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Obama Serves 14-State Governors With Warnings of Arrest: And why is this not front page news?
Tuesday, May 7, 2013 11:570
by Ken Larive
Barack Hussein Obama had served 14-State Governors in the United States, National Security Letters (NSLs) warning that the Governor's actions in attempting to form "State Defense Forces" needs to be halted "immediately" or they will face arrest for the crime of treason. The employment of NSLs was authorized by the Patriot Act introduced by George W. Bush. Contained within the section related to these letters, it is forbidden for anyone receiving a NSL warning to even acknowledge the existence of said communication.Obama is angered by the several State Governors who have reestablished "State Defense Forces." These forces are described as: "State Defense Forces (also known as State Guards, State Military Reserves, State Militias) in the United States are military units that operate under the sole authority of a state government; they are not regulated by the National Guard Bureau nor are they part of the Army National Guard of the United States. State Defense Forces are authorized by state and federal law and are under the command of the governor of each state. State Defense Forces are distinct from their state's National Guard in that they cannot become federal entities."
Mr. Obama is fearful of these State Defense Forces, in that he does not have control of said forces, and with the U.S. Military stretched to near breaking from multiple deployments and theatre actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, these State military forces would be under the direct command and authority of the Governors in which states have said forces. In essence, the Governors would have "de facto control" of the United States.
The two Governors leading this move are: Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota; and Rick Perry, Governor of Texas. Both of these State Governors stated they have: "...deep fear the President is destroying their Nation." Governor Pawlenty's fear of Obama is that since Obama took office he has appeased America's enemies and has shunned some of America's strongest allies, especially Israel. Governor Perry has declared that Obama is punishing his State of Texas by dumping tens-of-thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants into the cities and small towns of Texas. Governor Perry further recently stated: "If Barack Obama's Washington doesn't stop being so oppressive, Texans might feel compelled to renounce their American citizenry and secede from the union."
Jesse Ventura lawsuit vs. murdered Navy SEAL can move forward, judge says
FoxNews.com | Published July 21, 2013
Jesse Ventura's lawsuit against "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle -- purportedly the deadliest-ever American servicemen -- can proceed with the war hero's widow as a substitute defendant, a judge has ruled.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan reportedly wrote in his decision concerning Ventura's defamation suit, "(if) a party dies and the claim is not extinguished, the court may order substitution of the proper party."
Boylan subsequently named Taya Kyle, executor of her husband's estate, as replacement defendant, the StarTribune of Minneapolis reports.
'Auschwitz Borders': Did John Kerry Really Guarantee New Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks Will Be Based on Pre-1967 Map?
The Blaze | Sharona Schwartz | July 21, 2013
Though two senior Palestinian officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that Secretary of State John Kerry gave Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a letter guaranteeing that new peace negotiations with Israel will be based on pre-1967 borders, Israeli ministers and an unnamed Western official are now denying that claim.
Two senior Israeli politicians are calling the pre-1967 borders "Auschwitz borders," because it would leave Israel only nine miles wide at its narrowest point, would expose Ben-Gurion International Airport to the threat of close-range rocket fire and in their opinion would leave Israel with indefensible borders.
"Nine miles is less than the distance from Barack Obama's Chicago home to Wrigley Field," the American Thinker wrote last month.
Forget Monopoly there's a new game in town! Now you can learn the Constitution in new board game
If your family loves playing Monopoly, here's a new board game that can help adults and children learn about something more important than money - the Constitution.
It's all made in America, designed for two to four players or team play. It's great for teens and adults. The directions are simple. It's fun and engaging. It includes 223 game cards with information about the Constitution, including:
3 branches of government
Powers granted and denied
Checks and balances
Laws from the Articles
The Bill of Rights and other Amendments
Historical facts and dates
Play in less than an hour
Learn the Constitution as you play ... the more you play, the more you learn
Includes a complimentary copy of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence
Fun and educational for the classroom environment
Fantastic for home schooling
Great for entertainment for adults and teens who want to learn the Constitution
FROM THE DIRECTOR OF GODS AND GENERALS AND GETTYSBURG COMES THE LIBERTY MOVIE OF THE YEAR
RON MAXWELL'S COPPERHEAD
For anyone who reveres and believes in the preservation of the Constitution of the United States, Copperhead is a must see this summer!
Copperhead is unlike any Civil War movie to date. It is a film of the war at home - of a family ripped apart by war, of a community driven to an appalling act of vengeance against a man who insists on exercising his right to free speech during wartime. A story of the violent passions and burning feuds that set ablaze the homefront during the Civil War, Copperhead the movie is also a timeless and deeply moving examination of the price of dissent, the place of the individual amidst the hysteria of wartime, and the terrible price of war - a cost measured not in dollars but in fractured families, broken loves, and men dead before their time.
Based on the extraordinary novel by Harold Frederic, who witnessed these conflicts firsthand as a small child, Copperhead tells the story of Abner Beech, a stubborn and righteous farmer of Upstate New York, who defies his neighbors and his government in the bloody and contentious autumn of 1862.
Special Operations Speaks http://www.specialoperationsspeaks.com/has just been asked by Congressman Steve Stockman to mount an event to put pressure on the House of Representatives (and especially Speaker Boehner!) to form a select committee to investigate the tragedy that was Benghazi.
As a first step toward causing Congress to get serious about assigning responsibility for what happened at Benghazi, we are organizing a rally at Cong. Stockman's request that will be held on the steps of the US Capitol at noon, Tuesday, July 23, 2013. That rally will hear words from a number of patriots, including Cong. Stockman and Cong. Louie Gohmert, both of whom have been very supportive of our efforts to answer Hillary Clinton's heartless answer to a Senator's question about the men who died at Benghazi: "What difference does it make?"
Be with us next week as we demonstrate to Hillary and others like her "what difference it makes." Bring yourself, a carload, or a busload, but be there.
Thousands of you showed up to protect the Vietnam Wall in 2007; please help us demonstrate that we will not tolerate the murder-by-neglect of four of America's finest on September 12, 2012. Please help us send a message to our nation's leaders that we demand full accountability for this national crime.
CALL TO ACTION - JULY 29, 2013
We have some work to do during Congress's August break, and WE NEED YOU. NumbersUSA has some great suggestions on how we, pro-American, pro-enforcement, taxpaying citizens, can defeat the proposed Amnesty bill. Please join us on Monday, July 29, at the Warminster Library, 1076 Emma Lane, Warminster, PA at 7 p.m. or call Marge at 215-659-6404.
If not now, then when? If not me, then who?
The Rise of the Police-State
Tuesday, July 30th, from 7PM-9PM Jeffersonville Golf Club 2400 W Main St, Norristown, PA 19403 (Right out side of King of Prussia, Philly, Phoenixville, Lansdale, and Conshohocken)
Hello Members and Friends,
I hope that you can join us for our monthly meeting. Its free and open to the public! Our monthly meetings have officially been moved to the Jeffersonville Golf Club because its a bigger and better location. We are rapidly growing thanks to our dedicated members and friends. Our next meeting is on Tuesday, July 30th and after that our regular meetings will now fall on the 3rd Tuesdays of each month at 7PM. We hope you can make it!
Meeting Topic: The Rise of the Police-State
America is rapidly devolving into the oppressive police-state that our Founding Fathers warned us about. In recent years, politicians have passed laws that destroy and erode our constitutional rights like the N.D.A.A. and The Patriot Act. Recently, Homeland Security, federal government agencies, and local police departments have widely adopted military tactics, military equipment (armored personnel carriers, flash-bang grenades) - and, sometimes, the mindset of military conquerors rather than domestic peacekeepers, and they say its all in the name of "safety" to promote a "global society".
The military industrial complex is transforming our once free country into a giant prison camp. A broke and indoctrinated society constructed in the name of fighting terrorism, was actually built to enslave the American people by making them give up their liberties in the name of security, (Benjamin Franklin warned us about that). Body scanners, sound cannons, citizen spies, staged terror, and cameras on every street corner -- it's only the beginning of the U.N. & globalist's hellish plan.
THE AGENDA:
- Steve Piotrowski and Jackie Piotrowski will give an eye-opening presentation on the police-state, and the erosion of liberties that our government has taken away from us in the name of "safety". We will also speak about what you can do, and current PA. legislation that we can support to help us all fight Big Government and protect citizens of their Constitutional and god-given rights.
- Darren Wolfe, CFL guest speaker of the year, and (author of The International Libertarian) will also give a Philosophy presentation on the police-state and why the founding fathers warned us against this, and what we can do.
- We are also hoping to get Senator Folmer to come speak. He introduced a bill that will end the N.D.A.A. in PA and make it a crime for any government official to enforce it. Hopefully we can get him to attend and talk about it, or even others that helped draft the bill.
- We will also have a round table of open discussion... Your voice matters!
Stay in the Fight!
Gun Control advocates Still on the March!
Gun Control groups like Mayor Bloombergs CeasefirePA are still pushing hard to further "question" our right to Keep and Bear Arms! Just this week CeasefirePA testified at the PA Judiciary Committee hearing on HB1010 to expand background checks (next step towards registration). And the Bloomberg anti-gun bus tour continues across the USA with a likely stop in PA in the next 60 days. The recent Zimmerman trial verdict has given these anti-liberty groups a renewed energy to pass more incremental gun control laws.
This battle for our rights needs YOU to stay involved. CGOPA is an all-volunteer grassroots group of citizens, we are your friends and neighbors. There is a core group of 13 and we are always looking for more help! We need people to help coordinate legislative action and develop a formal membership framework. Please email concernedgunowners@gmail.com to get involved!
Even if you can't help directly, please continue to support our cause by showing up to one of our upcoming events.
Movie Screening- Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire
Thursday, August 8th 7:30pm
Philadelphia PA
Mike Novak stepped up to the plate and organized this Premiere in the Philadelphia area! Please check out this link and watch the trailer and then place your ticket order. We need to sell a minimum number of tickets by August 1st (less than 2 weeks away) in order to have the showing, tickets will not be charged until the minimum is met but please reserve yours TODAY. Thanks Mike for setting this up!
Townhall Meeting- Defensive Use of Firearms, Your Rights & Responsibilities
Tuesday, October 1st 7:00pm
Warminster VFW
Join us for this highly anticipated townhall meeting with 2A attorney Joshua Price from Firearms Consulting Group, an NRA instructor, and hopefully a representative of law enforcement as we discuss what you need to know if you ever have to use a firearm in a defensive manner. Not to be missed! More details to come. We will be announcing a gun raffle in the coming weeks that will be drawn this evening!
Rally & March in Support of HB357 Held June 15 in Doylestown
State Rep. Paul Clymer, co-sponsor of HB357, spoke to a crowd of almost 200 who then marched through the historic district of Doylestown handing out flyers. More info here.
We are excited to announce that Governor Nikki Haley will be attending this year's RedState Gathering!
We'll be in New Orleans August 2nd and 3rd with an all-star line-up to celebrate our Fifth Annual event. Nikki Haley hosted us two years ago in South Carolina where she hosted a great welcome reception and gave a fantastic speech that really got the crowd fired up on Saturday morning. We are thrilled to welcome her back to the RedState Gathering in New Orleans.
Confirmed speakers include:
Ted Cruz
Ken Cuccinelli
Nikki Haley
Bobby Jindal
Jim Bridenstine
Speaker invitations have also been extended to:
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Gov. Rick Perry (TX)
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Sen. Marco Rubio (FL)
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Liz Cheney
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Rep. Mick Mulvaney (SC)
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Sen. Tim Scott (SC)
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Rep. Steve Scalise (LA)
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And more!
We'll have plenty more speaker announcements coming shortly, but we're guaranteed to have a good mix of elected officials, potential 2014 cycle candidates, and other RedState friends. Remember, the Gathering is unique in conservative events in that speakers pay their own way and are required to take questions from folks in the audience.
What better excuse for a trip to New Orleans? And, don't forget, your registration even includes most of your food, as well as access to deeply discounted hotel rooms.
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
WHAT IS COMMON CORE?
Common Core, or the Common Core State Standards Initative (CCSSI), as it is known at the State and Federal level, is a set of national education standards that will fulfill the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, through a waiver system. (The NCLB Act was put into place by Congress in 2001 and signed into law by President George W. Bush). Many states were failing to meet the NCLB Act requirements and, therefore, wanted something to replace NCLB.Common Core is part of the UN's plan for complete federal control over our education systems and the "Dumbing-down" of America.
COMMON CORE IS A TROJAN HORSE AND TIED TO THE UNITED NATIONS (UN)
If you cannot see that Common Core is tied to the United Nations you have not done your homework! The major funder of the Common Core Movement is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has pledged $60 million dollars to this effort. Bill and Melinda Gates are tied to UN through-and-through and have spent money in America and overseas for UN programs in Africa and all over the world for decades.
From the Conservative Teachers of American organization, they wrote an article entitled: "Common Core Standards and the Federalization of Education." In this article we read: "Many are concerned that the Common Core Standards, once successfully implemented, will provide unfettered access of our educational system by the United Nations. Some textbooks and curricula for our public schools have already been written by the [United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization] UNESCO and the International Baccalaureate program, that is currently in many school districts, across the United States. Grabbing additional access is a natural next step. Once they write the curricula, they must have authority to develop all testing tools."
The UN involvement in the American educational system has already been facilitated by treaties signed by American presidents from both parties. Those documents include but are not limited to: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Treaty on the Rights of the Child, Civic Education: Classroom Connections, and Agenda 21.
The US Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development (since 2003), is the nexus of the UNA-USA and Global Leadership Coalition at the Department of Education, which altogether leverages the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014. UNESCO, the lead agency of the Decade, defines Education for Sustainable Development as "education for everyone everywhere" for the "lifelong learning" of "present and future generations".
The UNA-USA sponsors Model UN across America and tailors its Global Classrooms curricula to whichever setting the kids happen to be participating. Children are unknowingly trained to respond with prescribed consensus to the situations, simulations and stimulation's of the particular activity (Delphi Technique). Global Kids is the CFR arm of Connect All Schools Consortium, a new Department of Education network, led by Independent Sector and The White House via United Planet Partners. Global Kids is preparing children for Agenda 21.
The White House, NSA and CIA now have website divisions aimed at kids. The Public Education Network is a national association funded by Independent Sector donors: plus Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Department of Education
From the Partnership for 21st Century Skills aligning the Common Core State Standards with "professional development" content for teachers and principals and Lego Robotics curricula for students (Carnegie Mellon/Lego Education); to software curricula through websites like: cyberschoolbus.un.org, icivics.org, atomiclearning.com, renlearn.org, brainpop.com and ttl4.sunburst.com; to the weekly deliveries of Time for Kids magazine and textbook curricula into classrooms; kids are programmed with UN-defined values. State Governors administer Federal funds to "Community-Oriented Policing" systems like Crime Stoppers (The UN, FBI and other law enforcement and corporate partners administer Crime Stoppers International), the local student-equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security's' "See Something, Say Something" campaign; whereby children see hand-drawn posters of child characters on school walls displaying "Eyes Looking", "Ears Listening", "Mouth Reporting" with a hotline to call. Presidents Bush and Obama have personally followed the George H. W. Bush/Clinton trail of the Agenda 21/ Sustainable America megabanks-maze in "bipartisan" fashion.
UNESCOPLEDGESSUPPORT OF COMMON CORE
From UNESCO's document "The Vision of Education Reform in the United States" it states: "My department has been pleased to partner with the US Agency for International Development to help ensure that our best domestic practices are shared world-wide. The United States provides over a billion dollars annually to partner countries working on educational reform. Our goal for the coming year will be to work closely with global partners, including UNESCO, to promote qualitative improvements and system strengthening....Ultimately, education is the great equalizer. It is the one force that can consistently overcome differences in background, culture, and privilege."
Principle #25- "Children and Youth in Sustainable Development." In the "Activites 25.9.d" it states: "Ensure access for all youth to all types of education, wherever appropriate, providing alternative learning structures, ensure that education reflects the economic and social needs of youth and incorporates the concepts of environmental training, implementing innovative methods aimed at increasing practical skills, such as environmental scouting."
Principle #36- "Promoting Education, Public Awareness and Training." In the Activities Section of this document in "36.5.g" we read: "Within two years the United Nations system should undertake a comprehensive review of its educational programmes, encompassing training and public awareness, to reassess priorites and reallocae resources. The UNESCO/UNEP International Environmental Education Programme should, in cooperation with the appropriate bodies of the United Nations system, Governments, non-governmental organizations and others, establish a porgramme within two years to integrate the decisions of the Conference into the existing United Nations framework adapted to the need of the educators at different levels and circumstances. Regional organizations and national authorities should be encouraged to elaborate similar parallel programmes and opportunies by conducting an analysis of how to mobilize different sectors of the population in order to assess and address their environmental and development education needs."
In the Activities Section of this document in "36.5 h" we read: "There is a need to strengthen, within five years, information exchange by enhancing technologies and capacities necessary to promote environment and development education and public awareness. Countries should cooperate with each other and with the various social sectors and population groups to prepare educational tools that include regional environment and development issues and initiatives, using learning materials and resources suited to their own requirements." Sounds just like PARCC and SLDS. ASU's Institute for Global Sustainability and their "Sustainable Cities Network" is doing a fine job "brain-washing" our students in our high schools on sustainability, global warming (aka climate change), etc. Go here to meet the ASU sustainability schools!
COMMON CORE SCIENCE STANDARDS TEACH GLOBAL WARMING!
Reality Check.....COMMON CORE EDUCATION = COMMUNISM IN AMERICA!
Common Core Education is the INDOCTRINATION of our CHILDREN.
DO NOT LISTEN TO THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT RHETORIC FROM MIKE HUCKABEE!!!
Reality Check- just in case you ever had a doubt......MIke Huckabee is a typical GOP Establishment person.
Mike Huckabee is now championing Common Core Education on Fox News for the GOP! How disgusting is that?!?!? "Mike Huckabee Urges Conservatives to Back Common Core Standards"
This is another reason why Constitutional Conservatives MUST leave the GOP and beware of what you hear on Fox News. Fox News continues to move to the left - to the liberal progressive side of issues. That is the very very sad but true fact. Mr. GOP Huckabee....."It's disturbing to me there have been criticisms of these standards directed by other conservatives including the RNC," Huckabee wrote. "The truth of the matter is, these criticisms are short-sighted." see attached article from Sunshine News. Send a message to Mr. GOP Huckabee at http://www.mikehuckabee.com/masterfeedback and send a loud message to the every more liberal progressive Fox News! Americans that believe in our Constitution must not be silent about this!
Do NOT let Fox News get away with promoting the very liberal progressive Common Core Education that promotes the ideology that American Children are Common/Community Property!
Do NOT let Fox News get away with promoting the loss of state's rights and the federal government taking over Education. WE NEED TO ABOLISH THE FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION - NOT EMPOWER IT!
If you support SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM FOR THE U.S.A. then COMMON CORE EDUCATION IS FOR YOU. If you believe in the U.S.A. CONSTITUTION....then YOU WILL LOUDLY AND OPENLY REJECT AND OPPOSE COMMON CORE EDUCATION AND ANYONE THAT PROMOTES IT!!
Common Core Education is the indoctrination of American Children. This is NOT acceptable if you still believe in FREEDOM!!
The proponents of Common Core say that the standards ARE state led because they were developed by The National Governors' Association.
Well, perhaps this is true in a way that is very disturbing! Listen to this speech at the 1989 NGA conference on education (at 12:48).
The Development of Common Core, Explained by Michael Chapman
The video says this is a clip from the 1989 National Governors'Assoc conference on Education:
Sr. Director of Mid-Continental Regional Education Laboratory, Dr. Shirley McCune
She says about education:
#1) Total transformation of our society
#2) Teaching of facts and information (knowledge) is no longer the primary purpose of education
#3) Close connection between economic (sustainable) development and human capitol (human resource labor for a planned economy)
A group that allowed this kind of rhetoric to be said at their meeting? I don't think I want them developingeducational standards! Please read to the bottom for transcripts from the 1987 NGA meetings chaired by Bill Clinton. These transcripts are eye-opening. They are clearly more concerned with workers for the manufacturing. They seem to have concerns that we have students who can't read well enough (non-English speaking especially) to function in the manufacturing plants, and then on the other end of the spectrum... too many with higher ed degrees who don't WANT to work in the manufacturing. So... what to do about all this? Hummm.... standards! Make sure they read well enough to function as the industrial workers, but not so well that they don't want to!!! This is the John D. Rockefeller goal of the early 20th century when he started pushing for compulsory government schooling and funding the building of government schools.
NOW.... review the transcripts below of the conferences chaired by Bill Clinton: National Governor's Association website (find all annual meetings here with transcriptsm- ) 1986-87 NGA Chair Gov. Bill Clinton's Initiative
Making America Work: Productive People, Productive Policies
1987 Annual meeting.See page 34of this document to see how those governors seem to be concerned that we aren't training our students for the "workforce." They are concerned that the professors of higher ed are telling students to strive for more than the job of working in the manufacturing plants. On page 40 they start talking about standards needed in education. " See page 42 with this statement by Governor Sinner (great name!) to Lee Iacoccoa: "But you also made a point about the terrific cost to industry of the disparity between states in these regulations and I wondered, with all the fuss and the furor that we make over states' rights...." http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/1987NGAAnnualMeeting.pdf
June 11, 2013: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) leads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee in a markup of the Strengthening America's Schools Act of 2013, an education initiative to replace No Child Left Behind. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220036
At the June 10 Common Core forum in Fayette County, Superintendent Barge stated over and over again that if Georgia wants to change these standards at any time, we have the ability to do so.The testimony below contradicts this belief by Superintendent Barge and confirms that states who adopted the Common Core standards DO NOT have the ability to change the standards in any way on their own.
2:23:00 - Rep. Tim Scott discusses his amendment to Harkin's bill. Instead of states being forced to adopt blanket standards like Common Core as a prerequisite for funding, let's put decision-making back in the hands of parents and teachers in our communities."
2:31:00 - It is admitted that states who want to change the CC standards,the Secretary of Education would have to approve it. States DO NOT have the ultimate decision making abilities!
2:39:00 - Alexander reads page 89 of the bill stating that any changes to standards MUST go through the Secretary of Education for approval. As are most of the amendments offered by Republicans to this education bill, the Scott Amendment is defeated 12-10.
DATA COLLECTING: Senator Burr at the 1:00:00 mark reveals information about ADDITIONAL data points that this legislation will add to the data mining.He says that his count is now 500 data points.
TEACHER EVALUATIONS: Senator Alexander at 2:00:00 mark discusses his amendment to end federally mandated school and teacher evaluations. He says states had a "gun to their head" to adopt the teacher evaluations because they were desperate for NCLB waivers. He makes the charge that the Harkin bill creates a "NATIONAL SCHOOL BOARD." The Gates Foundation involvement is mentioned frequently.
Harkin says over and over "this is voluntary." If states don't want to implement the programs in the bill we just don't accept the money!" More strong evidence that our states need to "just say no" to all federal education dollars. As is pointed out in this debate: Any private business that entered into a partnership where the partner who contributed 10% funding got 80-90% of the control (as is the case with education funding under NCLB and Common Core) the partnership is DOOMED TO FAIL!
We all know how tough it is to maintain your morals in today's media world. Here are two gifts from the AFA to you, each meant to help you navigate your way through media today:
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
AGENDA 21 RESOURCE PAGEs
Agenda 21 and the impact on personal property rights and land rights content, This page is updated often, last update was May 3rd, 2013 about conservation easements by Rick Buchanan The most recent updates are first, but the foundational video series are below. under the
Taking Liberty Video Documentary. We have had several hundred thousand visitors to this page due to its indepth resources on Agenda21 and property rights. You can also search our database of over 15,000 content news and commentary articles for more information. Use the search box in the upper right corner above the newsletter subscription button. Recently the UN website removed some long standing links to the 351 page document on Agenda21 (link below) Just a note: Don't be fooled by the term "non-binding", as that can be easily edited by the removal of 3 letters.
Donna Holt from Campaign for Liberty has also written extensively on this issue and her research provided valuable information both to James Simpson and Right Side News, and most importantly, the citizens of Virginia to get them involved at the local level.
Sustainable Development is code for a policy designed to transform human society, essentially eliminating individual life decisions and replacing them with top - down, one-size-fits-all government control. In steady fashion, the agenda for this new policy, designed at the international level, is put into place piece by piece with a new government council here, and new regulation there, each designed to appear as a "local" development program. Like the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot, many Americans fail to notice the rise in government heat.
The main course of action to impose the new agenda is through the pretense of environmental protection; "Sorry about your rights, but if we don't save the planet, then we will all perish!" And so with the devastation of a thousand pin pricks, America and its form or government is being changed through the creation of non-elected boards, councils and regional governments, designed to enforce the new regulations and "assure that we protect the environment."
The pin pricks come disguised as such issues as controls on community development; controls on use of private property; controls on use of open space; creation of development areas, many times under the excuse of historic preservation; communities designed on the blue print of pack and stack housing; making it harder to drive as roads are narrowed, even forcing cars to share the road with bicycles; the enforcement of expensive mass transit boondoggle projects; and the never ending spending spree on inefficient, unworkable alternative energy, such as wind and solar power.
In fact, control of energy and water are the two most effective tools in the enforcement of the Sustainable Development agenda. Without energy and water, human society stops. Using strict controls on how, or even if, energy and water can be used provides government with the power to dictate every aspect of society.
Mandatory Biometric Enrollment Lawsuit - UPDATE (fingerprinting, facial recognition, iris scan, DNA, etc.) By Mark Lerner: Co-Founder Constitutional Alliance
If you value liberty and understand how dangerous government mandated biometric ID is to our freedom, you need to read and understand every word of what I am writing about today. Something very important is happening so stay with me.
Over the years, the Constitutional Alliance has consistently fought against mandatory biometric ID and for the right of all citizens to be free of it. Government mandated biometric ID is the lynchpin of the modern surveillance society. The amount of control this system gives government over individuals is an anathema to a free society and we oppose it being imposed on anyone - period. You cannot reconcile a free society with a surveillance society.
The founders of this country called religious freedom "the first freedom" because it is a precondition for other important rights.. Try to imagine the value of freedom of speech, or freedom of association without religious freedom and you will quickly see why religious freedom, also referred to as 'freedom of conscience' is so important.
Here is the Big News
This past week, 19 June 2013, a Motion for Summary Judgment was filed in Kaye Beach's lawsuit in the state of Oklahoma (You can read it here). This is a pre-trial motion that presents the undisputed facts of her case and makes the strongest assertion based on those facts, that her rights are being violated. The Motion for Summary Judgment asks the Judge, based on these undisputed facts, to rule in her favor. Kaye fully expects a favorable ruling on this Motion but in the event that this doesn't happen, her lawsuit will continue on. You need only to read the first 30 pages of the Motion to understand the arguments Kaye and her attorneys have made. If you choose to read further you can read about the answers the Department of Public Safety (the department that oversees the issuance of driver's licenses) gave to Kaye's "Discovery Motion".
Kaye Beach's lawsuit, is the only substantial challenge to government mandated biometric ID, to my knowledge, that exists anywhere in our country.
Here is a brief recap of the issue and basis for Kaye's legal challenge;
Kaye is opposed to mandatory biometric identification which is required of her if she wishes to have a state issued driver's license or ID card. As we know, the ability to drive a vehicle and also banking, many financial transactions, as well as a host of other necessary daily activities are dependent upon having a government issued photo ID most commonly presented in the form of state driver's license or ID card. Try to go without one and you will soon find (like Kaye has!) that not having a valid ID is no small matter.
In September, 2011 Kaye filed a lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma for the unwarranted collection of her biometrics and for violating her religious freedom, both of which are protected under Oklahoma law. Kaye is a born again Christian.
We must stop the call for a Constitutional Convention!
Article V of the Constitution:
Gives NO guidelines for how to conduct a Con Con.
NO rules on how delegates will be eligible or selected
States have NO Guarantees they will even be represented
Con Con could result in a COMPLETE CHANGE of our way of government
There simply are NO controls over the delegates once selected.
We must stop the call for a Constitutional Convention!
I have enclosed a vitally important petition.
I desperately hope you will immediately sign. I am not exaggerating when I say the future of our nation is at stake.
I am becoming more alarmed by the day.
Because the drive to force a Constitutional Convention (Con Con) is growing stronger.
I am getting phone calls and notes from APC supporters telling me that they are receiving appeals asking them to support a Con Con.
I am seeing more and more articles in Conservative publications supporting the call for a Constitutional Convention.
The Internet is full of such messages. Many in the Tea Party are beginning to support the idea of a Con Con.
Those pushing the idea are powerful and well funded. Every single state government and all state legislators in the nation have received very expensive, professionally-produced packages detailing how a Con Con could be called and controlled for a Conservative agenda.
This is an outright lie. A Con Con can not be controlled and there can be no guarantee that delegates will do anything they are instructed to do.
By calling a Con Con our precious Constitution will be placed on an operating table and cut to ribbons. Nothing is more dangerous to our Republic.
But the movement for a Constitutional Convention is gaining strength. Conservatives are being targeted because of our love of the Constitution and our frustration over how it is being ignored by those leading our government.
The effort is misguided, dangerous and just plan wrong.
We must stop this movement now.
Urgent: I have enclosed a petition to your state's Governor asking him/her not to sign on to the Con Con movement.
You and I must deliver thousands of these petitions to every single Governor as fast as we can. They must know that Americans across the nation do not support this certain destruction of our Constitution.
Please sign your petition and we will email it immediately to your state governor.
This new Con Con effort is very serious. The organizers are misguided in thinking they can control a Con Con once it has been called.
But that's what they are telling state legislators and Governors. And many who truly want to fix our problems are starting to believe it.
ImmigrationCounters.com provides the key numbers and events related to illegal immigration in the United States. Using the latest government and private sources, research and analysis trending data is factored at their individual rates of increase. For information about the research behind the individual counters clickhere Data Sources. ImmigrationCounters.com supports legal immigration and respect for all humanity yet highlights the significant impact of illegal immigration in America.
ImmigrationCounters.com informs the public of the realities of illegal immigration while challenging the myths and misinformation surrounding it. After decades of passively watching this problem grow, most Americans are now more aware of the severity of this issue. Our government has demonstrated a complete lack of urgency to control illegal immigration both on the borders and within the interior. Because of this large failure that which traditionally had been the American way of welcoming immigration is now dividing the country because of one word, illegal. Opposing illegal immigration and wanting the laws enforced is not un-American. It is time to set the record straight on what is un-American, illegal is un-American.
The issue of illegal immigration doesn't need more laws, studies or debates, it needs leadership and enforcement. America doesn't need immigration reform, it needs leadership reform. Because our government has failed to enforce the existing immigration laws, why should anyone be confident they will do so with expanded immigration reform? Because of these failures, legislators have been addressing the problems at their local levels with bills to manage it incrementally, piece-by-piece, rather than trying to fix the national problem at once--an impossible task. What most Americans expect is to have our borders secure, enforcement of the existing laws within the interior, meaningful punishment of employers who hire illegally and removal of incentives such as birthright citizenships and public school enrollments without status verifications. We must also address the fact that we're soft on criminals caught in crimes and aren't deported. No other country would allow this to continue. 40% of them entered the country legally and overstayed their visas. Yet there's still no reliable method to verify if Visa overstays have left the country. Another incentive that must be addressed is the birthright citizenship program that has resulted in millions of children and parents receiving instant rights and benefits. Some have called them "GPS babies" and this certainly cannot be what the authors of the 14th Amendment intended to occur. Public housing and other benefits are provided for the illegal parents through their 'anchor children' while citizens are turned away because of limited resources. This antiquated program must end. Government agencies and officials at all levels must address the costs associated with this kind of abuse. Past mistakes have been made in attempts to fix illegal immigration and our communities can no longer afford these kinds of mistakes.
sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (both longtime members of theDemocratic Socialists of America, where Piven today is an honorary chair), the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.
In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.
The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian
moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.
The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare -- about 8 million, at the time -- probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls." Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces ... for major economic reform at the national level."
"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be." --John Adams
Romanticizing the filibuster
It may seem like an opaque argument over procedural rules, but it will have lasting consequences for the nation. We refer to the Senate fight over the filibuster of presidential nominees. Democrats and Republicans reached a "compromise" to keep Democrats from using the "nuclear option" of changing the rules to prevent filibusters, but they basically got everything they wanted and Republicans got nothing.
The fight centered on a number of Barack Obama's executive branch nominees -- Republicans were blocking votes, just as then-minority Democrats did to the nominees of George W. Bush. To be sure, Republicans were just as angry with Democrat filibusters then as Democrats are incensed now. But let's look back at what Democrats once said.
In 2005, Sen. Barack Obama warned, "Everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse."
Also in 2005, Harry Reid offered this wisdom: "The filibuster is a critical tool in keeping the majority in check." He called Republican threats to change the rules a "partisan political grab" and worse, "un-American."
So much for that.
The deal struck this week means that Democrats won't go nuclear but neither will Republicans filibuster Obama's nominees. In return, Democrats took two National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) nominees off the table, to be replaced by two other pro-union ones and two GOP nominees. The five-member NLRB has made controversial rules with three "recess" appointments that Obama made when the Senate wasn't actually in recess. Three courts struck down those nominations and their rule-making, as the Fourth Circuit Court this week joined the Third Circuit and the DC Circuit courts. The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall. Regardless, the NLRB will remain firmly in the pocket of Big Labor.
The Senate deal also enabled confirmation of Labor nominee Thomas Perez, one of seven nominees on which Republicans agreed to allow a vote. We previously recounted Perez's contempt for Rule of Law and his penchant for using supposed racial discrimination to justify different racial discrimination. Now he'll head up a Labor Department overseeing persistently high unemployment, especially among blacks.
Richard Cordray, nominated to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created by the Dodd-Frank financial legislation of 2010, was also confirmed after the deal. Cordray first received a "recess" appointment nearly two years ago. One problem with the CFPB is that it will function as sort of an EPA-like agency in the financial sector, only with even less accountability.
Speaking of the EPA, Gina McCarthy was confirmed Thursday to head that department, and she will inherit the economy-crushing mantel of former chief Lisa Jackson. Under McCarthy, we don't expect the EPA to be any less of a weight around the necks of American business.
As an aside, Democrats did not threaten to end the filibuster on judicial nominees. That's at least in part because the pro-abortion lobby insisted on retaining the filibuster for the day when Democrats are again the minority party with a Republican president. Any judicial nominee who questions Roe v. Wade could then be torched.
While it's entertaining to watch both sides take up the arguments their opponents used eight years ago, the bottom line is this: Elections have consequences. When Obama won a second term, it meant he could continue his work to fundamentally transform this nation.
"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." --Thomas Jefferson (1785)
Barack Hussein Obama walked into a White House press briefing Friday afternoon, unannounced. He used the briefing to deliver his political assessment of the Zimmerman/Martin case. Some beltway conservative commentators, suffering from acute Potomac Fever, were enamored with his comments. However, grassroots Americans across the nation were not amused.
I have published two comprehensive critiques of this case, "Race Hustlers and Double Standards" last week, and "What Democrats Won't Say About Race" this week. Those columns challenge the Left's promotion and intentional distortion of the case as race bait, to maintain the unyielding sycophantic support of 95 percent of black voters. Without that low-information voter constituency, Democrats would win few congressional elections, and Obama would not be president.
Below, I rebut the key points of Obama's latest effort to politicize the Zimmerman/Martin case, and in conclusion, ask a question that has not been asked -- but should.
O: I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday, but watching the debate over the course of the last week I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.
A: In other words, there is more political capital to be squeezed out of Martin's death.
O: I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle's, to the family of Trayvon Martin.
A: How about Obama offering thoughts and prayers to George Zimmerman and his family, whose lives Obama, et al., turned upside down by politicizing this case 16 months ago. Otherwise, there never would have been a trial as there was no basis for the charges -- and the jury and virtually every legal expert agree.
O: There are very few African-American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. ... There are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. ... There are very few African-Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.
A: Obama is referencing an unfortunate stereotype, unfortunate because that stereotype is well earned. Black males between the ages of 16 and 35 commit a grossly disproportionate share of crime across our nation. Until that changes, the stereotype profile will not change, nor should it. Most people of all races have decent instincts about threats to their person or property, and they respond accordingly. The problem is not that a particular demographic of our society is subject to increased scrutiny, the problem is that demographic has earned that scrutiny.
O: The African-American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.
A: The racial disparity in arrests and convictions of blacks is commensurate with the racial disparity of crimes committed by blacks. To suggest otherwise is flatly disingenuous.
In 2014, several prominent Republicans in the House and Senate are going to be challenged by people more conservative than the incumbents in area where a more conservative person can still win. Leading up to these challenges, conservatives must beware of the Hatch Effect.
In 2012, many conservatives in print, radio, and television came out quickly and endorsed Orrin Hatch against Dan Liljenquist. Hatch had been a conservative warrior for a long time, he sounded conservative, and we'd need him in the fight against amnesty. He made the rounds on television, radio, and had references in various op-ed columns. Outside groups went to work for Orrin Hatch.
Those who fretted that Hatch might return to the ways of Ted Kennedy's best friend on the right were drowned out by a near unified conservative front - one that did not include RedState.
In a debate against Dan Liljenquist, Hatch hit all the right notes on immigration.
"[W]e won't be able to solve these problems until we secure the borders, and we have to do that. Every other large nation in the world knows how to secure their borders, why can't we secure ours? And second, we can no longer grant amnesty. I fought against the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill because they granted amnesty to 3 million people. They should have to get in line like anybody else if they want to come into this country and do it legally."
Orrin Hatch got re-elected and became an integral part to helping the Gang of 8 shape its immigration plans and run interference against conservatives. The shift back to what too few were warning about happened quickly.
Let Orrin Hatch be a lesson to you, conservatives. This year, some long time Republican Senators are going to get primary challengers. There will be large megaphones declaring just how conservative those Senators are. There will be people trotted out to remind you that for decades these have been the men we relied on to save us from big government. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2.WaPo reluctantly reports Terry McAuliffe's bald-faced debate lie.
Mary Landrieu is taken to task in this recent op-ed by James Varney of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Ah, the challenges of being a Blue Senator, the only statewide elected Democrat, in what has become a very Red State. The 2014 elections loom just around the corner.
4.The Double Standard On The Zimmerman-Martin Case
While outrage peddlers try to inflame racial tension over George Zimmerman's acquittal (a nice favor to the administration who'd like to forget its numerous scandals) these same peddlers are silent this case. The case of Roderick Scott and 16-year-old Chris Cervini is almost identical to Zimmerman-Martin.
5.Great Achievements in Central Planning: The Renewable Fuel Standard
In 2005, Congress, in its infinite wisdom, imposed the Renewable Fuel Standard on America.The RFS mandates yearly increases in the amount of ethanol that must be used in motor fuel, on an ever-increasing schedule, through 2022.
Problem is, nobody anticipated a crummy economy, high gasoline prices and shrinking consumption of motor fuel. But the RFS marches on.* As depicted in the video above (from our friends** at smarterfuelfuture.org), the numbers are starting to look wacky and detached from reality.. . . please click here for the rest of the post →
6.Helen Thomas Attends Eighth Circle Gala
It is a tradition at RedState that we acknowledge the passing of particularly odious personages with a short obituary to set the record straight on their accomplishments. This tradition is a rather short one, the blog is only 9 years old, and began with this memorial on the death of Robert Drinan titled Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic.
Helen Thomas, no-talent "journalist", partisan hack, raving anti-semite, and the living embodiment of Rush Limbaugh's theory that feminism was developed to give ugly women an entree into society, died yesterday at age 92.
Helen Thomas, contrary to what you will read, was not some sort of reporter on steroids. She was equal parts stupid and evil. Her writing was pedestrian. Her opinions banal but ever predictable. Her employment as a reporter, not coincidentally, has led to the decline of journalism in the United States.. . . please click here for the rest of the post →
Detroit is a showcase for the liberal agenda - and now it is bankrupt. More than 50 years of control by big-government liberals and union bosses have left a once-great American city crippled and deteriorating.
Last week Detroit became the largest city in American history to declare bankruptcy. Few were surprised, as the city's been struggling for years.
The unemployment rate in Detroit is 16 percent, more than twice the national average. The city's government-run schools have failed, with just 7 percent of eighth graders proficient in reading. It takes police about an hour to respond to calls, and the city has more than $18 billion in unfunded liabilities. The city's population has dropped by a quarter in just the last decade, as hundreds of thousands have voted with their feet and left.
It hasn't always been this way, of course. For decades, the city of Detroit was a manufacturing powerhouse. The assembly line was perfected there, and brought with it the idea of a middle-class lifestyle based on manufacturing. Tanks and planes made in Detroit helped make the U.S. the arsenal of democracy. And after World War II the city boomed, producing cars that helped make the American dream achievable for millions. Motown Records produced music that defined a generation, with artists who remain household names such as Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and the Jackson 5.
Attorney General's Refusal to Enforce PA Marriage Protection Law Tarnishes Integrity, Encourages Lawlessness
Last week, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, announced that she refused to defend the state against a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Pennsylvania's ban on same-sex marriage.
Within hours of Attorney General Kane's statement, Sam Rohrer, President of the Pennsylvania Pastor's Network denounced her position as "not only a clear dereliction of her duty as our state's Attorney General, but a volitional attack on the integrity of the family in PA."
Rohrer now goes further by saying, "This activist decision by AG Kane is an example of the type of lawless action by government officials encouraged by the Obama administration's Executive Branch with its unlawful refusal to defend DOMA, and the US Supreme Court's illegitimate ruling against DOMA and California's Prop 8. The refusal to fulfill constitutional obligations and duties that comprise the very underpinnings of the constitutional oath of office is the very essence of tyranny and must be opposed by all those who love liberty. When our highest elected governmental officials declare themselves to be above the law they do not just tarnish their own integrity, they actually cultivate the spirit of lawlessness among the citizens. I urge those in office to understand the gravity of their actions and for the sake of liberty, to uphold the law."
The Pennsylvania Pastors' Network is a group of biblically faithful clergy and church liaisons whose objective is to build a permanent infrastructure of like-minded clergy who affirm the authority of Scripture, take seriously Jesus' command to be the "salt and light" to the culture, encourage informed Christian thinking about contemporary social issues; examine public policy issues without politicizing their pulpits and engage their congregations in taking part in our political process on a non-partisan basis.
RINO Mike Fitzpatrick joins Liberal Democrat Chaka Fattah to promote Liberal "No Labels" Movement
Click on weblink below to read the text of gun control legislation (H.R. 329) introduced by RINO Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-8). The bill would increase the power of the Federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System over states, in violation of the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed", and Section 21 of the Pennsylvania State Constitution which states: "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned."
Obama's Off-teleprompter Race Speech Kevin Jackson It seems pretty obvious that Obama secretly wishes he had led that black experience that he proffers so readily. More
The Fatal Fallacy of Muslim Outreach Pamela Geller Outreach is a euphemism for submission. We saw it in the case of the Boston Marathon bombing, and we will see it again...and again. More
Where Is the Rule of Law? Robert Weissberg The Zimmerman trial outcome was good for African-Americans, though in ways that many will refuse to believe, let alone accept. More
'Better Angel' Obama Incites More Turmoil July 21, 2013 Exposing his true colors, the president extended condolences to the Martin family and completely ignored the Zimmerman family More
Thousands of high school students, including those who scored below average on their eighth grade reading and math tests, will soon be encouraged to learn how to sell Obamacare to their families under a $43 million federal grant.
John Adams won the acquittal of six British soldiers and two defendants received convictions for the lesser charge of manslaughter, for their role in the deaths of five colonists.
The warning signs are being drowned out somewhat by the horrors of the Syrian civil war and deteriorating unrest in Egypt, but they are present for any observer to see.
Congressman Frank Wolf said Thursday that survivors of the Benghazi terror assault have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements prohibiting them from speaking out about the deadly attack.
You find out that under the National Defense Authorization Act (HR 1540), signed into law by Obama on, you can be arrested and detained without recourse to an attorney or the courts.
Due to IRS abuse, funding has become more difficult for nonprofits like FSM.
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
Yes, there's a war on women in America. But it's not the phony "war" that tampon-hurling feminists are always shrieking about -- as they did last week in Texas to protest tougher regulations on dangerous late-term abortion clinics. No, I'm talking about a real war on women waged by Saudi royals and elites who've imported human trafficking and abuse of domestic workers onto U.S. soil.
Meet Meshael Alayban of Saudi Arabia, wife of Abdulrahman bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. She apparently thought we Americans would look the other way at human trafficking and abuse of domestic workers -- you know, the way they do in her misogyny-infested home country. The wealthy Meshael Alayban thought wrong.
Secret Court Renews NSA's Phone Records Collection
Friday, July 19, 2013 07:03 PM
By: Todd Beamon
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court gave the green light to the Obama administration by recertifying a court order allowing the NSA to collect telephone records in bulk on millions of Verizon customers, the White House said Friday.
The court order was to expire at 5 p.m. Friday.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said its authority to maintain the program expired July 19 and the government sought and received a renewal from the secret surveillance court.
The FISA Court in Washington oversees U.S. surveillance programs. It consists of 11 federal judges, all whom have been appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
The White House disclosed the FISA's stamp of renewed approval of the court order in an effort at greater transparency after former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the National Security Agency's secret U.S. surveillance programs to the media.
But bipartisan criticism continues to mount on Capitol Hill over the NSA's collection and stockpiling of millions of Americans' phone records without individual warrants or suspicions of connections to terrorism.
Editor's note: The letter below was formulated on behalf of the Israeli Prime Minister by Steven Plaut:
Dear Leaders and Commissioners of the European Union:
As Prime Minister of Israel I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts with the world about how Israel should solve the Middle East conflict, namely by agreeing to "return" the "occupied Palestinian" lands to the "Palestinians."
Always willing to be of public service, I have composed a small list of minor preconditions that must be met in order for Israel to agree to return to the "Palestinians" of the "occupied territories" that are "theirs." These are really just minor corrections in your own plan. After all, why should Israel be the first and the only country to "return" lands to the original inhabitants from which they "seized" these lands in "occupation"?
So here goes:
It goes without saying that the Americans and Canadians must lead the way and show Israel the light by returning all lands that they seized from the Indians and the Mexicans to their original owners. The Anglo-Saxons, meaning the English, will be invited to return the British isles to their rightful original Celtic and Druid owners, while they return to their own ancestral Saxon homeland in northern Germany and Denmark. The Danes of course will be asked to move aside. In fact, they will be asked to move back to their Norwegian and Swedish homeland, to make room for the returning Anglo-Saxons.
The Black American Leadership Alliance (BALA) organized the the DC March for Jobs, which was held on July 15, along with community leaders of all races from around the country. The march was organized in an attempt to stop Congress' amnesty push, enforce immigration laws as written, and support policies that put black U.S. citizens back to work. The following videos are of the speakers from the event.
Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medical information? Under Obamacare you won't have any choice.
As the Obamacare train-wreck begins to gather steam, there is increasing concern in Congress over something called the Federal Data Services Hub. The Data Hub is a comprehensive database of personal information being established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges. The purpose of the Data Hub, according to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, is to provide "electronic, near real-time access to federal data" and "access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-eligibility information." In these days of secret domestic surveillance by the intelligence community, rogue IRS officials and state tax agencies using private information for political purposes, and police electronically logging every license plate that passes by, the idea of the centralized Data Hub is making lawmakers and citizens nervous.
As the unnecessarily divisive Zimmerman trial and its aftermath begin to fade into memory, we should gather our thoughts and learn lessons from our folly, so that somehow, we can avoid the madness the next time a racially charged incident sears the consciousness of black people, reminding them of past -- and present -- injustices
The generals' coup in Egypt has proven conclusively that the old, nationalist regimes are not finished yet. The Muslim Brotherhood, in Syria and now in Egypt, has been faced down. The fight is not over in either country. But the fight is over power, not over ideology or methods of governance.
The conservative "institution" is enfeebled by these two inherently disruptive factors: a depletion of the political will, and the specter of class distinctions - and it is the left that profits from this infusorial derangement.
Mark Oppenheimer, an author for The New Republic, stumbles over what the the rest of us have known for well over a decade: The left are the New Puritans.
Scratch a bleeding heart and score a fascist. What we have now are not citizen-legislators but citizen-dictators who can't wait to get their hands on the levers of the regulatory state and give it to their fellow Americans, but good.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
Forty-four years ago, a nation that we now know was racist, didn't care about the environment and drank too much soda, landed on the moon.
Half-a-billion television viewers watched it happen live. They saw men walk on the surface of another world. They saw that human beings could break free of their world and take a first step into the rest of the universe.
And that was that.
Neil Armstrong died about the time that Obama finished gutting NASA. He lived long enough to write a saddened letter about the decline of American space exploration under Obama that everyone in the media did their best not to pay attention to. The letter was also signed by Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon.
Cernan is 79. Of the dozen men who walked on the moon, only four are dead, a testament to their quality of their vigor.
No one who was born after 1935 has walked on the moon. That period is swiftly becoming a historical relic. A thing that men did who lived long ago. A great work of other times like the building of dams and fleets, the winning of wars and the expansion of frontiers.
Those are things that the men of back then did. Those are not things that we do anymore.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
I AM NOT TRAYVON MARTIN
The latest liberal idiocy involves while college kids apologizing for their "white privilege" by declaring "I am not Trayvon Martin". Of course they're more likely to get assaulted going through a black neighborhood, than the Trayvon Martins are going through a white neighborhood, but facts like that stopped mattering years ago.
So let me take my own shot at it.
I am not Trayvon Martin. Not just because if confronted by a local Latino homeowner, I'm not likely to pick up a fight with him and beat him until he shoots me.
I am also not Trayvon Martin because if I were shot and killed by any person, regardless of race, color or creed, you would never hear Obama talking about it because I look nothing like his son.
Lacking the Black Privilege that turns a death into an opportunity for race baiting, I would just be another statistic. There would be no rallies for me and no t-shirts with my name on it. No one would be talking about how they are me or aren't me.
Twenty years ago, a young man who looked very much like me was stabbed to death in Crown Heights by a mob shouting, "Kill the Jew". His name was Yankel Rosenbaum. The man responsible for the race riot he was killed in has a show on MSNBC and is considered Obama's main liaison to the black community.
So I know that if I were killed, the man responsible would probably show up on MSNBC ten years later lecturing on racism and white privilege.
If I were killed, my death would not be a cause, only another urban statistic in cities where crime is disproportionately carried out by the Trayvon Martins of the world, who are turned into martyrs when they are killed, rather than when they do the killing.
I am not Trayvon Martin because my death would not be used to convince bored white kids to pour out their fake guilt in histrionic displays of political correctness.
I am not Trayvon Martin because no one would care what brand of candy I was carrying or what I was wearing or where I was going. I would be another white outline on the sidewalk that the white privilege kids would walk around on the way to another seminar on white privilege.
Is this Castro's payback for Cuban missile crisis?
Does this latest ominous development indicate Cuba's Castro brothers are still bearing a grudge against the U.S. for being forced to remove Soviet missiles aimed at the United States in 1962?
Fifty-one years is a long time to stew and plot revenge ... but then, who expected Fidel and Raul to still be around a half-century later?
And who could have predicted revenge could be so easy and totally devastating?
Just because the Bible likens those who follow God to sheep doesn't mean they're supposed to be some wolf's lunch.
Churches are catching on to the fact their flocks are being targeted by evil, and some are taking what once would have been considered extreme measures to deal with it.
She scorched Barack Obama ... she made Sarah Palin's "pitbull with lipstick" a lapdog by comparison ... she took no prisoners ... and she left Americans swooning.
"Barry Soetoro," was the name used to register six-year-old Barack Obama at Jakarta's Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi Primary School by his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro. The school registration card lists Barry Soetoro as a Indonesian citizen born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Now -- amazing coincidence -- a review of the D.C. Board of Elections records shows a 'Barry Soetoro' registered to vote in the nation's capital.
And you won't believe what he lists as his address!
A functioning national medical system -- whether privately run or based on Obamacare's socialist model -- needs certain components in place, or there simply is no provision of care.
Now, a survey of physicians has 60 percent of them warning of THIS critical coming shortage that will make "health care" an oxymoron ...
The left doesn't only want to prevent you from standing your ground against hooligan attacks ... it wants to prevent the police from coming to protect you as well.
Look what was going on behind the scenes as Trayvon protesters seized control of Oakland's streets and terrorized the city's residents ...
ALAN KEYES - WND.com is reporting on the activities of people who have been gathering on highway and other overpasses in different parts of the country with signs advocating the impeachment of Barack Obama... (more)
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST - John Koster is not the first author to lay the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor largely at the feet of Soviet agents. He has, however, connected major pieces of that Soviet activity within the United States in significant detail. Mr. Koster, a serious author of history and U.S. Army veteran, has written a volume shining new light on the Soviet plot -- specifically as it involved Harry Dexter White... (more)
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST - During this time of political setbacks for conservatives, it is a good time to consider the vital role of Conservatism in Western cultural and political history... (more)
CLIFF KINCAID - When conservatives complain about Al Sharpton, they usually note his relationship to NBC news or his hosting a show on MSNBC. But a new book says the racial agitator and Democratic Party politician has considerable clout with Fox News, and in fact played a role in getting conservative Glenn Beck fired from the channel.... (more)
NEWSMAX - In a heated confrontation over domestic spying, members of Congress said Wednesday they never intended to allow the National Security Agency to build a database of every phone call in America. And they threatened to curtail the government's surveillance authority.... (more)
JOSEPH FARAH - Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, the distinguished former adviser to the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher better known to the world as Lord Monckton, dropped a bombshell in his weekly column for WND yesterday.... (more)
WORLDNETDAILY - Under the threat of a presidential veto, House Republicans have voted to postpone implementation of Obamacare's individual and employer mandates.... (more)
WORLDNETDAILY - It was as if everyone finally noticed the emperor had no clothes. It began July 3, the day after the administration decided to delay enforcing the Obamacare employer mandate for a year, when Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, pointed out the move was strictly illegal.... (more)
DAILYCALLER - In late 2010 and early 2011 George Zimmerman, the Hispanic Sanford, Fla., man who shot and killed 17-year-old black teen Trayvon Martin, publicly demanded discipline in a race-related beating case for at least two of the police officers who cleared him after the Feb. 26 altercation, according to records obtained by The Daily Caller.... (more)
REAGAN COALITION - The media created a narrative about Trayvon that he was a small child. But that couldn't have been farther from the truth. He is quite big.... (more)
AARON KLEIN - Dream Defenders, the main group that has been agitating the protest movement surrounding the Trayvon Martin case, was spawned by activists employed by a who's who of the race-hijacking radical left.... (more)
MICHELLE MALKIN - Welcome to the Obama administration's cringe-inducing non sequitur of the week. On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder continued stoking the fires of racial resentment over a Florida jury's acquittal of George Zimmerman. In an address to NAACP leaders, who are demanding federal intervention, Holder attacked Stand Your Ground self-defense laws.... (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES - A third federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that President Obama violated the Constitution last year when he made recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, adding more weight to the case as it goes before the Supreme Court in the justices' next session.... (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES - It didn't take long for the ACLU to push the recent Supreme Court ruling on homosexual marriage to the extreme. The ACLU is filing challenges to overturn the will of voters and lawmakers protecting marriage in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Similar challenges are underway in Arkansas, where the people approved an amendment to the state constitution by an overwhelming vote.... (more)
ROBERT KNIGHT - In the latest court ruling upholding Obamacare, a three-judge federal panel in Richmond, Va, last Thursday rejected Liberty University's challenge to both the individual mandate and the employer mandate to provide health insurance.... (more)
NEWSMAX - Labor unions fought successfully for the passage of Obamacare, but now their solidarity is broken and the unions are among the loudest critics of the pending national health insurance program.... (more)
JOSEPH FARAH - I don't know how to say this more delicately. Now that we know Barack Obama's Justice Department, under the direction of Eric Holder, paid for trips to Florida by race-baiting hater Al Sharpton, with the express purpose of influencing the trial of George Zimmerman by striking fear into the jury pool about race riots in the event of his acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin, there's simply no other way to put it.... (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES - As usual, the Obama Administration, touted in 2008 as the administration that would heal racial division in America, is helping racial matters about as much as a screaming child helps a headache.... (more)
BREITBART - Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.... (more)
PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY - The new education standards called Common Core won't make U.S. kids any smarter. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute studied them and concluded that they are inferior to existing standards in 12 states, superior in only 16 states, and the standards of 22 states are too close to call. It would be better if states used their own revised and improved version of standards already successfully piloted in 12 states.... (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES - A government watchdog has found for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases.... (more)
WES VERNON, RA ANALYST - Inquiries to this column (in person or e-mail) have reflected at least a question in the minds of some Americans as to whether we are in the middle of a Communist take-over... (more)
ALAN KEYES - Every day offers Americans new proof of what the Declaration of Independence calls "a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism." On every front, our liberty is under assault from an elitist faction bent on overthrowing constitutional self-government of, by, and for the people... (more)
CLIFF KINCAID - After the not-guilty verdict was handed down, George Zimmerman's attorney Mark O'Mara strongly criticized the media's role in getting his client charged in the case. He compared the media to "mad scientists" who had turned Zimmerman into a "monster." He said the media "took a story that was fed to you and you ran with it and you ran right over him and that was horrid to him."... (more)
JOSEPH FARAH - It was one of the most extraordinary trials in American history -- not so much for what happened in the courtroom (though there were more than a few unusual developments there, too), but for what happened outside the courtroom that enabled the near racial lynching of a Hispanic victim of a crime who merely defended himself.... (more)
GOA Fights to Preserve Stand Your Ground Laws, Pro-gun Majority on Court
"Mr. Holder's comments rankled gun-rights groups and other supporters of [Stand Your Ground] laws.... Erich Pratt, spokesman for the Gun Owners of America, said the attorney general 'wants to take us back to the days where those who are under attack are forced to retreat.'" -- Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2013
GOA Standing our Ground against assaults by the Obama Administration
It was a good week for gun owners in many respects.
First, unless you were living in a cave the past few days, you have surely heard about the acquittal of George Zimmerman in Florida.
While this was certainly a tragic case, the jury followed the law and acquitted Zimmerman of second degree murder -- in the case which has now become internationally famous.
Predictably, the Obama administration is using this case to demonize gun owners and attack Stand Your Ground laws around the country -- laws which remove a person's duty to retreat prior to using deadly force when facing "death or great bodily harm."
GOA has fought to get these laws enacted in the past, and we will continue lobbying to keep them from being weakened or watered down.
As an aside, the Zimmerman defense team NEVER invoked "Stand Your Ground" as a defense. So all these attacks on Florida's SYG law are simply disingenuous attempts to use a manufactured "crisis" to advance their left-wing agenda.
Nevertheless, Attorney General Eric Holder announced this week that he wants us to return to the dangerous doctrine that requires citizens to retreat before they can protect themselves.
This thinking comes from the same school of thought where college students in Colorado were recently told they must urinate or vomit on themselves to prevent rapists from attacking them.
In other words, people should think of every way possible to NOT use force in protecting themselves. Never mind that George Zimmerman couldn't retreat because Trayvon Martin had him pinned down while beating his head into the cement.
GOA has called on Eric Holder to issue an apology to George Zimmerman and his family. The Justice Department used taxpayer dollars last year to organize protests against George Zimmerman -- long before the trial ever occurred.
"We are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, and Lady Justice is supposed to be blind," GOA's Erich Pratt was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal.
Yes, justice is SUPPOSED to be blind. Sadly, the DOJ had its hand on the scales long before the Zimmerman trial even started.
Every new person you encourage to sign up for our free email alerts or for a new GOA membership gives us a louder voice in Washington and in states across the country!
Senate victory preserves Gun Owners' ability to defeat anti-gun judges
Gun Owners achieved another victory this week and can report that our ability to filibuster anti-gun Supreme Court Justices -- and preserve the Supreme Court's Heller decision -- remains intact.
Granted, this victory has come at a price, and many conservatives in Washington are saying that Senate Republicans "caved" in their dealings with Senator Harry Reid.
While there may be truth to that assertion, the facts are this:
* The time-honored right of Senators to filibuster has come under increasing attack, especially since pro-gun forces have used the Senate filibuster to defeat anti-gun judges (like Caitlin Halligan) and anti-gun legislation (like the Toomey-Manchin registration amendment).
* GOA worked with pro-gun Senators in January to beat back attempts by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to blow-up the filibuster rules, via the so-called "nuclear option."
* Recently, Senator Harry Reid engaged in another all-out assault on the filibuster, but he settled for an agreement where certain appointments would get confirmed and others would be taken off the table -- but, most importantly, where the filibuster would remain untouched!
By reaching the deal, Republicans have averted a parliamentary precedent that would have allowed:
1) A swing anti-gun Supreme Court justice to be approved by a 50-vote (plus Biden) margin -- instead of garnering 60 votes;
2) A precedent that would allow gun control to be approved by 50 votes (plus Biden) margin -- instead of garnering 60 votes; and,
3) An anti-gun ATF Director by a 50-vote (plus Biden) margin -- instead of garnering 60 votes.
The downside is that Harry Reid has now demonstrated that he can get what he wants by threatening to use the "nuclear option" to blow up the Senate as an institution. We expect him to drag out this threat again and again and again.
Every new person you encourage to sign up for our free email alerts or for a new GOA membership gives us a louder voice in Washington and in states across the country!
Fox News host Geraldo Rivera tweeted a jaw-dropping half nude "selfie" mirror photo early Sunday. "70 is the new 50," the shirtless Rivera wrote from what appears to be a bathroom, a fluffy white towel positioned very low in front of his hips. The tweet came from Rivera's verified Twitter account and he has given no indication that his account was hacked. If you dare, see the imagesHERE.
Israel's pre-1967 borders will be the basis of renewed peace talks between Palestinians and Israel, according to a letter U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas which guaranteed the stipulation. After Abbas received the Kerry letter, he agreed to resume peace talks with Israel, two senior Palestinian officials said Saturday. "The talks with Kerry were about to collapse, and the letter came as a lifeline in the last minute bargaining," one of the Palestinian officials said. Get all the details on this storyHERE.
When the Rev. Al Sharpton and Trayvon Martin's mother arrived at the Harlem rally for Martin on Saturday, they were accompanied by Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera. National Review Online reports that Rivera had "no cameraman and seemed to be observing the proceedings as a guest." Some protesters apparently spotted Rivera and began to complain and shout, "Get Fox out!" and "What are you doing here?" Find out how Sharpton responded to the backlash HERE.
The last (legal) way to stick it to the government
Imagine an account so powerful government didn't want you to know about it. Why? Because they don't make a dime off it. It's true, but that hasn't stopped them from taking advantage of it... John McCain used this account to fund his 2008 electoral campaign. JFK had his own account. So did FDR and at least 4 other U.S. presidents. As a result of this secrecy only about one American in 1,500 (0.07% of the population) has one of these underground accounts. But I've hidden 20% of my wealth here and so can you...
Bill Maher unloaded on Dr. Ben Carson on Friday, calling him "half brilliant brain surgeon, half Tea Party dumbass." On his HBO show Maher said, "And he believes that Earth is 6,000 years old, and that homosexuality is akin to bestiality, and that the Bible calls for a flat tax. He's half brilliant brain surgeon, half Tea Party dumbass." You can watch the rest of Maher's contentious comments HERE.
Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) had harsh words Saturday for those who racially profile black men. Wilson said that black males "will continue to be singled out and arrested for driving while black, shopping while black, walking while black, eating while black, and just being plain old black." Her fiery comments drew loud cheers and applause from more than 300 people who gathered at a "Justice for Trayvon" vigil held in front of the Federal Building in Miami. Watch a video clip of Wilson's speech HERE.
A model who says she's an evangelical Christian is reportedly appearing on the cover of the Brazilian edition of Playboy magazine in September, the Christian Post reports. While it is suspected that she will not pose nude because of her fatih, Aline Franzoi has come under fire from those who believe the images will not adhere to the tenets of Christianity. Franzoi responded on her Facebook page to criticism she's received over this career move, which you can readHERE.
Countries around the world have a higher opinion of the United States than they have of the People's Republic of China, according to a new global poll from the Pew Research Group. The research firm put together the following infographic to illustrate how the U.S.' "favorability" stacks up next to communist China. Unsurprisingly, the only place where China is more popular that the U.S. is the Middle East. Get all the stats on this pollHERE.
For the second straight month, the same airline has forced passengers to wait in their seats for hours on a tarmac, reportedly without air conditioning. More than 150 Allegiant Air passengers were forced to sweat it out in their seats in triple-digit temperatures at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona on Wednesday when a maintenance issue was discovered that left the aircraft without air conditioning for 2 1/2 hours even though the plane was still at the gate. Watch a video report on this incidentHERE.
Looking for a rush? A giant pressurized swing that sends riders shooting out 1,300 feet above the Colorado River might do the trick. It's the Grand Canyon Swing at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park in Colorado. It reaches speeds up to 50 miles per hour and is so intense that riders must sign a liability waiver before boarding. See it in action (watch in fullscreen for the full, vertigo-inducing effect)HERE.
What a difference a century makes. Check out the footage filmed on May 21, 1905, of the then-7 months old New York City subway run from 14th to 42nd Street. For the video, a camera was mounted on the front of a subway car and followed another train on the same track, while a specially constructed work car, fitted with lights, lit the dark tunnel from a parallel track. See the historic videoHERE.
On Thursday, Sean Hannity clashed with NAACP Washington Bureau Director Hilary Shelton over the Zimmerman verdict and the group's involvement in pressuring the Department of Justice to pursue civil rights charges in the case. Watch Hannity accuse his guest of ignoring the evidence of the beating Zimmerman receivedHERE.
Another year, another round of exaggerations from President Barack Obama and his administration about health insurance rebates. In his speech defending his health care law Thursday, Obama said rebates averaging $100 are coming from insurance companies to 8.5 million Americans. In fact, most of the money is going straight to employers who provide health insurance, not to their employees, who benefit indirectly. See the rest of the AP's scathing fact checking of the PresidentHERE.
An Albuquerque, New Mexico, man was in for a vile surprise when he realized that a random woman has been defecating next to his house during her morning jogs. The bizarre and grotesque act - which has purportedly occurred at least four times - has been repeatedly caught on a security camera. Watch the local news report that will have you shaking your headHERE.
The Original Survival Business Card is back in stock and FREE for Blaze readers. Over 30,000 of these wallet-sized, 11-function tools have already been claimed.
On Thursday, while hosting two black guests on his show, MSNBC host Chris Matthews took it upon himself to apologize for racism on behalf of all "white people." His comments came after a discussion about race and racial profiling. In case you missed it, we have the videoHERE.
During Thursday's hearings, Rep. Jason Chaffetz unloaded on the White House and a top Democratic colleague over the idea that House Republicans should drop their investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups. Watch the Utah Congressman's emotional outburstHERE.
Glendale, CO Mayor Mike Dunafon is a former NFL pro football player and has one of the most unique stories you'll probably ever hear. He owns a castle, a strip club, and a church. Earlier this week, Dana Loesch was filling in for Glenn Beck and interviewed the Mayor on TheBlaze TV. Watch this fascinating profileHERE.
As of today, this very moment, an American named Bobby Cleveland and his very powerful Snapper lawn mower hold the title of the "World's Fastest Lawn Mower." Key phrase in that sentence -at this very moment. Watch the video showing a speedy new Honda lawn mower that threatens to snatch Bobby Cleveland's titleHERE.
Beach-goers at the fossil-rich Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England were recently alarmed to discover what appeared to be an absolutely enormous dragon skull in the sand. It was reported to be about 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 feet tall. Learn the source of the giant skullHERE.
Defensive end for the NFL's Houston Texans J.J. Watt weighs in at nearly 290 pounds and is showing his lighter professional comrades who play ball on a court instead of a field that football players too can gain some air. Watch the video showing amazing Watt's vertical leap HERE.
In honor of National Ice Cream month, Baskin-Robbins has decided to give you a little insight on what your favorite flavor says about your personality. The ice cream parlor partnered with taste and smell expert Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, to associate personality traits that might correspond with its most popular flavor. Learn what your favorite flavor says about youHERE.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he will use every resource he has at his disposal to stop President Barack Obama from bailing out newly-bankrupt Detroit because he believes the city can and must save itself and learn from its fiscal mistakes. "I basically say he [Obama] is bailing them out over my dead body because we don't have any money in Washington."
"There's some good things that come out of bankruptcy," Paul said in a phone interview from Iowa. "One is you get to start over. Bankruptcy lets you be forgiven of your debt. And you do so by getting new management, better management, and by getting rid of unwieldy contracts, contracts that give you where public employees are getting paid twice what private employees are and things come back more to normal. That's the way cities and businesses can recover.
Detroit, the once-thriving Midwest metropolis that gave birth to the nation's auto industry, is now the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy.
Kevyn Orr, the city's appointd emergency manager, formally sought federal bankruptcy court protection on Thursday after Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, approved the filing, deeming the decision necessary "as a last resort to return this great city to financial and civic health for its residents and taxpayers."
"I know many will see this as a low point in the city's history," Snyder wrote in a letter authorizing the bankruptcy filing. "If so, I think it will also be the foundation of the city's future - a statement I cannot make in confidence absent giving the city a chance for a fresh start, without burdens of debt it cannot hope to fully pay."
In the letter, Snyder explained his decision by citing statistics that have hobbled the city's operations:
* The city's unemployment rate has nearly tripled since 2000 and is more than double the national average.
* The homicide rate is at historically high levels, and the city has been named among America's most dangerous for more than 20 years.
* Detroiters wait an average of 58 minutes for police to respond, compared with the national average of 11 minutes.
* An estimated 40% of the city's street lights didn't work in the first quarter of 2013.
* Roughly 78,000 city structures have been abandoned.
Funny to think how much of Obama's message in 2012 was how wrong Romney was for writing an op-ed that ran with the headline, "Let Detroit go Bankrupt." (Romney was in fact referring to the Big Three automakers and the bailout of the auto industry.) Chuck Todd may not be able to believe it, but a lot of folks see the latest developments as one more sign that the president brags about improvement even as circumstances actually get worse -- turning a blind eye to Detroit, unsustainable local and state spending, and overall urban decay.
Conn Carroll: "I love how the standard liberal reaction to Detroit going bankrupt is to blame all the missing people. Why do you think they left, geniuses?"
Still, people predicted a dystopian, anarchic, crime-ridden future for Detroit going back to the late 1980s. In fact, as we look back on those fears of the future, the obvious solution is right there, all along:
Oh, like a robot cop would make today's Detroit any worse.
Intense Competition for 'Weirdest Member of Congress' Title This Year
Steve Cohen: Maybe not as creepy as Bob Filner, but approaching Harry-Reid-kissing-the-television weirdness. First, the soap opera:
The story of a Tennessee congressman tweeting his love to a younger woman and then declaring she was his daughter has taken another bizarre turn.
Turns out, aspiring model Victoria Brink is not related to Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. DNA tests show Cohen and Brink are not related, according to a CNN report that aired Thursday.
"The results show Steve Cohen is not my father," said Brink, a 24-year-old college student in Texas.
Cohen, 64, said in a statement that he was "stunned and dismayed" that the tests "disproved what Victoria and I believed about our relationship."
"I still love Victoria, hold dear the time I have shared with her, and hope to continue to be a part of her life," he said. "It's been a roller-coaster ride these last three and a half years, from which I have learned something about parenting and some more about love, life and heartache."
During President Obama's State of the Union Address earlier this year, Cohen sent tweets that included "ilu" for "I love you" to Brink and then deleted them. The tweets had the makings of a scandal, but Cohen revealed that the woman he was communicating with was his daughter.
Caitlin Huey-Burns, congressional reporter for RealClearPolitics, comes along and . . . well, I'll let her tell it: "Just asked Rep. Cohen about the paternity test developments and he told me: 'You're very attractive, but I'm not talking about it.'"
So What's at the Heart of the 'Free Jahar' Movement?
Would the Rolling Stone magazine cover be less bothersome if we hadn't also seen a "Free Jahar" movement appear in recent months?
Since the April 19th capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man allegedly responsible, along with his now deceased older brother, for this year's Boston Marathon bombings, media outlets have anxiously observed the development of the "Free Jahar movement." Less a typical protest group and more a loosely affiliated confederation of conspiracy theorists, Tsarnaev sympathizers, and anti-government dissenters, these individuals communicate mainly through social media sites like Tumblr and Twitter, where they keep up to date on the latest developments in Tsarnaev's trial by tagging pictures and text posts with #FreeJahar. The Twitter account devoted to the cause, @FreeJahar, has fewer than 2,000 followers. The handful of Tumblr accounts devoted to the same purpose use hashtags to indicate posts related to Dzhokhar, allowing for easy, anonymous perusal.
Oh, wait; Stoker feels these folks have been . . . wait for it . . . unfairly stereotyped!
Those who support Tsarnaev have a variety of reasons for doing so. Some believe he is innocent, and that the marathon bombings were perpetrated by the U.S. government. Others believe that Tsarnaev's rights were violated during and shortly after his capture, while others fear that he will be subject to the death penalty, which they oppose. Yet despite the fact that conspiracy theories and their adherents abound all over the web, it is the primarily female users of these social media outlets who have been, despite their varied reasons for supporting Tsarnaev, uniformly reviled as a single entity in the media.
To properly smear Tsarnaev's female supporters, it was first necessary to lump them together in a gender-based cadre stripped of whatever affiliations they may have ascribed to themselves: Tsarnaev fangirls.
What's that? You feel the media isn't giving these folks a fair shake? Then listen carefully, because somewhere the Tea Party is playing the world's smallest violin in sympathy.
I'm going to do something I don't ordinarily do: cheerfully cite Amanda Marcotte of Slate as a rebuttal:
Tsarnaev's supporters insist that they have purely intellectual reasons for supporting the young man accused of causing three deaths and 14 amputations. They believe the government set him up. But they sure do spend a lot of time sharing pictures of him on Tumblr , squealing over any behavior of his that can be construed as "cute," and clucking maternally over his well being. On Wednesday, outrage flared up in "Free Jahar" circles because of the unflattering portrayal of him in the court illustrations. The whole thing feels uncomfortably like a Justin Bieber fan squee -- bad enough when it's for Bieber, but even worse for someone who appears to be a remorseless killer.
Unfortunately, there's nothing new about this. Every reasonably good-looking, famous criminal can count on getting a fan club of excitable women who justify their affections by denying his guilt or rationalizing his crimes -- or both, since we're not talking about rational people here. Olympian Oscar Pistorius, accused of murdering his girlfriend, has a devoted fan base that swings between claiming he was framed and hinting that his victim had it coming. Ted Bundy had scores of groupies, and even managed to marry one of them. And there are so many rabid fans of the violent Chris Brown (notably, not a killer) that even the object of their affection has asked them to cool it with the constant haranguing of whoever he's currently beefing with.
So what's in it for the women? I think the answer is in the fantasy many women have of loving a dangerous man who then, by virtue of this love, eventually reveals a gentleness he doesn't show the rest of the world. It's the old "my love tamed the dangerous beast" fairy tale of romance novels and Disney movies.
I would like to declare a war on women -- namely, on all those cringe-inducing ninnies who lust after every celebrity criminal defendant with big muscles, tattoos, puppy-dog eyes, or Hollywood hair.
You know who I'm talking about, right? America's Bad Boy groupies. They're on the courthouse steps with their "Free Jahar" signs, cooing over how "hot" and "cute" the bloodstained Boston Marathon bombing suspect is. He "can blow me up with babies," one moral reprobate quipped shortly after his capture. "I'm not gonna lie, the second bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is hot. #sorrynotsorry," another young girl boasted.
If you think he's hot now, sweetheart, you should check him out when he sits in the electric chair.
So, in the Free Jahar crowd, are we seeing the same old freaky-crush-on-a-serial-killer phenomenon amplified in the age of social media, or is this something different?
It ties into his appearance, doesn't it? We're used to terrorists looking like this:
What, no Khalid Sheik Mohammed groupies? Okay, I guess they have some standards.
Terrorists in the public eye are not usually so young, and their life experiences are usually extremely different from that of the average American teenager. So perhaps Little Brother Bomber's visage breaks through some young people's cultural filters because he's not old, he's not obviously from another culture; he seems like someone they could have known.
And one of the constants of our popular culture is some young, fresh-faced allegedly cute young man who makes young women go insane with excitement and devotion:
Pick your generation.
However, this is a particularly dark turn for our already pretty insufferable culture, because it suggests that some people really can't get past the idea that beautiful people are good and ugly people are bad. Although that school of thought has been around for a very, very long time:
The early Greeks were inclined to think that beautiful people were good and ugly people bad -- still a common point of view, though likely to lead to disillusion. "The most beautiful is the most just," proclaimed the Delphic Oracle. Plato opined that beauty lay in harmony and proportion, and was best discerned by the mind, not the eye. In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, following the philosopher Plotinus and Abbott Suger of St Denis, many were of the opinion that light and colour emanated from the divine.
The belief that a person's character, good judgment, moral virtue, etc. is tied into their appearance is horsepuckey, of course.
Early in their training of cinematic conventions, kids learn the rule of thumb for sorting out good guys from bad guys: the good-looking guy is good and the bad-looking guy is bad. Indeed, if the guy is positively ugly, he is the likely villain. And if he has something visibly wrong with him -- a limp, a scar -- he'll be an especially cruel one.
Of course, Hollywood did not invent this cultural convention. It is a tradition that goes back at least as far as Richard III, whose "Deformed, unfinish'd . . . half made up" body -- a hunchback, a limp -- prefigured the disfigurement of his soul.
Krauthammer's column went on to critique the deformed, handicapped Confederate Civil War-veteran villains of Wild, Wild West.
Did years and years of Hollywood's visual shorthand somehow get hard-wired into how young people see the world?
ADDENDUM: You may be headed for a weekend, readers, but no yacht time for Secretary of State John Kerry in the coming days: "Secretary of State Kerry flying to West Bank to press effort for new Israeli-Palestinian talks."
He can focus on that issue, in his sixth trip to that region in a year, because the countries around Israel are so stable and peaceful right now.
"If liberals were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that at least some of their decisions would serve America's interests." ~ Joe McCarthy
Obama Ain't Right
Breaking: Obama Suffers Emotional Breakdown Posted On America's Conservative News No one else is daring to say it. Members of the MSM are calling Obama's impromptu Trayvon-ramblings "historic," but his incoherent musings make it more than clear that Barack Obama is not just behaving like a tin-pot dictator... but a tin-pot dictator on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown ...
CDC: Armed Victims Less Likely To Be Harmed By Attackers By Greg Richter Newsmax.com A $10 million government report on gun violence ordered by President Barack Obama has concluded that people who are armed are less likely to be harmed by their attackers.
Once We Take Care Of The Rest Of The World, Will They Take Care Of US?
Feds To Spend $500K For Job Creation--In Belize By Melanie Hunter CNSNews.com The State Department through the U.S. Mission to Belize is planning to spend $500,000 to create jobs for youth in Belize.
"Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow." ~ Benjamin Franklin
Star-Studded Radical Left Troupes In Action
Radical Groups Behind Trayvon Martin Protests UNMASKED Posted On America's Conservative NewsThe groups behind the Trayvon Martin agitation events across the country reads like a Who's Who of the radical left and someone is finally naming names....
NY SAFE Act Creates A New Class of Criminals By Leah Barkoukis TownHall.com[J]ust as gun-rights activists feared when the legislation was rammed through, the law seems to be doing nothing but turning law-abiding citizens into criminals.
He Has Taken Over The Horizontal And The Vertical ...
New Law 'Allows Obama To Take Over All Media' By Joe Kovacs World Net DailyAn online radio host is sounding the alarm over a brand-new law he claims grants the federal government massive new powers to saturate Americans with domestic propaganda at U.S. taxpayer expense.
Teenage Intern Short-Circuits Entire White House Press System By Asking Simple Question By John Hayward HumanEvents.com16-year-old Daily Caller intern Gabe Finger was called upon to ask a question of White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday.
Moments ago, President Obama made a surprise appearance at the White House briefing room to address the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman. It was a long, rambling statement that briefly warned against violence in reaction to the verdict.
The president conceded that the Zimmerman case was unique, and that the problems plaguing young black men in the inner cities are not neighborhood watchmen. Kudos for that.
But he then went on to repeat the left's mantra that the problems of our inner cities stem from a history of violence, poverty and despair. The real problems, Mr. President, are drugs, gangs and the breakdown of the family!
Most disturbing was that the president repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the verdict. Obama asked, "If Trayvon Martin was of his age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?" Statistics show that blacks have disproportionately benefited from Florida's "stand your ground" law.
Obama said, "If a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different." If a white male teen had been pounding a Hispanic man's head into the concrete, I have no doubt the jury would have reached the same verdict.
In one breath Mr. Obama is appealing for calm and asking Americans to respect the rule of law. Yet in the next breath, he suggests the law is flawed and the legal system is biased.
The president is also implying that the all-female jury rendered a racist verdict. Perhaps women should keep that in mind the next time he or someone else in his party says conservatives are "waging a war on women."
Sharpton & Jackson Fan The Flames
In contrast to President Obama's appeal for calm, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are fanning the flames of racial tension. This weekend, Sharpton's National Action Network is planning to stage "vigils" in 100 cities across the country, protesting the outcome of the Trayvon Martin case.
Jesse Jackson suggested that he is inclined to boycott the state of Florida in order to "isolate Florida as a kind of apartheid state." What is he talking about?
Florida is a multi-racial, multi-lingual state. It is one of the most diverse states in the union. Yet one incident takes place between a black teenager and a Hispanic man, and Jackson condemns the entire state as the equivalent of apartheid in South Africa. That is morally irresponsible and reprehensible.
If Sharpton and Jackson were genuinely concerned about the deaths of black youths, they should join neighborhood watch groups and start patrolling the streets of Chicago and Harlem themselves.
Unfortunately, it's not just rabble rousers like Sharpton and Jackson who are stirring the pot. Eric Holder's Department of Justice has set up a special email address seeking anonymous tips to help prove that Zimmerman really is a racist.
After interviewing more than 30 witnesses last year, Holder's FBI could find no evidence of racism, but Holder sees an opportunity to inflame Obama's base by exploiting their fears.
Thankfully, we are starting to hear from a few voices of reason. During a recent radio interview, comedian Bill Cosby said the prosecution failed to prove its case and lost.
Cosby also strongly suggested that there was no basis for the outrageous claims of racism, saying, "You can't prove if somebody is a racist unless they really come out and do the act and is found to be that. ...Let's not go into a racial discussion unless we really have something there."
Former basketball star Charles Barkley said he agreed with the verdict and blamed the media for creating the controversy. Here are excerpts of his remarks:
"Well, I agreed with the verdict. I feel sorry that young kid got killed. But they didn't have enough evidence to charge him. ...
"I just feel bad because I don't like when race gets out in the media because I don't think the media has a pure heart, as I call it. There are very few people [who] have a pure heart when it comes to race. Racism is wrong in any, shape, form -- a lot of black people are racist too. I think sometimes when people talk about racism, they say only white people are racist. There are a lot of black people who are racist. I don't like when it gets out there in the media because I don't think the media has clean hands."
The media certainly does not have clean hands. Remember the Duke lacrosse rape case? After that fiasco unfolded, one liberal reporter quipped, "The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong." In other words the media are always right to pursue their left-wing narrative of racist America, even when the facts are wrong.
Detroit Goes Bust
Almost every place where Democrats have had free reign, we see disastrous economic results. For example, even as the economy shows signs of improvement, the places doing the best are the conservative "red" states. Nowhere is the failure of liberalism more obvious than in America's big cities, where populations are falling and debt is out of control.
We were all reminded about this with today's news that venerable Detroit, once hailed as the "Arsenal of Democracy," has just declared bankruptcy. The city is nearly $20 billion in debt. It has lost more than half its population from its peak in the 1950s. Nearly 80,000 buildings and homes are abandoned and 40% of its street lights don't work. Detroit's unemployment rate is twice the national average.
It is noteworthy that more cars are being made in America today than ever before. But most new plants are in southern or mid-western states, as the auto industry fled the anti-business regime that has dominated Detroit.
It's been more than half a century since Detroit had a Republican mayor and the results speak for themselves. Chicago is not far behind. Liberalism's lies -- its failed cultural, economic and educational promises -- are coming home to roost.
Liberals you should be ashamed of yourselves for the misery and destruction you have forced on Detroit. Because of liberal policies Detroit, an American city that once was the very epitome of the benefits of capitalism, was once able to boast of the highest standard of living of any city in the world is now little more than a garbage heap people want to run from.
Today Detroit has roughly 700,000 people. In 1960 Detroit had 1.6 million people. They were auto workers and auto manufacturing executives. They manufactured things and traded an honest day's work for a decent middle class salary. Then you took over, liberals. In 1962 the last Republican mayor left office. Your greedy unions swamped Detroit and all of a sudden every demand from every group was met. The debt you caused and the criminals you elected to run Detroit sacked the town like the Vandals who picked Ancient Rome clean. ... Continue Reading:Liberals you should be ashamed of yourselves for wrecking Detroit
Western Hemisphere Threat This week Panama seized a North Korean cargo ship that was on its way back home from Cuba. Panamanian authorities were tracking the cargo vessel as it entered the Panama Canal as they believed the ship was carrying drugs. The ship was stopped and searched. The crew resisted the boarding for inspection as it turns out they really did have something to hide. After subduing the ship's crew the Panamanians didn't find drugs but instead turned up undeclared weapons in violation of UN sanctions regarding the North Korean Nuclear program. (1)(4)
Denial In a display of sheer chutzpah the North Korean regime demanded the release of the ship and crew because Panamanian officials hadn't found any drugs. North Korea has a long history of smuggling drugs and has been caught many times, the money from the drug shipments having been used to prop up the hermit nation. On this ... Continue Reading:Cuba caught getting antiquated military hardware fixed by North Koreans
"Under no circumstances should people be able to confront others in a hostile manner, end up using deadly force, and escape punishment." Such is the far from unconventional viewpoint of UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler. (1) But it's not the doings of actual thugs and lawbreakers that worry the professor. His concern is about people who "take advantage" of Stand Your Ground laws; laws which according to Winkler, "unambiguously authorize people to pursue and confront others" and encourage vigilantism. (1)
Of course, the professor is not alone in spreading his deliberately false description of the contents of Stand Your Ground legislation. Three days after the George Zimmerman verdict, AG Eric Holder told members of the Orlando NAACP that "'stand your ground'" statutes can 'undermine public safety' and 'victimize too many who are innocent.'" (1) They are laws which "senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods." (2) That there ... Continue Reading:Self-defense shouldn't be practiced by the common folk
On the Laura Ingraham show, Thomas Sowell blasted Paul Ryan's argument that we need immigration "reform" in order to avert labor shortages:
That's incredible. I mean--first of all to an economist, it is incredible to speak about shortages without talking about prices, in this case wages...You know there, there have been so many predictions of shortages of so many occupations and the shortages don't materialize. And why not? Because if there is a shortage, the wage rate goes up. That attracts in more people and lo and behold, the jobs are filled.
In agriculture, the farmers would obviously prefer to get workers who get low pay rather than workers they have to pay a higher wage. And as long as there are an unlimited supply of farm workers coming in from Mexico, they will never have to raise the wages very much. They say Americans won't do these jobs. These are jobs Americans have done for generations, if not centuries. And it's a time when millions of Americans are out of work, and are looking for any kind of work. And so this is utter nonsense.
That seems like common sense, not to mention sound economics, but it drew criticism from an open-borders advocate at the Cato Institute:
If Sowell is going to quibble about words like "shortage," it's fair to criticize Sowell's use of the word "unlimited" to describe the supply of farm workers coming from Mexico. If the supply of workers in agriculture was truly unlimited, or infinite, the wage would be 0. Furthermore, Americans are not "looking for any kind of work." If they were, they would be lowering their wages quite a bit more than they currently are, until they become attractive hires. ...
Issues of economic vocabulary aside, Sowell only described one possible outcome from a reduction in the supply of low-skilled immigrant farm workers: an increase in wages. The far more likely reaction is that American farmers will stop growing crops that require many workers. ...
Furthermore, it's hard to see why it's desirable to increase the wages of low-productivity farm workers by increasing their scarcity.
A knowledgeable reader whom we have quoted before offers what I think is a devastating critique of the Cato scholar's rejoinder:
They have to concede that he is right about the concept of "shortage": a shortage just means the price is too low. The rest of it combines sophistry with an overlay of the economism fallacy.
They seem piqued that they have to forgo the propaganda around worker "shortages" - an absolutely essential element to the claims of the immigration celebrationists and the provisions for "guest workers"-who-never-leave in the Senate bill. So they pedantically quibble about "unlimited" immigration. It's laughable, though. Sowell's correction on the "shortage" propaganda is a critically important conceptual point. He did not mean to suggest that there is already an in place literally infinite supply of ag labor. He meant that the "shortage" propagandists advocating effectively unlimited immigration so ag interests never have to adjust wages to domestic supply DO have what is effectively an "unlimited" foreign labor supply in reserve. It needn't be exclusively Mexican. For example, if they "need" yet more supply of imported labor to keep wages down what is to stop them from importing, say, scores of millions of ag workers from Bangladesh? There are 4 billion people in the world whose economic well being would be improved by at least an order of magnitude by coming to the U.S. If that isn't "unlimited," it is all but.
What are the terrible consequences of failing to permit unlimited immigration of low skilled 3rd world ag workers?
"...Sowell only described one possible outcome from a reduction in the supply of low-skilled immigrant farm workers: an increase in wages. The far more likely reaction is that American farmers will stop growing crops that require many workers. Without a large supply of low-skilled immigrant farm workers, labor-intensive farming would either shrink dramatically or disappear entirely. American farmers would either grow different crops that could be profitably harvested mechanically or stop farming." [emphasis added]
Just so. Exactly what should happen in an efficient market. They would have to adjust; to modify the mix of capital and labor inputs in response to a constraint - a labor constraint that arises naturally precisely because the economy has higher valued uses for that labor than one more acre of cucumbers. So the farmers can't expand cucumber growing indefinitely? Our optimal production function is more of something higher valued than the next acre of cucumbers? Tough...then it's not economic activity we want, and the market is telling us so. And telling them that if they overplant and the yield on the marginal acre is worth less than the cost of the labor to pick it...then let it "rot in the fields".
Note as well the misleading formulation of the argument: "a reduction in the supply of low-skilled immigrant farm workers". That's not the situation; it's an inability to increase the supply of low-skilled workers by raising wages sufficiently to elicit that supply - like every other employer has to - and also profitably increase the low value-added output. Sure, it is also a prohibition on bringing in foreign workers at the lowest possible wages, at least legally. But that isn't the same as "a reduction in the supply of low-skilled immigrant farm workers".
Further consequences:
"American consumers would either import fruits and vegetables that require large numbers of workers from countries where those workers are abundant, or scale back their consumption of those food stuffs."
Again, just so. But the horror! We might become "dependent" on cheap foreign cucumbers? Ironically, über-libertarian Cato wants a policy that, in effect, like tariffs and import quotas, amounts to import substitution to "protect" domestic producers, something they would never advocate for, say, steel. No American other than the landowner would lose anything: not workers....these are jobs Americans won't do!....not consumers...they can import...not distributors and retailers...their margins do not depend on the provenance of the commodities...not investors...they can get similar risk-adjusted returns investing elsewhere. The landowner's land value is potentially at risk, if he cannot adjust to higher value uses. Again, tough.
Here is the nub of the policy issue, in a disingenuous but clever bit of sophistry:
"Those effects would be the economically efficient outcome if increased labor scarcity was driven by changes in the free market. In this case, however, the increase in labor scarcity would come from legislation mandating such scarcity." [emphasis added]
VERY slippery move! Did you see that? "The increase in labor scarcity would come" [emphasis added] not from legislation but from the market allocation of the labor supply to its most productive uses, based on the marginal product/marginal value of product relationship for that labor. No legislation required at all. It's just the ex ante status quo - the default condition, like the entirety of our legal regime which also prohibits, say, labor peonage in agriculture...also a constraint. What they want is new legislation to permit an injection of foreign labor from outside the economy to prevent a naturally occurring - and economically beneficial - labor allocation arising from that constraint. The "scarcity" arises from an increase in demand which assumes the price of labor to remain as low as it can possibly be. A "shortage" means the price (wage) is too low. It's only if you think that the default condition should be unlimited immigration that the inability to increase low skilled immigration comes from "legislation mandating...scarcity".
Here's where the economism fallacy comes in:
"Sowell is right that the economy would adjust to a decrease in the supply of low-skilled labor, but he fails to mention that it would do so by shrinking."
Misleading. He means, of course, that aggregate GDP might be less - not even absolutely, compared to the ex ante baseline - only relatively compared to an ex post GDP that included the increased but low value ag production as well as the higher value output from workers who are attracted into those positions instead of picking cucumbers, at the margin. GDP per capita, however, would necessarily be lower: the increase in output derives from a lower than average value of output per capita - and a population increase! We get bigger, but not richer, certainly not existing, native-born Americans. Moreover, the implication is that our incremental aggregate GDP growth should come from a relative increase in the lowest value-added economic activities - even by importing the labor necessary to make that activity feasible from the lowest possible wages. And it ignores the potential adverse impacts from massive population growth to accommodate these low value ag interests: overcrowding, pollution, land use, environmental degradation - and net government spending.
But note further: they simply assume that the default constraints on economic agents in America do not, or should not, include population based on our collective democratically determined policies regarding the population levels and demographics we want. If marginal low value economic interests can expand only by first ignoring that constraint by intentional and flagrant violations of the law implementing the democratically enacted policies and now want new legislation to repeal the policies leading to the constraint, in the interest of nothing but more GDP in aggregate, so be it. It's economism on steroids.
And there is no principled stopping point. The labor supply globally in excess of American labor willing to do the cucumber picking at the ever expanding margin at the lowest possible wages is for all practical purposes unlimited; so they want, and openly argue for, completely unlimited immigration. How could they not? Once any limit becomes binding the argument compels them to want to eliminate it! But once you concede that there should be some limit set by policy and not the narrow economic interests of the ag lobby, then the question arises as to what's wrong with the limits we already have?....that the scofflaw ag sector has worked to undermine? If the answer is that the existing limit is arbitrary, ANY limit becomes arbitrary and the reason to prefer a new limit becomes nothing but special pleading for special interests. And why stop at ag? Why not let entrepreneurs in the strategic T-shirt and bra and panty sectors of the textile industry import millions of those Bangladeshi workers toiling in unsafe sweatshops? Think of the GDP!....and import substitution for cheap Asian T-shirts.
Effectively, the Cato-type extreme libertarian arguments for unlimited immigration depend on a fallacy of economism: only considerations of gross first order economic conditions are relevant to any policy question. Only aggregate GDP matters, not GDP per capita, not second order environmental non-GDP impacts, not the economic welfare of existing native-born Americans, not population densities, not cultural or demographic issues. America is just a geographic expression; it just identifies a place where rational economic maximizers happen to be living because they can rationally maximize. It's economism...and it's specious, no matter how sophisticated the economic claims appear to be.
Back in February I mused about the idea of a "wealth tax" as a way of exposing the fact that so many of the rich liberals (Buffett, Gates, the Hollywood and Silicon Valley crowd) who support higher income taxes do so because higher income tax rates do not touch any of their vast fortunes, accumulated not in the form of taxable income, but in the form of non-taxed asset value appreciation. Why not nick those guys where it hurts?
I know, I know, it's a bad idea on the merits, and would amount to double (or really quintuple) taxation on the assets of people who accumulated wealth the old fashioned way-by saving their after-tax earnings. My purpose was to taunt the left, which-so far-has not embraced the idea. So far. But this may well change soon, and it could provide an opportunity for a wider argument about "fairness" that conservatives manage to flub consistently.
IF you'd like to know where American political debates are headed, the data suggest a simple answer. The next major struggle - in economic terms at least - will be over whether taxes on personal wealth should rise - and by how much. . .
In the United States, wealth taxes are currently limited to a few levies, such as property taxes and inheritance taxes. Capital gains taxes that aren't indexed to inflation also serve as an implicit wealth tax, because they dig into the body of a person's capital. Most likely those rates will rise. Like the bank robber Willie Sutton, revenue-hungry governments go "where the money is."
The coming battles over wealth taxation may prove especially bitter and polarizing. Most wealth has already been subjected to income and other taxes, perhaps multiple times. It doesn't seem fair to the holders of that wealth to suddenly pay additional taxes on assets that they thought were in the clear, and such taxes would signal that previous policy has failed.
Higher wealth in a nation means that there is more to take, and growing inequality means there are more problems that its government might seek to remedy. At the same time, however, this new economic configuration will mean greater political influence for the holders of that wealth, and that will make higher wealth taxes harder to achieve.
Historically, economists - including me - have generally favored taxes on consumption, on the grounds that they would do the least damage to long-term savings, investment and economic growth. Yet in some eyes, rising wealth will become a tempting target for short-term political gain. And note that while most Republicans currently oppose consumption taxes, they may dislike the relevant alternative, namely wealth taxes, even more.
The bankruptcy of the city of Detroit is a warning and portent. It is symbolic of the ruin wrought by the corrupt one-party rule of urban Democratic bastions. The current issue of the Claremont Review of Books carries Michael Barone's review of Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: An American Autopsy. Given the CRB's publishing schedule, I would guess the review was written some four or five months ago, yet it could not be more timely. I particularly appreciate the autobiographical element that Barone brings to the review. Here is the opening:
When people ask me why I moved from liberal to conservative, I have a one-word answer: Detroit. I grew up there, on a middle-class grid street in northwest Detroit and a curving street in affluent suburban Birmingham, and I got a job as an intern in the office of the mayor in the summer of 1967 when Detroit rioted. I was at the side of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and occasionally Governor George Romney during the six days and nights in which 43 people, mostly innocent bystanders, died. I listened to the radio in the police commissioner's office as commanders announced, shortly after sundown, that they were abandoning one square mile after another. The riot ended only after federal troops were called in and restored order.
Cavanagh was bright, young, liberal, and charming. He had been elected in 1961 at age 33 with virtually unanimous support from blacks and with substantial support from white homeowners-then the majority of Detroit voters-and he was reelected by a wide margin in 1965. He and Martin Luther King, Jr., led a civil rights march of 100,000 down Woodward Avenue in June 1963. He was one of the first mayors to set up an antipoverty program and believed that city governments could do more than provide routine services; they could lift people, especially black people, out of poverty and into productive lives. Liberal policies promised to produce something like heaven. Instead they produced something more closely resembling hell. You can get an idea of what happened to Detroit by looking at some numbers. The Census counted 1,849,568 people in Detroit in 1950, including me. It counted 713,777 in 2010.
In the articles recounting Detroit's bankruptcy this past week, I haven't seen many journalists date the beginning of the decline to Cavanagh or the riots of 1967. Here is Barone's ssessment:
I blame the ambitious liberalism of the Cavanagh years, which I believed in at the time, and the 20-year rule of Coleman Young, mayor from 1973 to 1993. Young was smart, funny, and politically ruthless, with a background in left-wing unionism. The story I heard was that he supported the reelection of pro-Communist R.J. Thomas as president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in 1947 against the anti-Communist Walter Reuther; after Reuther won, Young lost his job as a pork chopper (the local word for union staffer) and was sent back to the assembly line. As mayor he disbanded the police department's stop-and-frisk unit. Crime soared and Devil's Night became a Detroit institution. Young occasionally denounced black criminals. But much more often he denounced white suburbanites and in his autobiography, published after he left office, savaged white homeowners who left the city. His economic strategy was to ally with the big auto companies and the UAW, just as their business model was undermined by foreign-based competitors. He got the Big Three automakers to finance the 70-story Renaissance Center, physically disconnected from the rest of downtown, and tore down a viable white neighborhood to make room for General Motors's Poletown plant. The great northward migration of Southern blacks quadrupled Detroit's black population from 149,000 in 1940 to 660,000 in 1970. The high crime rates of the Young years reduced its non-black population from 853,000 in 1970 to 250,000 in 1990; it was down to 125,000 in 2010.
My sense is that the "Justice for Trayvon" rallies that were held in various cities today didn't amount to much. One basic question is, did they even have much to do with Trayvon Martin? The answer to that question is suggested by this flyer that was handed out at the rally in New York:
This is exactly the same stupidity we have seen over and over from the left. Boycott oranges! Why? They grow in Florida! Boycott Coca-Cola! Why? Because they buy oranges! Boycott the Koch brothers-of course-because they "help fund piggermans defense." Which is a complete fiction, but if you are a liberal, the facts are optional. Boycott Foot Locker! Huh? Foot Locker? "This company is owned by the same racist family that use to own woolworths." I have no idea what that is all about. No doubt it is familiar to students of left-wing mythology, but Foot Locker isn't owned by any family, it is a publicly traded, $5.6 billion a year company.
Looking on the bright side, I doubt that a single orange, can of Coke, pair of shoes or box of Dixie cups will be forgone because of today's agitation. The salient point is that the people who sponsored the "Justice for Trayvon" rallies are the same tired leftists who have organized all the other protests in recent years, and who have nothing more substantive or creative to offer than "Don't buy Brawny paper towels!" Trayvon Martin has, really, little to do with it. As always, leftists are trying to capitalize on others' tragedies to advance their worn-out agenda.
As I suggested yesterday, President Obama's little speech about the Trayvon Martin matter seemed to have two purposes. First, he wanted to explain to whites why so many blacks are up in arms about a jury decision that most whites believe was correct (and that Obama himself apparently finds no fault with). Second, he wanted to assure blacks that he shares their pain, while preparing them for the prospect of federal inaction against George Zimmerman.
Both of these purposes seem marginally worthwhile to me. However, in serving them, Obama put plenty of stuff out there, much of which has interesting implications that he may or may not have considered. During the next few days, I plan to write about some of these implications.
Let's start with the implications of Obama's discussion of how African-Americans are scarred by their nearly universal experiences of being profiled and receiving adverse reactions from whites as they go about their everyday business. A very perceptive friend, who has studied racial disparities for decades, writes:
[O]ne implication is that persons who have the experience of being profiled in the manner described by Obama cannot fairly evaluate a self-defense claim in a case like [Zimmerman's]. . . .
But it also is a reason why Trayvon Martin would have reason to believe that he was being followed because he was suspected of being a criminal, rather than [because] he was being targeted by some predator. [In this scenario] he had little reason to fear for his safety but did have reason to be resentful, all supporting Zimmerman's account.
I suspect that most white people now are rather more apprehensive when they pass young black men on dark streets because they have reason to believe that the black man is harboring more resentment against whites than [they believed] he did a week ago.
This, indeed, would be a logical conclusion for whites to draw from Obama's speech.
My friend also argues that many law abiding black males are deeply resentful of the young blacks whose conduct produces the tendency to profile blacks as a class. Thus, there's a twist to Obama's thought experiment about how the Martin-Zimmerman confrontation might have played out in different racial circumstances.
On this issue of switching the races and imagining what would have occurred, it seems to me that being overlooked is whether in a situation where the neighborhood watch person had been a black man (while TM also was black) the role of TM's race would have been any less influence than it had for GZ.
Any anger, and any racial element in the anger, would probably have been greater. For many law abiding black men are very resentful of the conduct of young black men that causes all blacks to be profiled.
The soundest study I have seen so far attempting to sort out race from conduct in analyzing racial differences in [public school] discipline rates seems to attribute the largest [differences] to the rigorous discipline practices of black male teachers.
President Obama was right in saying yesterday that "when politicians try to organize conversations they end up being stilted and politicized." Obama's talk wasn't stilted, but it was politicized (see the first paragraph above) and dumbed down.
It's good to know that the mullahs are with the crowds out in the streets seeking justice for Trayvon Martin today. In a little noted sidebar, Adam Kredo reports that Iran's foreign ministry on Friday criticized the acquittal of George Zimmerman and chastised the United States for widespread "racial discrimination."
"The acquittal of the murderer of the teenage African American once again clearly demonstrated the unwritten, but systematic racial discrimination against racial, religious, and ethnic minorities in the US society," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran's state run Fars News Agency. "The court ruling has also seriously puttle under question the fairness of the judicial process in the United States," Fars reported Araqchi as saying.
So while the crowds protesting the Zimmerman verdict take to the streets today, they should know that the mullahs are with them in spirit. Neither the mullahs nor the crowds would approve of Bill Whittle's backgrounder on the case. Whittle calls it "The Lynching."
So Detroit is bankrupt, Obamacare continues to crumble, and our national security challenges remain a festering mess, and Obama decides he has to talk about . . . Trayvon Martin. I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this president. In any case, it's clear where the biggest bankruptcy of the nation is right now, and its street address is "1600."
Woo hoo! Look what's out in a Polish translation:
While we await the release of the surely epic sequel of "Anchorman: The Saga of Ron Burgundy" (I'm going on opening day, baby), take in what has to be the most epic 80s opening sequence for a local newscast, and what may well have been the inspiration for the first Anchorman movie in the first place:
Yesterday President Obama delivered extended observations on the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case to reporters, on a seemingly impromptu basis. Obama's comments were widely praised, and Paul gave them a characteristically generous assessment here yesterday. My own view of Obama's comments is more negative, and I also think it is important to put Obama's often high-sounding statements about race in the context of his administration's deliberate promotion of racial division to advance political ends.
You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.
As many have pointed out, Obama could have been Martin only if he had committed an unprovoked aggravated assault. As far as I know, the Choom Gang was non-violent.
There are very few African American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me - at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.
It sure does. Why? Because everyone knows that African-American men commit ridiculous numbers of crimes, especially violent crimes. Obama, of course, knows this is true, and more or less acknowledges the facts:
Now, this isn't to say that the African American community is naive about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they're disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It's not to make excuses for that fact - although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context. They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.
No, actually, it can't be. Slavery is now 150 years in the past, and legal segregation 50 years. Yet the social pathologies exhibited by the African-American community, especially black men, have gotten worse, not better, as these dark eras have receded into the past. Until the 1960s, for example, black labor force participation was higher than white participation. How bad are the facts here? Heather MacDonald provides some details:
In fact, if a black parent wants to radically reduce his son's chance of getting shot, he should live in a white neighborhood. New York's crime profile is typical of urban-crime disparities across the country. The per capita shooting rate in predominantly black Brownsville, Brooklyn, is 81 times higher than that of predominantly white and Asian Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, according to the New York Police Department. Blacks in 2012 committed about 75 percent of all shootings in New York, and whites a little over 2 percent, though blacks are 23 percent of the city's population and whites 35 percent. Blacks are 60 percent of the city's homicide victims. Their killers? They aren't white.
The picture is the same nationally. Black males between the ages of 14 and 24 committed homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males combined in the same age category in 2008, resulting in a homicide victimization rate nearly as disproportionate. As for interracial crime, black homicide offenders in 2010 had nearly three times the absolute number of white and Hispanic victims as there were black victims of white and Hispanic homicide offenders, despite blacks' much lower population numbers.
Crime perpetrated by African-American males is an enormous problem, and one from which blacks, for the most part, suffer. Skating around the issue as Obama did, and as liberals always do, is unhelpful at best. Obama continued:
I think the African American community is also not naive in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else. So folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys. But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there's no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.
I don't see how the outcome would have been different: does Obama seriously think that if it was a white man who jumped Zimmerman, knocked him to the ground, pounded on him and beat his head into the pavement while threatening to kill him, that Zimmerman would have thought, "It's OK, he's white?" On the other hand, the aftermath certainly would have been different. We have heard of Trayvon Martin only because he was black. If he had been white or Asian, he would have remained anonymous like so many other victims of violent African-American criminals.
I know that there's been commentary about the fact that the "stand your ground" laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case. On the other hand....
This has become a common theme on the Left: stand your ground had nothing to do with the Zimmerman case, but let's talk about it anyway.
[F]or those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these "stand your ground" laws, I'd just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.
Obama is rumored to have been a lawyer at one time, but there is little evidence of that fact. "Stand your ground" laws don't say that you can open fire on someone because you "feel threatened." The Florida jury instruction is typical:
If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
As is so often the case, Obama uses the "bully pulpit" of the presidency to spread misinformation. But what was most striking to me was his conclusion:
And so we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues. And those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions.
Here Obama employs the reasonable-sounding tone that has always been his greatest asset. And no one would disagree with the sentiment he expresses: that "those of us in authority" should not try to "heighten divisions," but should "encourage the better angels of our nature." That would be a good description of, say, the George W. Bush administration. But does Barack Obama practice what he preaches?
No. On the contrary, the Obama administration and the Democratic Party consistently seek to aggravate racial divisions in order to advance their political agenda. We saw this when Democratic Congressmen falsely accused Tea Party demonstrators of using racial epithets. We see it on almost a daily basis when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee accuses Republicans of being motivated by racism whenever they try to advance conservative principles. We have seen it, to an outrageous degree, in the wake of the Zimmerman case.
This morning, Andy McCarthy wrote an article in National Review titled "The Obama Administration's Race-Baiting Campaign."
The attorney general of the United States is engaged in a shocking extrajudicial publicity campaign. Eric Holder is prosecuting George Zimmerman in the court of public opinion because he knows he wouldn't have a prayer of convicting him in a court of law. Worse, in doing so, Holder is quite deliberately stoking resentment and tension - under the guise of leading a "national conversation" about race.
At precisely the same time, the United States secretary of health and human services has loathsomely injected race into the debate over Obamacare. Toward the conclusion of this week's NAACP grievance fest, Kathleen Sebelius took the podium to demagogue Obamacare opponents. The fight against them, she inveighed, is reminiscent of "the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation." She made these inflammatory remarks just as violence was erupting over Zimmerman's acquittal in the Trayvon Martin shooting, no small thanks to Holder's accomplice, Al Sharpton.
Andy could have compiled countless more examples of race-baiting by the Obama administration and Obama's party. Why do they do it?
[R]ace-baiting is the last resort of scoundrels whose insipid policy claims cannot survive collision with real-world conditions. The incitements that transform policy debates into an us-versus-them rumble are not about race per se. They are about advancing a hard-left agenda through the community organizer's crude bag of tricks - the extortion that Alinskyites euphemistically call "direct action." It is what happens when social-justice prescriptions turn out to be unjust and unworkable.
Sebelius is not agitating because she actually believes there is some faint connection between Jim Crow and opposition to socialized medicine.
That's right. The Democrats know that their accusations are lies, and their behavior is contemptible. That conduct-stirring up racial antagonism for political gain-starts at the top, with Barack Obama.
As we have noted many times, President Obama's dishonesty in peddling Obamacare was comprehensive. It will not in any sense save money or be revenue neutral. If you like your health insurance, you won't necessarily be able to keep it. If you like your doctor, you won't necessarily be able to keep him, even assuming he continues to practice under the Obamacare regime. To paraphrase Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman, everything Obama said was a lie, including "and" and "the."
Most of our fellow Americans must have seen through these lies on some level. Thus the persistent unpopularity of Obamacare. Anyone who believed Obama's assertions to the contrary was at best a chump, but that doesn't absolve Obama and his fellow Democratic liars from their wrongdoing.
All will become clear in the fullness of time, which includes even the empty present. Yesterday Jeryl Bier pointed out the creeping rollout of the truth in a question-and-answer posted by HHS:
Bier comments:
"Depending on the plan you choose in the Marketplace, you may be able to keep your current doctor." The bottom line is that Obamacare guarantees neither. Doctors may be only available through certain networks, just as in the current system. And only plans that existed in their current form on March 23, 2010, are even eligible to be "kept." The vast majority of plans will be new, subject to a raft of new regulations, requirements, and restrictions.
Now that Health and Human Services has confirmed that the suspicions of Obamacare opponents were justified, the Obama administration will have some explaining to do to friends and foes of the law alike. Because now everyone is finding out "what's in it."
The proposition that the Obama administration "will have some explaining to do" is an optimistic assessment. If they are put in the position of having to say something, the Obamacrats will continue to flap their lips in the same manner that they did in peddling the abomination of Obamacare, with the same freedom from ethical inhibitions. It remains for all of us to continue to exercise our rational capacity through the blather and the billingsgate.
Not exactly Black Rock, but the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which conducted a hearing today titled: "Climate Change: It's Happening Now." That title alone will prompt a snicker from all knowledgeable people; climate change has been happening for millions of years, and will continue for as long as the Earth exists. Watts Up With That has a roundup; the stars of the show were Roger Pielke Jr. and Roy Spencer. You can watch the proceedings here if you've a mind to; they go on for close to four hours. (Be aware that there is a fair amount of dead air at the beginning; otherwise you might think that the link isn't active.)
One of the highlights was when the assembled panel of experts was asked whether any of them could support Barack Obama's claim that global warming has been accelerating over the last decade:
Warmists were asked: "Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama's statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?" For several seconds, nobody said a word. Sitting just a few rows behind the expert witnesses, I thought I might have heard a few crickets chirping.
Heh. You can count on Obama to be wrong about pretty much everything.
You can read Pielke's prepared testimony here and Spencer's here. This is from Dr. Spencer's testimony:
The most indefensible claim regarding climate change from an observational point of view is that severe weather has increased. Meteorologists like me have long known that public perception of weather is skewed by short memories and increasing media sensationalizing of weather disasters.
During globally cool conditions in 1970 a tropical cyclone (hurricane) killed 500,000 people in Bangladesh. Records of such storms killing hundreds of thousands of people extend back to 1582. In contrast, as of this writing, it has been a record 7+ years since a major (Cat 3 or stronger) hurricane has hit the U.S. mainland. New research from northwest Florida, based upon coastal sediments, suggest that the past 600 years has been a period of weaker hurricane activity compared to the 1,000 years before that (Brandon et al., 2013). All of these facts indicate the huge amount of natural variability in tropical cyclones which exists and confounds attempts to determine whether tiny global energy imbalances caused by humans have any noticeable effect. ...
There is little or no observational evidence that severe weather of any type has worsened over the last 30, 50, or 100 years, irrespective of whether any such changes could be blamed on human activities, anyway. Long-term measurements of droughts, floods, strong tornadoes, hurricanes, severe thunderstorms etc. all show no obvious trends, but do show large variability from one decade to the next, or even one year to the next. While the 2003 heat wave in France and the 2010 heat wave in Russia were exceptional, so were the heat waves of the 1930s in the U.S., which cannot be blamed on our greenhouse gas emissions.
While it is true that storm damage of manmade structures increases over time, this is due to socioeconomic reasons: there are simply more manmade targets for severe storms to hit.
From Dr. Pielke's testimony:
Hurricanes have not increased in the US in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900.
The story of Marty Hahne, the magician who received a regulatory notice from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture that he needed to file a disaster plan for his rabbit, has been around a while, but this week it made the Washington Post, so now it is officially certified by the (still-unregulated, for the time being) mainstream media:
Hahne is a slight man with the stage persona of an exuberant doofus - he seems continually surprised by his own tricks. He has been doing magic shows full time for 27 years, on cruise ships and on land. That means he has experienced most of the troubles a magician can expect: overexcited kids who wet themselves after he brought them onstage. A shipboard drunk who threw up on his props. A rabbit so mean it growled.
But he did not expect the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"She said, 'Show me your license.' And I said, "License for...?' "Hahne recounted. This was after a 2005 show at a library in Monett, Mo. Among the crowd of parents and kids, there was a woman with a badge. A USDA inspector. "She said, 'For your rabbit.'"
Hahne was busted. He had to get a license or lose the rabbit. He got the license. (The inspector did not respond to a request to tell her side of the story.)
In the past decade, the same thing has happened to other children's magicians across the country, according to Mark Daniel, president of the trade association KIDabra. . . They checked and were surprised. It was the law.
"It was on the books 40 years," Daniel said. "And nobody knew anything."
The story behind it illustrates the reality of how American laws get made. First Congress passes a bill, laying out the broad strokes. Then bureaucrats write regulations to execute those intentions.
And then, often, they keep on writing them. And writing them.
It's not just the feds who are in on this culture of overregulation. Local governments can be just as bad, such as the Coralville, Iowa, police shutting down 4-year-old Abigail Krstinger's sidewalk lemonade stand because she lacked a $400 city permit-a feat duplicated in Midway, Georgia; Appleton, Wisconsin; McAllen, Texas, and more than three dozen other cities across the country that were reported in the media. Some parents were slapped with $500 fines for allowing their kids to sell lemonade without the proper (expensive) permits. Local bureaucracies have even restricted or stopped annual Girl Scout cookie sales drives.
Time to cue Tocqueville again. Increasingly it appears we have arrived at the kind of governance he warned about in his late chapter in Democracy in America entitled "What kind of despotism democratic nations have to fear." He described a "soft despotism" that "would be more extensive and milder" that the tyrannies of history, but which "would degrade men without tormenting them." Tocqueville struggled to give this phenomenon a meaningful term:
I myself seek in vain an expression that exactly reproduces the idea that I form of it for myself and that contains it; the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. The thing is new, therefore I must try to describe it, since I cannot name it.
It is ironic that a profound thinker from France-which came early and hard to governance by bureaux-would fail to conceive the formal term bureaucracy, but his description certainly hits the mark better than just about any thinker with the possible exception of Max Weber. The climax of de Tocqueville's argument is one of the best-known passages of his great book:
Thus, after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends it arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.
It's not just conservatives who criticize bureaucracy and "red tape." The Clinton Administration decried unresponsive government and conducted a major "reinventing government" initiative that purported to streamline federal agencies and actually succeeded in reducing the number of federal civilian employees. But the rebellions never seem to succeed, or at least not for long. Bureaucracy seems to have settled in as the dominant center of gravity in American government; de Tocqueville feared this outcome:
I have always believed that this sort of regulated, mild, and peaceful servitude, whose picture I have just painted, could be combined better than one imagines with some of the external forms of freedom, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.
In times of national tragedy we expect our leaders to speak with insight, seriousness, and solemnity. The Trayvon Martin affair isn't a national tragedy, though, it's a personal one.
Nonetheless, President Obama decided to discuss it today in an unscheduled appearance to talk solely about this matter. The transcript is here.
Obama's remarks were certainly solemn, and were not devoid of insight and seriousness. At times, he rose to the occasion (to the extent this is one); at other times, not so much. My hunch, though, is that the latter times were to some extent in service of the former.
Early on, the president doubled down on irrelevant biographical reflection:
You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.
But was young Obama suspended from school twice, once for getting caught with a burglary tool and a dozen items of property that did not belong to him? Was young Obama into fighting and seeing his opponent bleed? Did he ever sucker punch anyone, as Zimmerman says Martin sucker punched him?
Obama explained that very few African-American men haven't had the experience of being watched closely in a department store or hearing car door locks click as they approach. But did Obama ever respond by "grounding and pounding" the observer or the lock clicker? If not, then there's no reason to believe that Martin could have been Obama 35 years ago.
In any event, Martin's death is no more or less tragic depending on Obama's biography.
Obama then offered a less than focused discussion about the "history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws" and "the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system. . .both [as] victims and perpetrators of violence." From this discussion, he concluded that there's "a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different."
Is this Obama's "sense"? He didn't say. He just put it out there.
This, it seems to me, is irresponsible. If Obama really believes that, on the evidence in this case, Zimmerman would have been convicted if Martin had been white, he should say so and explain why. Referring to America's "history" of unfair verdicts in race cases won't suffice, absent evidence that this pattern persists - of which Obama offered none. And the fact that young African-Americans disproportionately are "perpetrators of violence" should not produce a sense that the outcome of Zimmerman's trial was race-based.
On the other hand, if Obama doesn't see good reason to believe that Zimmerman would have been convicted had Martin been white, I don't think he should be voicing that view, even if he's only attributing it to others. I suspect that Obama sees himself as an "intermediary" or "translator" between "black American" and "white America." But the effect of this portion of his remarks is mostly to stir the pot.
Obama was on far more responsible ground when he called for non-violence on the part of those demonstrating against the verdict.
Next, in the most newsworthy portion of his talk, Obama indicated that, though Eric Holder is right to continue investigating the matter, it is unlikely that any litigation will come from that investigation:
Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government - the criminal code. And law enforcement has traditionally done it at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.
Perhaps Obama's personalized and other musings about race in the first part of his talk were designed in part to make walking away from federal prosecution of Zimmerman more palatable to blacks. By convincing African-Americans that he really is a black president, he positions himself to receive less blowback for not persecuting Zimmerman to the max.
So too with the next portion of his comments, in which Obama discussed things like racial profiling legislation and "stand your ground" laws. I'll leave my reaction to these policy issues for another post.
Obama then called for "all of us to do some soul-searching" in the aftermath of the Zimmerman trial. Soul-searching is never to be despised. But in the scheme of things, the Zimmerman-Martin affair is pretty close to a one-off, at least insofar as fatalities are concerned. The better cause for soul-searching is the epidemic of black-on-black killings. Obama skirted this issue early in his remarks, but did mention it in the context of soul-searching.
Too bad.
Saving his best for last, Obama concluded on a note of uplift:
I don't want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. I doesn't mean that we're in a postracial society. It doesn't mean that racism is eliminated. But you know, when I talk to Malia and Sasha and I listen to their friends and I see them interact, they're better than we are. They're better than we were on these issues. And that's true in every community that I've visited all across the country.
And so, you know, we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues, and those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids these days I think have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did, and that along this long, difficult journey, you know, we're becoming a more perfect union - not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.
Here, at last, was our president sounding presidential.
On the whole, Obama's remarks were a roughly equal mixture of sense and borderline nonsense. But under the circumstances, I see the net effect as more salutary than not.
Aside from Power Line, where else do you find worthy blog action these days?
I like to take in the Post-Modern Conservative blog, which is a project of the good people at First Things. I'm not convinced that "post-modern conservatism" (a project of one of the main contributors to the site, Peter Lawler of Berry College) isn't an oxymoron, or at least hugely problematic, but the entries on this site are always good, and include a number of alumni of my old home turf at NoLeftTurns (whose archives are still up!) including Lawler, Peter Spiliakos, and Kate Pitrone. (And while we're talking about First Things, this is a good place to note the publication of a Festschrift for Hadley Arkes, A Second Look at First Things: The Case for Conservative Politics. Richard John Neuhaus named the magazine after Hadley's 1986 book First Things, naturally prompting Hadley to say he would title his next book Urology and What It Can Do for You, just to confound Neuhaus.)
Next, if you want good cultural commentary-and who doesn't?-check out Acculturated.com. It features a stable of young, up-and-coming conservative writers including Emily Esfahani Smith (who seems to be everywhere), Julia Shaw, R.J. Moeller, Mark Tapson, and many others. Enjoy especially this trailer for the site, "Taking Back the Culture One Post at a Time":
Finally, at the complete other end of the blog spectrum, econonerds will want to take note of Stanford economist John Taylor's blog, economicsone. If you don't know about the "Taylor Rule," you can check it out here. There's a high chance that a future Republican president will install Taylor at the head of the Federal Reserve or Treasury Department to help unwind the damage of the Obama years.
Probably not. But I'm an optimist, except when I'm not, so let's look for a silver lining.
As Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez will have an important role in implementing comprehensive immigration reform if such legislation is enacted. But, Perez's background in this area demonstrates that he cannot be trusted to implement immigration reform even-handedly, or even to abide by the law. As a member of the Montgomery County Council, he promoted spending taxpayer dollars on day-laborer sites to facilitate off-the-books work by illegal immigrants.
This is part of a pattern of lawlessness and cynical manipulation of the law by Perez with which our readers are familiar.
Accordingly, Perez's confirmation provides even more reason for the House of Representatives not to trust the Obama administration to implement comprehensive immigration reform legislation in good faith compliance with the law. And without such trust, there is no reason to believe that this iteration of amnesty will differ materially from the great (but lesser) amnesty of 1986.
Such an enhanced realization by the House is the silver lining, if any, to Perez's confirmation.
If you get your "news" from CNN, you might not know that the IRS scandal reached the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel this week. My daughter Eliana previewed the testimony before the House Oversight Committee yesterday in the NRO column "Targeting from the top." By my reckoning, that leaves the scandal with one degree of separation from the White House.
So ranking member (or should that be ranking member?) Elijah Cummings and his Democratic colleagues did their best to turn yesterday's committee hearing into a circus. CNN covered the circus and overlooked the news. In Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room on CNN, which I happened to catch yesterday afternoon, it was situation normal. Peggy Noonan caught the circus but kept her eye on the news, or so I deduce from her excellent Wall Street Journal column "A bombshell in the IRS scandal.".
Marty the Magician and others in the business of pulling a rabbit from a hat are under strict orders from the federal government to develop a "contingency plan" for handling their critters in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.
Magicians should now expect random annual searches by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who now require that magicians carry their "contingency plans" on them at all times. Katz points out that Marty the Magician now has to plan for "emergencies" involving his rabbits and even identify a chain of command for who will be responsible for handling these contingencies. Not only that, but Marty also has to have a federal license to use his bunny, Casey, in his magic acts.
Rapper Pitbull. (Photo: Alberto E. Tamargo/Sipa USA/Newscom)
Armando Christian Perez, better known by his stage name "Pitbull," is a rapper who fights for smart education policy. Perez knows charter schools not only provide a solid education but also allow parents choices in how to educate their children. He is so sure about this that he is funding a new charter school in Little Havana, an inner-city neighborhood where he grew up.
Last month, the Obama administration announced a new policy that would cut America's nuclear weapons stockpile by a third. This change would be done unilaterally, without regard for America's actual military needs.
It appears that President Obama made his decision backwards, Heritage Foundation expert Baker Spring explains: he decided to reduce America's nuclear arsenal and then commissioned a report - the Nuclear Posture Review Implementation Study - to justify the decision.
What should he have done? Spring argues that he should have first assessed America's requirements for nuclear deterrence and then chosen the number of nuclear weapons that would meet the requirements.
Reducing our nuclear deterrent this way is dangerous, Spring says.
"Somebody has to get fired over this," said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). "We fight groups like PSI all over the world and now we find our own church funds them."
The governor has not said whether he will sign or veto the bill, which could cause parents to lose custody of their children under certain circumstances.
Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group has withdrawn from a state court case in which it was defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and a similar statute.
The scientists behind the study pointed out that while the increased risk was statistically significant, it translates into comparatively small numbers in the real world.
In an exclusive interview with John-Henry Westen, Congressman Trent Franks said, "It is important in moments like this for us to become more active than we ever have been, especially in the blogs and on the internet."
"There is a substantial public interest in ensuring that no individual or corporation has their legs cut out from under them while these difficult issues are resolved," the court ruled.
Local Family Planning officials reportedly dragged Li Fengfei to their office and beat her, knocking out one of her front teeth, before forcing her to undergo the abortion.
Denis Naughten, the TD, who left Fine Gael in 2011, told media outlets on Friday that he was "saddened" to be "expelled" from the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children examining the Protection of Life During Pregnancy bill.
When a politician or religious person says that he or she is a "progressive," you can predict what will follow: an aggressive series of programs designed to conform society to the most recent trending moral and social fad even though history has proven to us again and again much of what actually works.
Even among those who claim no particular religious affiliation in an earlier Pew Forum survey, roughly 80 percent still believe in God or a universal spirit, and a majority describe themselves as "religious" or "spiritual."
In recent months, between 400,000 and a million demonstrators of all ages have crowded the streets of Paris and other large cities in France, loudly objecting to a gay marriage law that, the demonstrators insist, enshrines the notion that mothers and fathers are "optional" for children.
She is comfortable with women and children dying in a posh Maryland suburban clinic, but finds it reprehensible only when stripped of its sterile medical façade, and occurring in a vermin infested inner city office.
Terrorist Rocks Rolling Stone By L. Brent Bozell III The victims and their families surely choked when the magazine responded to the furor by claiming, "Our hearts go out to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, our thoughts are always with them and their families." What arrogant nonsense.
Black America's Real Problem Isn't White Racism By Patrick J. Buchanan From listening to cable channels and hearing Holder, Sharpton, Jealous and others, one would think the great threat to black children today emanates from white vigilantes and white cops. But is this the reality in Black America?
Slavery in America, Saudi-Style By Michelle MalkinYes, there's a war on women in America, and its waged by Saudi royals and elites who've imported human trafficking and abuse of domestic workers onto U.S. soil. Political correctness and diplomatic fecklessness are the handmaidens of women's subjugation, right here in the U.S. of A.
Detroit. Bankrupt. By Rich Galen It is the fault of the elected officials -- Democratic elected officials in Detroit -- who didn't have the, um ... guts to ever say "No" to their largest voting bloc, the municipal workers' unions, which pressed for ever-rising wages for no additional work.
Well, it was only a matter of time, but the city of Detroit became the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy, as the state-appointed emergency manager filed for Chapter 9 protection yesterday. Just 50 years ago, Detroit was the richest city in America and the birthplace of the middle class. Needless to say, once the progressives got involved, it all went downhill. Rock City has hit rock bottom. MORE
Get complete coverage of this story and much more on your mobile device with TheBlaze iOS app! Download the app HERE.
Meet the libertarian mayor behind one of Colorado's most thriving towns
On last night's Glenn Beck Program, guest-host Dana Loesch sat down with Mayor Mike Dunafon of Glendale, Colorado to talk about the community he has created based on libertarian principles. Dana, who has visited the small town on the outskirts of Denver, said Dunafon "has made it in way you could achieve only in America." Watch the entire interview HERE.
Real News: IRS in the crosshairs
On last night's Real News, the panel discussed the House Oversight Committee's hearing on the IRS scandal. Given the mounting evidence, can Democrats continue to argue that this scandal was manufactured by the right? Get the news and analysis the mainstream media missed, weeknights at 6pm ET only on TheBlaze. WATCH
Rep. Jason Chaffetz explodes during IRS hearing
During the House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) unloaded on the White House and a top Democratic colleague over the idea that House Republicans should drop their investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups. Watch his fiery remarks HERE.
Several full blown scandals have bombarded the Obama administration in the past few weeks alone, building on an already impressive list of past scandals. It's basically a full-time job to keep track of all the corruption in this administration, and since we know you are far too busy to pick up a second job chronicling Obama's lies & abuses, we attempted to do it for you this week on GlennBeck.com. See the timelines of DAY 1: The NSA, DAY 2: The IRS, and DAY 3: Intimidating the Press.
Man in the Moon merchandise is now available!
From the Man in the Moon DVD and official soundtrack to t-shirts and more, Man in the Moon merchandise is now available. You can find all of the great products HERE.
Yesterday, Leah Durant joined Andrew to discuss the Black American Leadership Alliance's opposition to the Gang of Eight's immigration bill. Why does it seem like the government is giving preferential treatment to illegal immigrants over American citizens? You can watch Andrew's thoroughly researched, unvarnished, and passionate opinion, weeknights at 7pm ET only on TheBlaze! WATCH
The AP releases scathing 'fact check' of President Obama
It looks like the Associated Press has ended its love affair with the Obama Administration. Yesterday, the AP published "Fact Check: Obama Spins Health Insurance Rebates," which skewered many of the claims the president made in his health care speech on Thursday. "Another year, another round of exaggeration from President Barack Obama and his administration about health insurance rebates," the article reads. Read the complete fact check.
Be the first to read the third of installment of the bestselling Michael Vey series!
LIKE the Michael Vey Official Fan Page on Facebook and be the first to read exclusive excerpts from Michael Vey 3: The Battle of the Ampere! The more 'likes' the page receives, the faster the exclusive content will be released, so make sure to SHARE the page with your friends too!
WATCH: Chris Matthews apologizes on behalf of ALL 'white people'
During a segment with two black guests, MSNBC host Chris Matthews took it upon himself to apologize for racism on behalf of all 'white people.' His comments came after a discussion about race and racial profiling. WATCH
Did you miss yesterday's newsletter? See what you missed HERE.
Wonderful World of Stu: Weiner for Mayor!
Anthony Weiner is running for Mayor of New York City, and the Wonderful World of Stu got an in-depth look at his new campaign ad. Make sure to catch this Saturday's episode of the Wonderful World of Stu at 10pm ET only on TheBlaze. WATCH
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What happens when a journalist comes out as a creationist?
Journalist Virginia Heffernan stunned many of her fellow reporters when she penned a piece for Yahoo last week entitled, "Why I'm a Creationist." The reaction to her reasoning has been ugly. Heffernan has had a successful career at The New York Times and Slate, among other outlets, but she now finds herself at the center of the ever-intense evolution vs. creationism debate. Read her article and see the reaction HERE.
The sequel to The Overton Window has finally arrived!
Glenn's blockbuster novel from 2010 now continues with The Eye of Moloch - a thriller that's seemingly been ripped right from today's headlines. Follow Molly and her group of 'Founders Keepers' as they work to expose the secrets of a government that wants them dead. If you're looking for a summer beach read or just something to help you get even less sleep at night, The Eye of Moloch is a perfect choice. Buy a copy now and get an invite to an exclusive online event with Glenn. Get all the details HERE.
6pm ET - Real News: In the wake of the Rolling Stone cover of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the panel discusses the real face of terror.
7pm ET - Wilkow!: With Detroit officially in bankruptcy, Andrew looks at what went wrong for the city.
Saturday @ 10pm ET - Wonderful World of Stu: Stu compiles some of his favorite moments for a very special 'best of' episode.
Saturday @ 10:30pm ET - The B.S. of A.: With Anthony Weiner and Eliott Spitzer running for office in NYC, it's apparently open season for any scumbag to run for office. You won't want to miss this hilarious new episode.
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Jesse Ventura's lawsuit against "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle -- purportedly the deadliest-ever American servicemen -- can proceed with the war hero's widow as a substitute defendant, a judge has ruled.
Romanticizing the filibuster
Gun Owners of America
BANKRUPT: Detroit files for Chapter 9 bankruptcy 
