa on Friday that any presidential ambitions Clinton might have in 2016 should be stymied by the administration's response to the Libya [...]
May 11, 2013 12:17 pm I don't mind doing in-depth analysis. I do a show that treats you like critical-thinking adults, not low-information voting children who can only handle enough truth and data to fit into a single Tweet. But sometimes in-depth analysis isn't required. Sometimes all the data and argumentation in the world simply comes down to one question-who [...]
Video: Carney Blames GOP For Leaking Benghazi Emails
May 11, 2013 12:07 pm
Jay Carney really needs to read his Bible; you reap what you sow. Related posts: Carney: Benghazi Happened A Long Time Ago Jay Carney is a disgraceful American...... Continue to Post... New Benghazi Emails Reveal 'Incredibly Stupid Cover-up' Officials at the White House and State Department were advised...
May 11, 2013 11:58 am WASHINGTON - Steady drips of information about a horrific night in Libya are fueling Republican arguments and ads designed to fire up the conservative base and undercut the Democrats' early favorite for president in 2016. Democratic and Republican strategists sharply disagree on the issue's power to influence elections next year and beyond. But after eight [...]
May 11, 2013 11:45 am WASHINGTON - A fundraising push by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is drawing criticism from a key Senate Republican who questions whether Sebelius has a conflict of interest. Department spokesman Jason Young confirms that Sebelius in recent weeks has asked various patient groups, churches and health care providers to support nonprofit groups like [...]
The House of Representatives' Oversight Committee hearings about the September 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya have concluded...yet this is still an important story for Americans to follow. Related posts: Call For Special Committee To Investigate Benghazi Attack Gains Steam Congressman Frank R. Wolf, along with over twenty-five co-sponsors in... Treason: Benghazi [...]
Treasonous Obama To Charge 14 Governors With Treason?
May 10, 2013 01:26 pm It has been repeatedly reported on some of our websites that President Barack Hussein Obama is guilty of multiple accounts of treason against the people and Constitution of the United States. He has not been charged with any of his many crimes because he controls the US Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of [...]
Video: WCJ Writer's Speech At The New York Revolution
May 10, 2013 01:20 pm
The following video is from a speech that I was invited to give to the Greene County, NY chapter of the New York Revolution. Among the speakers that day were U.S. Congressman Chris Gibson and New York State Assemblyman Peter Lopez. I found it an honor to be in such company. Thank you to NYR [...]
May 10, 2013 01:10 pm The godless extremists in the Freedom From Religion Foundation are notoriously unsatisfied with the extent to which faith has already been relegated in our society. While deep blue states have effectively removed God from any and all public forums, the FFRF often ventures into more traditional states to coerce them to do the same. One [...]
Why they never ran this, I have no idea... Related posts: Were Saudis Behind Benghazi Attack? The hacker known as Guccifer first came to prominence in... Obama Linked To Benghazi Attack We learned Tuesday that Barack Hussein Obama, along with the...
May 10, 2013 12:46 pm We can all save a lot of time (and Tylenol) by simply acknowledging the fact that Barack Obama is a Machiavellian "Prince." The Prince does what is needed, and he is the one who is feared. His use of force will be needed to achieve and hold his power. He doesn't have to tell you [...]
Video: ABC: State Department Edited Benghazi Talking Points
May 10, 2013 12:39 pm
Kudos to ABC for a change, doing their jobs... Related posts: Issa: State Department Lying About Benghazi Where are the other Congressmen?... Continue to Post... Benghazi WhistleBlower Attorney: State Department Violating The Law Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Victoria Toensing told FOX News...
May 10, 2013 12:35 pm Bill Ayers' claim that the Weather Underground bombed property, not people, in order to protest the Vietnam War, is two lies in one. First, they specialized in anti-personnel bombs using heavy metal staples. Second, Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn were not opposed to the war, only to a U.S. victory. As reported by Jim Mackinnon of [...]
May 10, 2013 12:19 pm How can a person like Sheila Jackson Lee be elected to office? A couples of weeks ago, Representative Lee spoke on the House floor in favor of more restrictions to prohibit law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves and their families from criminals. She had the nerve to blame the murdering of innocents at the hands of [...]
Here is a follow-up to our most popular story yesterday... Related posts: Footage Of The Arrest Of Patriotic Marine Brandon J Raub Here's an apparent video of Marine Veteran, Brandon J Raub,... Marine Faces Dismissal Over Anti-Obama Web Posts Obama's team is cracking down hard on any soldiers that...
Here, I have some advice for Sean Hannity... Related posts: Hannity: I Talked To George Zimmerman Some of the biggest news to come out of the... Breitbart's Shapiro: We've Reached The End Of Civility Ben Shapiro was on with Sean Hannity the other night...
At least that's what NBC's Lisa Myers is reporting... Related posts: Democrats Worry New Laws Threaten Their Illiterate, Illegal, Dead Voting Base by Danny Tyree According to Newsmax, Republican-controlled state legislatures... Women's Group New Ad "I Worry" Blasts Obama This hard-hitting radio at is from a group named "I...
May 10, 2013 12:06 pm WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday. Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, [...]
May 10, 2013 12:02 pm Thomas Sowell is an advanced thinker of the first order. Much of what he writes is thought-provoking, and he is not afraid to answer any inquiries that come his way. In his own words, he has said that whether the content is positive or negative, it is necessary to answer as many inquiries or comments [...]
Video: Radical Islam Cleric Condemned SEALS To Hell
May 10, 2013 12:00 pm
At their own FUNERAL, of all places... Related posts: Radical Islam Joins The DNC In Charlotte The Democratic National Convention will feature a three-day series of... Radical Islam Joins The DNC Starting at the end of this month the Democratic National...
May 10, 2013 11:50 am DES MOINES, Iowa - Sen. Rand Paul is doing much more than "considering" running for president. The Kentucky Republican is clearing a path to seek the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, with a series of upcoming early primary state visits, a beefed-up political operation and a plan to raise his profile. His national coming-out begins Friday, [...]
May 10, 2013 11:34 am NEW YORK - The financial industry has long been a draw for former political operatives seeking a bigger paycheck and New York lifestyle. But with the big banks now under constant assault from reformers, regulators and some members of Congress, the flow of top talent from Washington to Wall Street has become a small flood. [...]
Video: Democrats Joining Republicans In Criticizing ObamaCare
May 10, 2013 11:29 am
Good news, I suppose... Related posts: Video: Who Are "Nazis"? Republicans And Democrats Differ Despite empty promises of infusing a new civility into our... Liberal Super PAC: Calling Republicans Racist More Effective Than Criticizing Policy A top official at a liberal super PAC with the...
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." ~ Frederic Bastiat
The Price Of Honesty
CBS Reporter To Lose Job Over Benghazi-Gate? America's Conservative News CBS' Sharyl Attkisson bucked the trend and was the only main stream media reporter who dared to investigate Benghazi-gate ... and now it is being reported that she may lose her job over it ... and the fact that the president of CBS News is the brother of a top Obama Administration official is allegedly not helping matters ...
Minimize, Deny, Blame, Lie-- We Are In An Abusive Relationship
The IRS Just Admitted That It Targets Dissidents By John Hayward HumanEvents.com It seems like only yesterday that President Obama was mocking those who fear the immense power of the Leviathan State has been turned to tyrannical ends.
Sen. Alexander: Obamacare Fundraising 'May Be Illegal' By Todd Beamon Newsmax.com Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee charged on Saturday that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius might have broken the law by asking insurance companies to donate to outside groups promoting Obamacare.
Happy Mother's Day: Five Obamacare Taxes That Hurt Moms Most By Grover Norquist CNSNews.com "President Obama will deliver a Mother's Day-pegged speech from the White House where he will trombone the supposed benefits of Obamacare for women. The President will undoubtedly forget to mention the 20 new or higher taxes in Obamacare, and the five that most hurt women.
"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much." ~ Ronald Reagan
Nt Impeachable? ... We THink Not.
100 More Reasons To Impeach Barack Obama Posted On America's Conservative NewsFor all the folks who say that Barack Obama has not committed an impeachable offense, here's a list of 100 potential impeachable offenses...
Pope Faces First Crisis as Archbishop Resists Pressure to Quit By Edward Pentin Newsmax.comEdward Pentin reporting from Rome - Pope Francis is facing what is being described as the first crisis of his papacy: a Puerto Rican archbishop who is refusing to obey numerous Vatican requests that he resign.
Families Say Insane Rules Of Engagement Cost Their Sons' Lives
Navy SEALS Sacrificed To Political Correctness? By Garth Kant WorldNetDailyThe National Press Club in Washington fell silent as Charles Strange recalled how he leaned over to whisper into President Obama's ear to ask if there would be a congressional investigation into the death of his son.
Is A College Education For Everybody Or Just A Way To Stave Off Rising Unemployment Figures?
College Bubble Bursts After Decades of Extravagance By Michael Barone HumanEvents.comSurprise! Over the last three decades, tuitions rose faster than the economy grew.
Too bad Barack Obama didn't have Kermit the Frog as one of his advisers.
Kermit could have told him "it's not easy being green" before he threw away hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on enviromental schemes the free market wouldn't support.
Here's the administration's latest "innovator" ... on it's way to bankruptcy court.
America's 15th-most liberal city practicing 'apartheid'
It's nationally known as one of the most liberal cities in the country, blacks make up a majority of the city board, and the official policy that favored blacks over whites and Hispanics was the subject of a Supreme Court case.
So, why is one of America's most liberal organizations coming down so hard on a city that has embraced so many of its positions?
You'd think a man who ran a filthy clinic that used untrained and uncertified personnel to perform abortions and who delivered babies born alive, only to murder them by snipping their spinal columns, wouldn't have a friend left in the world.
But he does ... famous friends who know how to pull strings ...
Even as Obama was praising NBA basketball player Jason Collins' recent announcement to the world he's sexually attracted to other men, his Pentagon was threatening court martials for military personnel who take seriously Jesus command to take the Gospel into all the world.
Fine, says a spokesman for this scrappy group. Threaten away. But be warned -- we've got their back ...
What if there was a "cancer pill" ... an oral prescription much less toxic to the immune system than traditional chemotherapy ... a medication more effective than standard treatments?
There is.
But chances are good if you need it, you'll be denied.
Women, children and men from a number of Pro 2nd Amendment (2A) groups across southeastern Pennsylvania rallied along the banks of the Delaware River on Saturday to protect their rights and liberties to keep and bear arms. The crowd peacefully gathered by the "Trenton Makes Bridge" to hear from speakers Larry Pratt (Gun Owners of America), Charles Heller (Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership), Tracy Scarpulla and Sgt Robert Mansfield. The crowd was carrying a multitude of signs asserting their second amendment rights. Many women proudly displayed signs such as "Hands of my 2A Rights" and "Moms Demand Firearms for Protection". Multiple counts put the pro 2A patriots put the count at between 140 and 150.
Upon completion, there was a march to Williamson Park where the anti-gun/anti-liberty event by the so called "Coalition for Peace" was underway. There were only 25 to 30 present from their side representing Pennsylvania based on multiple counts. Their numbers were significantly overshadowed by the Pro 2A/Pro Liberty patriots. Towards the very end of their program, they did receive a group that marched from NJ to bolster their anemic numbers from Pennsylvania.
The anti-liberty folks harped on their desire for Universal Background Checks (UBC), despite that fact that even democrats in Washington conceded such checks would not have stopped the shooting in Sandy Hook or Aurora. The UBC is being used as a first step in an "incrementalism" strategy by the left to chip away to 2nd Amendment rights. The failed UBC bill would have lead to firearm registration as a measure for implementation and ultimately confiscation. Yhe real goals of these groups are firearm and magazine confiscation as declared goal of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) who is Coalition ally and money behind the the UBC effort. See MAIG's own website (link below)...the fourth bullet under their own principles. The Coalition and their allies clearly can't be trusted, and they can't hide behind the seemingly innocuous title of their group to perpetuate their assault on the Constitution and law abiding Americans.
As Pro 2A groups promised, our rally was peaceful and responsible, and the march by ant-gun/anti-liberty folks from NJ late in the day was totally unchallenged. There was no need for police intervention at any point throughout the day. The Peace Coalition spoiled the day for the kids and unnecessarily took Pennsylvania's s finest (State Police and Morrisville Police) away from their more critical police duties and their also families.
Pro 2A groups demonstrated that we will protect our liberties in Pennsylvania, and that any assault on our rights will not go unchallenged. The line in the sand is the Delaware just as it was at the Battle of Trenton in 1776. As it says in the Pennsylvania Constitution, the right to keep and bear arms "shall not be questioned"
We would again like to thank our speakers, the Delaware River Bridge Commission, the Pennsylvania State Police and the Morrisville Police.
Homosexual former teacher pushes bill through state assembly
The California State Assembly passed a bill Thursday mandating schools permit boys to play on girls' athletic teams and utilize the ladies' locker room if they gender identify as girls - or vice-versa for girls identifying as boys.
The bill's author, openly homosexual San Francisco Democrat Tom Ammiano, has been an activist for lesbian, "gay," bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, issues for decades and reportedly became in 1975 the first San Francisco public school teacher to make his homosexuality public. Ammiano later co-founded an LGBT organization with Harvey Milk, the homosexual activist about whom Hollywood made a recent feature film and California schools celebrate an annual day of remembrance.
Ammiano told the Los Angeles Times some parents may be uncomfortable with their children sharing bathrooms with students of a different sex, but he said, "It's also important to protect our children from prejudice."
"There's no trampling of other people's rights," he said. "There's a recognition that other people have the same rights that you do."
Yes, it's time to talk about the debt limit again.
Every time the U.S. bumps up against its debt ceiling, we start the cycle all over again. President Obama insists he won't negotiate over the debt ceiling, but of course he will. Members of Congress grandstand about changing this vicious cycle, and then most clamber for the easy way out so they can return to matters they'd rather talk about, which is just about anything but cutting spending.
Meanwhile, federal spending continues its out-of-control expansion, and the debt clock keeps ticking.
We will hit the debt limit again on May 19. Treasury is expected to exhaust its cash management tools sometime in September or October. In the meantime, Washington's periodic debt ceiling ritual will play out. Whatever happens, the debt limit should not be raised unless we are put on a path to balance the budget in 10 years. That's the bottom line.
Debt ceiling fights are always about leverage-Members of Congress want to use the vote to extract concessions from the other side, usually the President. For example, tax reform is a much-needed pursuit, but it's not the answer to the debt limit. Tax reform, done well, should strengthen the economy and produce more revenue, but it obviously cannot cut spending-and excessive spending is the near-term and the long-term problem.
Heritage's J.D. Foster, the Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy, says that tax reform needs to proceed on a separate track. When it comes to the debt limit, Congress needs to stay focused on its responsibility of budgeting:
The House of Representatives, in passing the Ryan budget, memorialized its commitment to balancing the budget within 10 years. Simple as it sounds, achieving that consensus was a major accomplishment, and achieving the result will be a major undertaking. The debt limit debate provides the next venue for taking concrete steps to reduce spending consistent with the commitment.
Recent news on the recovering economy is welcome, but the editorial board of USA Today is right on the money:
Should we chill the champagne? Should we take our cues from liberals who say it's time to stop worrying about debt and focus on job creation and investment? Should we conclude that, even as President Obama and Congress careen from crisis to crisis, they are solving America's fiscal problems?
The answer is: none of the above.
Why? Because "Congress and the White House have yet to address the core problem fueling long-term deficits: the automatic and runaway spending on health care and retirement benefits."
Exactly. Reforming entitlements and cutting spending-while funding America's vital defense needs-should be top priorities. The debt limit is an imperfect vehicle, but right now it appears the best we have for making progress on spending reductions and deficit-reducing entitlement reforms.
You may have seen or heard the new ads created by Americans for a Conservative Direction, seeking to persuade skeptical conservative and Republican voters to support "comprehensive immigration reform." But the roots of this group are far from "conservative."
Today: The first of weeks of votes on the giant amnesty began today in the Senate -- MAKE SURE YOUR SENATORS KNOW WHERE YOU STAND
SIGN THIS PETITION WHICH WE WILL FAX IMMEDIATELY (for free) TO YOUR SENATORS.
And share this with your friends who will want their views counted, too. Thanks. -- ROY
DEAR Moderate, Conservative & Liberal AMERICAN VOTERS,
Despite $1.5 billion of lobbying by nearly every special interest in Washington to pass the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, the start of the Senate debate today showed that plenty of Senators are listening to the voters, too . . .
. . . or they are at least nervous about what voters will think.
Tell them what you think of 33 million
Join 290,000 other American voters who have already signed a "Stop Amnesty" petition as of this moment.
We've already faxed 98% of those petitions directly to the congressional offices.
We usually are able to deliver a petition within two hours of a person clicking on our website to send it.
The petition not only opposes giving lifetime work permits and residency to 11 million illegal aliens but it also objects to giving out an additional 22 million green cards to new immigrants in the first decade alone -- 33 million work permits in just 10 years!
During these weeks of the Senate Judiciary Committee voting on amendments before sending the bill to the Senate floor, you can always keep up with the latest developments on our home page at:
Here is the text of the petition that will go not only to your two Senators but also to your U.S. Representative and to Pres. Obama. They all need to oppose this bill.
Read the petition text to learn more about the bill:
Please oppose the S. 744 immigration bill, that would give out a minimum of 33 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens in the first decade alone.
The last thing we need when 20 million Americans are unable to find full-time jobs at every level of occupation is for Congress to flood the country with more foreign job-seekers.
S. 744 promises to give work permits to at least 11 million illegal border crossers and visa overstayers. It also would continue the recent elevated flow of 11 million new immigrants a decade. And it would add at least another 11 million the first decade through new immigration categories and increases in existing categories.
It is irrational and cruel to give out 33 million more work permits when millions of Americans who ARE employed are suffering long-term wage depression due to the persistent shortage of jobs and excess of workers.
Incredibly, this billl in a single decade would give out about ha lf the number of green cards as all the immigrants who ever came in the history of this country since the founding of Jamestown four centuries ago.
No matter what you may think about legalizing most of the current illegal population in this country, you can't possibly justify adding 33 million potential foreign job seekers as competitors for scarce U.S. jobs.
Furthermore, this bill would be a pathway to higher chain migration and massive new social service expenditures in a time of budget deficit and debt crisis. And it would lead to more illegal immigration because it gives the legalization and work permits first with only promises of future enforcement, just like the previ ous seven amnesties between 1986 and 2000 which had no hard enforcement triggers and served only to entice 11 million new illegal immigrants who now demand their own amnesty.
In your lifetime, America will never recover if this bill passes.
Whether you are moderate, conservative or liberal, the things yo u hold most dear about America cannot withstand the crush of tens of million citizens of other countries added to the labor markets, public services, infrastructures, roads and public spaces in the near future.
Only the massive voices of the people themselves can stop this from becoming law.
Take our interests survey. Let us know what you're interested in so we can customize actions and other information to meet your needs.
Marco Rubio on Modernizing Our Legal Immigration SystemThere are currently about 700,000 foreign students studying at U.S. universities. Some of them are among the world's best and brightest; many of them are not. Full Story
Immigration Done The Right WayGiven the multifaceted nature of immigration, is there a version of "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" that ought to appeal to true conservatives, who are not beholden to the bottom line of a global business or to the ideological dictates of Ayn Rand? Full Story
Rubio is WrongSen. Marco Rubio yesterday attacked the estimate by the Heritage Foundation that adoption of the Senate's amnesty bill negotiated by the Gang of Eight would cost U.S. taxpayers $6.3 TRILLION... Full Story
Heritage Foundation - Amnesty Will Cost $6.3 TrillionThe comprehensive immigration overhaul being taken up in the Senate this week could cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion if 11 million illegal immigrants are granted legal status. Full Story
Isn't One "Train Wreck" Enough? In 2009, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) famously urged Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, in order to "find out what is in it." Full Story
Free Speech for Conservative Students? By L. Brent Bozell III It can be tough to be a student in today's public schools. Never mind restrictions on the schools. It is becoming impossible to express a socially conservative or Christian viewpoint - as a student.
Requiem for a Grand Old Party By Patrick J. Buchanan America's white majority, which accounts for nine in 10 of all Republican votes in presidential elections, is not only shrinking as a share of the electorate, but it is declining in numbers, as well. But minorities, peoples of color - Hispanic, black, Asian - gave 80 percent of their votes to Obama. And their share of both the electorate and the population is inexorably rising.
The Crucifixion of Jason Richwine By Michelle Malkin If it is now inherently racist to study racial and ethnic differences among demographic groups, then it's time to shut down every social sciences department in the country.
Benghazi-gate By Rich Galen The "buck" only stops on the President's desk when he knows there's a dollar bill in circulation looking for a home. That covers Obama on the night of the Benghazi attack, but it doesn't let him off the hook for the way his administration responded to it.
I would like you to consider the difference between a mother and the government. They say a mother's love is enduring. So is the funding for a government program.
They say a mother's love will never die. Well, neither will a government program, especially once it's been enshrined as a civil right, a national treasure, and yes, even a so-called third rail.
They say a mother's love is forever. So are government entitlements.
At this point you must be asking, "So what's the difference between Mother and the Government?
Homeschoolers will not escape the Common Core - at least those who take GED tests.
Once Common Core is nationally implemented and federally enforced, public education will become just another word for a forcible indoctrination of our children to induce them to give up their parents' political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas. This is the dictionary definition of brainwashing.
SHOCK: IRS admits & apologizes for unfairly targeting conservative groups
Remember way back when (like last weekend) President Obama mocked those who warn against government tyranny? We learned today that during the election season the Obama administration used the IRS to unfairly target conservatives and harass them. And you thought the government was out to get you. Ha!
ABC report proves Obama lying on Benghazi
Not that anyone will care, but an ABC news report has nuked the Obama administration's claim that they only made one edit to the talking points on Benghazi. Many edits and 12 revisions later, the actual facts were transformed into a tale that bore no resemblance to the truth. STORY
'The East' glorifies eco-terrorists attacking corporations
A new movie opening at the end of the month puts a sympathetic light on eco-terrorists bent on exacting revenge for all the evils done by CEO's and corporations. Apparently this is what Hollywood thinks will resonate with audiences. Are they right? Glenn has more on radio today. WATCH
Watch On Demand: For The Record
Episode 2 of For The Record is now available on demand! Two shocking stories you won't won't believe the mainstream media isn't talking about are exposed: the horrifying persecution of Christians in Egypt and unbelievable stories of human trafficking inside our own borders. We need your help to get these stories out. Watch For The Record on demand -- only on TheBlaze.
Do you have Comcast?
If so, we need YOU to help us Get TheBlaze: Comcast hasn't yet decided if they plan to carry TheBlaze or not. They say there hasn't been enough demand for the channel. If you want a channel that represents YOUR values, it's time to let Comcast know. Please visit GetTheBlaze.com or call 1-800-996-2529 and make your voice heard.
Gov't invites Imam to Seal Team 6 funeral
The Obama administration shunned Ted Nugent from attending a SEAL's funeral (against family wishes) but when SEAL Team 6 members were laid to rest after a devastating helicopter crash there was a curious guest: an Imam. Who invited him? And did he damn the souls of the fallen SEALS? Glenn has the story HERE.
Who do you trust? Blaze readers vs. Reader's Digest
Yesterday, Glenn reviewed a strange poll conducted by Reader's Digest made it seem as the most trusted people in America were actors or people in the Obama administration. TheBlaze decided to conduct a poll of it's own -- Who do you trust most?
Now it's your turn to play ad executive
The Obama administration is claiming to have a national mandate in their quest to enact more gun laws. They garnered 1.4 million signatures so everyone MUST be with them! Now it's your turn - it's time to show this administration who is in the majority. Unleash the creative mind of America -- find out how HERE.
It's the man, not the gun
The mainstream media wants you to believe that gun crime originates with the gun. It doesn't. Debunk the progressive myths, the talking points, and arguments with #1 New York Times bestseller CONTROL. Backed by hundreds of sources, Glenn's latest book gives everyone who cares about the Second Amendment the indisputable facts they need to reclaim the debate, defeat the fear, and take back their natural rights. Get your copy HERE.
Want to share CONTROL with your friends? Take advantage of this exclusive box set offer of CONTROL that includes an copy autographed by Glenn! Get one while they last!
6pm ET - Real News: Hillary may be in a bit of trouble as the panel takes a closer look at the Benghazi emails.
7pm ET - Wilkow!: 'Gang of 8' = Democratic strategy - If the 'gang of 8' bill fails, so will Rubio.
Saturday @ 10pm ET - The Wonderful World of Stu: Stu exposes the progressive lies of the FDA, reads awful excerpts from Michelle Obama's book, and much, much more.
Saturday @ 10:30pm ET - The B.S. of A.: Don't miss Brian and the gang hilariously break down the latest news on Benghazi, the Boston Police press conference, and Mother's Day.
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Glenn Beck issued a response Saturday to the Internal Revenue Service's shocking 
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 
The Right Scoop
I would like you to consider the difference between a mother and the government. They say a mother's love is enduring. So is the funding for a government program. 
[PROG WAY OFF]
SHOCK: IRS admits & apologizes for unfairly targeting conservative groups
