NFL Rejects Being Used to Push Obamacare

NFL Rejects Being Used to Push Obamacare

The Right Lane update 6.25.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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Ex-Soviet era spy chief: 'Disinformation' alive and well under Obama
Highest-ranking defector reveals secret strategies that are destroying America

The highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is at it again. A quarter century ago, in his international bestseller "Red Horizons," Pacepa exposed the massive crimes and corruption of his former boss, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, giving the dictator a nervous breakdown and inspiring him to send assassination squads to the U.S. to find his former spy chief and kill him. They failed. On Christmas Day 1989, Ceausescu was executed by his own people at the end of a trial whose accusations came almost word-for-word out of "Red Horizons."  After courageously defecting to the United States, which he now proudly calls home, Pacepa became a major asset to the Central Intelligence Agency's efforts to deal with the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union. The CIA has praised Pacepa's cooperation for providing "an important and unique contribution to the United States," and President Ronald Reagan (seen below holding Pacepa's "Red Horizons") reportedly referred to it as "my bible for dealing with dictators."  His book "Red Horizons" and condemnation of the Obama administration CANNOT be ignored.

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Random Thoughts By Thomas Sowell
Random thoughts on the passing scene:

Edmund Burke said, "There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men." Evil men do not always snarl. Some smile charmingly. Those are the most dangerous. If you don't think the mainstream media slants the news, keep track of how often they tell you that the Arctic ice pack is shrinking and how seldom they tell you that the Antarctic ice pack is expanding. The latter news would not fit the "global warming" scenario that so many in the media are promoting.

Someone has referred to Vice President Biden as President Obama's "impeachment insurance." Even critics who are totally opposed to Barack Obama's policies do not want anything to cut short his presidency, with Joe Biden as his successor.

People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?

Given the shortage of articulate Republican leaders, it will be a real loss — to the country, not just to the Republicans — if Senator Marco Rubio discredits himself, early in his career, by supporting "comprehensive" immigration reform that amounts to just another amnesty, with false promises to secure the border.

Ever since I learned, as a teenager, that the "Saturday Evening Post" magazine was actually published on Wednesday mornings, I have been very skeptical about words. "Gun control" laws do not control guns, "rent control" laws do not control rent and government "stimulus" spending does not stimulate the economy.

It is hard to think of two people with more different personalities than New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama. But they are soul mates when it comes to thinking that they ought to take a whole spectrum of decisions out of citizens' hands, and impose the government's decisions on them.

Maybe the reason for the New York Yankees' low batting averages has something to do with the fact that so many of their batters seem to be swinging for the fences, even when a single would score the winning run.

President Obama's denial of knowledge about the various scandals in his administration that are starting to come to light suggests that his titles should now include Innocent-Bystander-in-Chief.

It has long been my belief that the sight of a good-looking woman lowers a man's IQ by at least 20 points. A man who doesn't happen to have 20 points he can spare can be in big trouble.

When Attorney General Eric Holder argued that a "path to citizenship" for illegal immigrants was a "civil right" and a "human right," that epitomized the contempt for the public's intelligence which has characterized so much of what has been said and done by the Obama administration.

You know you are old when waitresses call you "dear."

Although many people have been surprised and disappointed by Barack Obama, it is hard to think of a president whose policies were more predictable from his history, however radically different those policies are from his rhetoric.

When any two groups have different behavior or performance, that plain fact can be turned upside down and twisted to say that whatever criterion revealed those differences has had a "disparate impact" on one of the groups. In other words, the criterion is blamed for an injustice to those who failed to meet the standard.

Have you heard any gun control advocate even try to produce hard evidence that tighter gun control laws reduce murder rates? Does anyone seriously believe that people who are prepared to defy the laws against murder are going to obey laws against owning guns or large capacity magazines?

I may be among the few people who want Attorney General Eric Holder to keep his job — at least until the 2014 elections. Holder epitomizes what is wrong with the Obama administration. He is essentially Barack Obama without the charm, so it should be easier for the voters to see through his lies and corruption.

Despite political differences, it is hard not to feel sorry for White House press secretary Jay Carney, for all the absurdities his job requires him to say with a straight face. What is he going to do when this administration is over? Wear a disguise, change his name or be put into a witness protection program?

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Soaring National Debt Remains a Grave Threat  By Alison Acosta Fraser and J.D. Foster, Ph.D.
Federal government debt has nearly doubled since President Barack Obama took office and is projected to increase 50 percent over the next decade—and then rise rapidly thereafter—under existing policies.[1] As federal debt has soared, so have concerns about America’s future.

Used properly, debt can safely finance private and government investment in productive capital to support economic growth. But too much debt can ruin a family, a business, or a nation.[2]
Fiscal Outlook Bleak
Some in Congress and the media argue that the recent improvement in the deficit means no more need be done this year to rein in spending. While deficits have improved somewhat due to the fiscal cliff tax increases and discretionary spending cuts from the Budget Control Act, this improvement is transient. By the end of the decade, the deficit will again approach $1 trillion as entitlement spending takes off.
Recent progress on the deficit is also woefully inadequate. Debt will continue to soar over the next decade: Debt held by the public will increase from $11 trillion in 2012 to $19 trillion in 2023. Debt subject to the legal debt limit—which includes debt owed to federal trust funds such as Social Security’s—will swell by $9 trillion, reaching $25 trillion after a decade. The result is highly likely to eventually spur exceptionally high interest rates and a slower economy.
U.S. Debt Levels Dangerous and Becoming More So
Recent and projected growth in U.S. government debt poses a serious hazard to the nation. Clearly, high levels of government debt mean that substantial government resources must go toward paying interest on that debt, often called servicing the debt. And a growing body of research supports the economic theory that high levels of debt relative to the size of the economy, sometimes called the debt ratio, eventually lead to unusually high interest rates and slower growth.
One traditional explanation relating government debt ratio and interest rates, referred to as “crowding out,” observes that government borrowing subtracts from domestic saving available to private borrowers, who then bid up the price of their borrowing, which, of course, is the interest rate they pay. That works in a closed economic system, but that is not the way the world works today.
Rather, the ability to tap into foreign savings by borrowing from abroad, as the U.S. is doing, appears largely to defuse this simple crowding-out effect at moderate debt ratio levels. This may explain in part the U.S.’s currently low interest rates. However, the foreign appetite for any nation’s debt is not unlimited. At some point, U.S. debt issuance would become so great relative to foreign demand that market resistance would drive up U.S. interest rates just as though the conventional crowding-out effect were in full force.
Rising Debt, Rising Interest Rates: The Developing Consensus
The relationship between interest rates and government debt issuance depends on many factors, yet one abiding conclusion stands out: When debt gets high enough or rises fast enough, markets notice and interest rates rise.
A team of prominent economists recently delvedmore deeply into the influence borrowing abroad has on the interest rate effects of government borrowing by including in the analysis a nation’s current account deficit—essentially the net value between the value of what a nation exports and the value of what it imports. Their results strongly suggest that the ability to borrow from abroad at moderate levels of debt likely reduces borrowing costs as expected, but the advantages of being able to borrow abroad rapidly dissipate as foreign bond buyers respond more quickly by demanding higher interest rates as either the debt share or the current account deficit increases.
The authors further observed that interest rate problems “can arrive quickly and dramatically once the debt loads and current-account deficits get sufficiently high.”
Rising Debt and Slowing Economies
A growing body of evidence supports the view that high levels of debt are associated with reduced rates of economic growth. This message has been clouded by revelations of substantial methodological flaws in the widely cited work of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. However, subsequent work corrected the flaws and reaffirmed the fundamental conclusion regarding the dangers of excessive debt.
Heritage’s Salim Furth notes that “in the end, all of [the] corrections and critiques show that countries with debt above 90 percent of GDP grow on average 2.0 percent less per year than low-debt countries and 1.0 percent less per year than countries with debt levels between 60 percent and 90 percent of GDP.”
The U.S. government debt ratio has already risen dramatically and is expected to grow rapidly late in the decade. The literature accords with theory in suggesting that a high and rapidly rising debt ratio should increase interest rates and weaken the economy. Yet interest rates remain near historic lows, and the economy, while disappointing, is growing.
Two key factors suggest that the traditional relationships between debt and interest rates and economic growth will resume. First, the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing is intended to push down long-term interest rates. But the Fed is already planning to phase out this program.
Second, persistent extreme uncertainty in global financial markets has heightened the safe haven aspect of the United States, which consequently lures vast sums of foreign capital from riskier locales, thus pushing down U.S. interest rates. However, at some point, as foreign tensions subside and the U.S. debt ratio rises, the attractiveness of U.S. debt to foreign lenders will decline. The likely outcome for both factors suggests that the recent period of abnormally low interest rates will end.
A Nation at Risk, a Clock Ticking
The U.S. economy is slowly recovering, but President Obama’s massive deficits, soaring debt, and tepid support for reforms to render America’s entitlement programs affordable pose a grave economic threat.
Recent welcome yet inadequate progress in the deficit combined with currently low interest rates despite rising debt are beguiling policymakers and the nation about the risks stemming from America’s irresponsible fiscal policy, lulling them into complacency. Not merely the calm before the storm, economic conditions brought about by developments abroad and monetary policy at home have effectively anesthetized financial markets against the risks of U.S. fiscal profligacy. The anesthesia, however, will prove temporary. Interest rates will almost certainly rise past the normal levels now forecast, and the economy will suffer—all largely due to budget deficits now being incurred and to the inaction to address the even greater, entitlement-driven deficits in the years immediately ahead.
—Alison Acosta Fraser is Director of and J. D. Foster, PhD, is Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Herita Foundation

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http://thelookingspoon.com/images/blog/2013/obama_gets_interrupted.jpg

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"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 1823

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The Right Lane update 6.24.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

To subscribe, see note below

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Five myths about the National Security Agency By James Bamford

James Bamford is the author of three books on the NSA, including “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.” by James Bamford When the National Security Agency was created through a top-secret memorandum signed by President Harry Truman in 1952, the agency was so secret that only a few members of Congress knew about it. While the NSA gradually became known over the decades, its inner workings remain extremely hidden, even with the recent leaks about its gathering of Americans’ phone records and tapping into data from the nine largest Internet companies. Let’s pull back the shroud a bit to demystify this agency.

1. The NSA is allowed to spy on everyone, everywhere.

After his release of documents to the Guardian and The Washington Post, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said, “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal e-mail.” But Snowden probably couldn’t eavesdrop on just about anyone, including the president, without breaking the law. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act forbids the NSA from targeting U.S. citizens or legal residents without an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This applies whether the person is in the United States or overseas. According to documents from Snowden published by The Post and the Guardian on Thursday, if agency employees pick up the communications of Americans incidentally while monitoring foreign targets, they are supposed to destroy the information unless it contains “significant foreign intelligence” or evidence of a crime. What’s technically feasible is a different matter. Since 2003, the NSA has been able to monitor much of the Internet and telephone communication entering, leaving and traveling through the United States with secret eavesdropping hardware and software installed at major AT&T switches, and probably those of other companies, around the country.

2. The courts make sure that what the NSA does is legal.

This is part of the NSA’s mantra. Because both the surveillance court and the activities it monitors are secret, it’s hard to contradict. Yet we know about at least one transgression since Congress created the court in 1978 in response to the NSA’s previous abuses. Under the court’s original charter, the NSA was required to provide it with the names of all U.S. citizens and residents it wished to monitor. Yet the George W. Bush administration issued a presidential order in 2002 authorizing the NSA to eavesdrop without court-approved warrants. After the New York Times exposed the warrantless wiretapping program in 2005, Congress amended the law to weaken the court’s oversight and incorporate many of the formerly illegal eavesdropping activities conducted during the Bush years. Rather than individual warrants, the court can now approve vast, dragnet-style warrants, or orders, as they’re called. For example, the first document released by the Guardian was a top-secret order from the court requiring Verizon to hand over the daily telephone records of all its customers, including local calls.

3. Congress has a lot of oversight over the NSA.

This is the second part of the mantra from NSA Director Keith Alexander and other senior agency officials. Indeed, when the congressional intelligence committees were formed in 1976 and 1977, their emphasis was on protecting the public from the intelligence agencies, which were rife with abuses. Today, however, the intelligence committees are more dedicated to protecting the agencies from budget cuts than safeguarding the public from their transgressions. Hence their failure to discover the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping activity and their failure to take action against the NSA’s gathering of telephone and Internet records.

4. NSA agents break into foreign locations to steal codes and plant bugs.

According to intelligence sources, a number of years ago there was a large debate between the NSA and the CIA over who was responsible for conducting “black-bag jobs” — breaking into foreign locations to plant bugs and steal hard drives, or recruiting local agents to do the same. The NSA argued that it was in charge of eavesdropping on communications, known as signals intelligence, and that the data on hard drives counts. But the CIA argued that the NSA had responsibility only for information “in motion,” while the CIA was responsible for information “at rest.” It was eventually decided that the CIA’s National Clandestine Service would focus on stealing hard drives and planting bugs, and the NSA, through a highly secret unit known as Tailored Access Operations, would steal foreign data through cyber-techniques.

5. Snowden could have aired his concerns internally rather than leaking the documents.

I’ve interviewed many NSA whistleblowers, and the common denominator is that they felt ignored when attempting to bring illegal or unethical operations to the attention of higher-ranking officials. For example, William Binney and several other senior NSA staffers protested the agency’s domestic collection programs up the chain of command, and even attempted to bring the operations to the attention of the attorney general, but they were ignored. Only then did Binney speak publicly to me for an article in Wired magazine. In a Q&A on the Guardian Web site, Snowden cited Binney as an example of “how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.” And even when whistleblowers bring their concerns to the news media, the NSA usually denies that the activity is taking place. The agency denied Binney’s charges that it was obtaining all consumer metadata from Verizon and had access to virtually all Internet traffic. It was only when Snowden leaked the documents revealing the phone-log program and showing how PRISM works that the agency was forced to come clean.

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We Know Washington Doesn’t Want to Stop Illegal Immigration - Rush Limbaugh

It’s never been about stopping illegal's and securing the border.  We don’t trust them! They don’t want to secure the border. The 1986 law was to ensure that we never ended up where we are. They promised us in 1986, “We do this, and this is the last time.” It doesn’t happen. The fence, 700 miles of fence, it’s the law; it must be built. Only 36 miles has been built. Two amendments offered to complete the fence, which is already the law, were defeated. Now this Hoeven-Corker amendment says, they don’t get a green card until we have these new border agents in place, and they don’t get a green card until the new exit visa technology’s in place. “In place” doesn’t mean anything. How’s it going to be used? Is it going to be used? There just isn’t any evidence! You know, the minutia of McCain, “Well, we got the 60 votes, 61. We got Big Business, we got the evangelicals, but we need to enlist their help in spreading the word.”  There’s no word to spread, because there isn’t any trust that undergirds the words. It isn’t any more complicated than this. Do you realize that if they want 46 million illegal's, most people in this country would sign off on that if there were just a serious efforts to shut down the border and make it really the last time this happened? They don’t want to secure the border, and that’s why none of the rest of it matters to anybody and that’s why the details end up being ignored and that’s why the details end up being laughed at and it’s why certain people are losing respect because they aren’t trusted, and it’s a shame. It’s not that we’re not smart enough to understand what’s going on. We know full well what’s going on. Republicans and Democrats both want open borders for their own political and financial reasons, and in order to get what they want, they’re going to have to somehow convince us that they mean to do something they have no intention of doing, and that is securing the border.

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Jihawg Ammo: Putting the “Ham” in Muhammad: maybe not so true, but truly humorous -  by Michael Minkoff

For years, my pastor used to recommend that we dip our ammo in pig’s blood and tell Muslim terrorists we were doing it. He said this would end the Muslim jihad against us overnight. Pork is “harem” to Muslims, meaning it is sinful—unclean. According to my pastor, if you eat or even touch pork as a Muslim, you cannot enter paradise until you are cleansed. Haraam should not be confused with “harem” which is what all the jihadists think they will be getting when they get to heaven. That’s going to be one nasty surprise.  Anyway, so my pastor recommended that we dip all our ammo in pig’s blood and let all the jihadists know what we were doing. If we shot them during a terrorist attack, they would be barred from paradise even though they had died in jihad. Apparently, Allah’s arbitrary sense of retribution trumps his obligation to reward. “Sorry, pal. No seventy brown-eyed virgins. And, to add insult to injury, you could have been eating bacon this whole time. Bummer.” Well, have no fear intrepid patriots. A company in Idaho—South Fork Industries—is doing just that. Called “jihawg ammo,” their pork-laced munitions are guaranteed to contaminate even the most devout Muslim in death so that his cruel god will not be able to accept his riddled corpse into the promised den of chauvinist debauchery. One of their slogans is “Put some HAM in MuHAMmad.” No, I can’t take credit for that one. If you’re interested in buying some jihawg ammo, you can find out more here.  As an aside, I don’t think the Quran actually penalizes someone for coming in contact with pork, only for consuming it. But, hey, if we can get the Muslims to believe our interpretation of their “holy” book, we should be golden, right? Oh, and I just had a thought: If the bullet hits their bloodstream, wouldn’t that kind of be like consuming pork? I don’t know. If I were a Muslim jihadist, I would definitely not risk a chance at Paradise on a technicality.

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Snowden, the World, Making a Fool of Obama

This is a matter of trust. We certainly can’t trust liberals with this kind of power. All of the recent scandals show that our government is out of control. NSA leaker Edward Snowden slipped back under the radar on Monday, failing to show up on the Cuba-bound flight he was expected to board from Moscow and befuddling the media who have been tracking the international fugitive’s every move. Meanwhile, Ecuador’s foreign minister said the country was considering a request from Snowden for asylum. Snowden, who evaded U.S. extradition efforts and left Hong Kong for Russia over the weekend, had been booked on an Aeroflot flight to Havana on Monday morning. But reporters on the plane, and an Aeroflot agent, reported no sign of him. It’s unclear what U.S. officials might know about Snowden’s location. The U.S. government has been pressuring countries not to provide him passage, and has revoked his passport.

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"Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, founded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings." --Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

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The Right Lane update

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

To subscribe, see note below

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Federal Employees Paid to Work for Unions

More than 250 employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs are being paid to work for government employee unions rather than veterans — even though the VA has a backlog of nearly 1 million unprocessed benefit claims. These employees are on "official time," defined as "paid time off from assigned Government duties to represent a union or its bargaining unit employees," according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).  Their salaries range from $26,420 to the $131,849 being paid to a nurse in San Francisco who represents the Nation Federation of Federal Employees.  Government workers on "official time" have office space at the agency that employs them, are paid for full-time work, and receive medical insurance and other fringe benefits, even though many are not required to show up at the agency, reports Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The VA spent $42.5 million on official time in 2011, including salaries and benefits. Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Rob Portman of Ohio sent a letter to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki saying: "Documents show that your department recently employed at least 85 nurses, some with six-figure salaries, who were in 100 percent official time status. At the same time, the department is recruiting more people to fill open nursing positions."  But official time is not limited to the VA. The OPM reported that the federal government paid more than $156 million to workers on official time in 2011, up from $139 million in 2010.  Sen. Coburn told Furchtgott-Roth: "It is unacceptable for employees to spend 100 percent of their time away from the job taxpayers pay them to do."  The vast majority of campaign contributions from government worker unions go to Democrats, Furchtgott-Roth observed in an article for Real Clear Markets.  Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia has introduced a bill to limit official time, and in the Senate, Kentucky's Rand Paul has a bill that would completely eliminate it.

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Clare Daly, Irish Politician, Slams Obama As ‘War Criminal’ In Parliament

“Is this person going for the hypocrite of the century award? Because we have to call things by their right names, and the reality is that by any serious examination, this man is a war criminal.” “This is the man who has facilitated a 200 percent increase in the use of drones, which have killed thousands of people including hundreds of children,” “There isn’t much peace in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, and there certainly isn’t much peace in Syria”

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Turning the tables on the spies

Lawsuits seeks to expose NSA secrets to the public by Garth Kant

Attorney Larry Klayman has filed the first lawsuits in the NSA spying case and they are receiving a lot of attention. In this exclusive interview, Klayman tells WND how the lawsuits could affect every American.

Klayman is a WND columnist, the founder of both Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, a prosecutor in the Reagan administration Justice Department and a member of the trial team that broke up the AT&T monopoly. He is suing President Obama, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the director of the NSA, the NSA, the CEO of Verizon, the U.S. Department of Justice and Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court.  Klayman alleges the NSA’s massive telephone surveillance program violates the “reasonable expectation of privacy, free speech and association, right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures and due process rights.” [Fourth Amendment]  The suits are class-actions on behalf of everyone in the country but also on behalf of Charles Strange, the father of a Navy SEAL who tragically died on August 6, 2011, in an attack in Afghanistan. In this exclusive interview, Klayman and Strange tell WND in detail what led them to file suit. Klayman told WND he believed the outrage over the NSA spying scandal could help unite the country. WND asked him how the left and right could come together. Strange and other parents of the SEALS who were killed believe their sons were targeted for retaliation and ambushed by the Taliban after Vice President Joe Biden revealed, and the administration then confirmed, that it was a SEAL Team VI unit that had killed Osama bin Laden just three months earlier. Strange says his phone has been tapped ever since he began criticizing the administration.  WND mentioned the president assured us no one from the government is listening to the content of our phone calls unless a court has given permission. However, WND reported a Democratic congressman who came out of a closed briefing last week said that’s not true, any number of analysts at the NSA can obtain the content from any phone call or email if they choose to do so, without a court authorization. WND asked Klayman if he believes that has happened in this case. Strange told WND he strongly believes there is a cover up of his son’s death that goes all the way to the top.

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Unasked and Unanswered Questions  by Walter Williams

Grutter v. Bollinger was the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s racial admissions policy. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority, said the U.S. Constitution "does not prohibit the Law School's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." But what are the educational benefits of a diverse student body?  Intellectuals argue that diversity is necessary for academic excellence, but what’s the evidence? For example, Japan is a nation bereft of diversity in any activity. Close to 99 percent of its population is of one race. Whose students do you think have higher academic achievement -- theirs or ours? According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, the academic performance of U.S. high-school students in reading, math and science pales in comparison with their diversity-starved counterparts in Japan.

Should companies be treated equally? According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed (9/7/2009) by Manhattan Institute’s energy expert Robert Bryce, Exxon Mobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with its pollutants. The company paid $600,000 in fines and fees. A recent Associated Press story (5/14/2013) reported that “more than 573,000 birds are killed by the country's wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.” The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted windmill farms, sometimes called bird Cuisinarts, for killing eagles and other protected bird species. In fact, AP reports that the Obama administration has shielded the industry from liability and has helped keep the scope of the deaths secret. It’s interesting that The Associated Press chose to report the story only after the news about its reporters being secretly investigated. That caused the Obama administration to fall a bit out of favor with them. But what the heck, the 14th Amendment's requirement of "equal protection" before the law for everybody can be cast aside in the name of diversity, so why can’t it be cast aside in the name of saving the planet? There are politically favored industries just as there are politically favored groups.

What’s the difference between a progressive, a liberal and a racist? In some cases, not much. President Woodrow Wilson was a leading progressive who believed in notions of racial superiority and inferiority. He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith’s "Birth of a Nation" movie, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him. During one private screening, President Wilson exclaimed: "It's like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." When President Wilson introduced racial segregation to the civil service, the NAACP and the National Independent Political League protested. Wilson vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of Negroes.

Dr. Thomas Sowell, in “Intellectuals and Race,” documents other progressives who were advocates of theories of racial inferiority. They included former presidents of Stanford University and MIT, among others. Eventually, the views of progressives fell out of favor. They changed their name to liberals, but in the latter part of the 20th century, the name liberals fell into disrepute. Now they are back to calling themselves progressives.

I’m not arguing that today’s progressives are racists like their predecessors, but they share a contempt for liberty, just as President Wilson did. According to Hillsdale College history professor Paul A. Rahe -- author of "Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift" -- in his National Review Online (4/11/13) article “Progressive Racism,” Wilson wanted to persuade his compatriots to get “beyond the Declaration of Independence.” President Wilson said the document “did not mention the questions" of his day, adding, “It is of no consequence to us.” My question is: Why haven’t today’s progressives disavowed their racist predecessors?

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NSA Surveillance of Politicians: Be ‘Compliant’ or Be Exposed (Think Petraeus)

You ever wonder why politicians never follow through with their campaign promises? A lot of it does have to do with the irresistible bribes they are enticed with once they get into office, the back-room deals and that fact that these politicians don’t have backbones. But there might be another reason. They’re being snooped on by the NSA too. It’s a way to ensure these politicians keep playing the game and are compliant with their “handlers,” lest they be exposed, humiliated, and forced to resign.  Russ Tice is a former intelligence analyst and whistleblower during the George W. days. He said that the intelligence community kept surveillance over all sorts of politicians, ranging from military officials to judges to congressmen and senators. Here are some of the things he pointed out:

 “They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial… But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people… Here’s the big one… [T]his was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, D.C. That’s who they went after, and that’s the president of the United States now.”

Are you afraid or outraged yet?

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Hilliary Clinton: Female President Would Send Right Signal

Hillary Rodham Clinton mused aloud about the significance of America electing its first female president. Left unsaid: whether she might try again to be the one. In a video of a private Clinton speech posted to YouTube on Friday, Clinton told a Canadian audience that she hoped the U.S. would elect a woman to the White House because it would send “exactly the right historical signal” to men, women and children. She said women in politics need to “dare to compete” and the nation needs to “take that leap of faith.” “Let me say this, hypothetically speaking, I really do hope that we have a woman president in my lifetime,” Clinton said at a women’s conference in Toronto on Thursday night. “And whether it’s next time or the next time after that, it really depends on women stepping up and subjecting themselves to the political process, which is very difficult.” The former secretary of state told the cheering audience that she would “certainly vote for the right woman to be president.”

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Study Casts Doubt On Whether Health Insurance Improves Health

Does having health insurance make people healthier? It’s widely assumed that it does. Obamacare advocates repeatedly said that its expansion of Medicaid would save thousands of lives a year. Obamacare critics seldom challenged the idea that increased insurance coverage would improve at least some people’s health. Now, out of Oregon, comes a study that casts doubt on the premise that insurance improves health.  In 2008, Oregon state government had enough Medicaid money to extend the program to 10,000 people but many more were eligible. So the state set up a lottery to determine who would get coverage. That created a randomized control trial (RCT), to compare the health outcomes of about 6,000 people who won the lottery with a similar number who lost. RCTs are the best way to test the effects of public policies, as Jim Manzi argues in his recent book “Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics and Society.” Other studies compare the effect of policies on populations that may differ in significant ways — apples and oranges. RCTs compare apples and apples. The only previous RCT on health care policies was conducted by the RAND Corporation between 1971 and 1982. It found no statistically significant difference in health outcomes from having more insurance. But health care has changed a lot since then. The Oregon Health Study, published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, found much the same thing. Comparing three important measures -- blood sugar levels, blood pressure and cholesterol levels -- It found no significant difference after two years between those on Medicaid and those who were uninsured.  It did find lower levels of reported depression among the group on Medicaid. And it found, unsurprisingly, that they did save significant money. Those findings may not be unrelated. The findings have serious implications for Obamacare. Half of its predicted increase in insurance coverage comes from expansion of Medicaid. Obamacare supporters have assumed that those eligible for Medicaid -- poorer, sicker and less steadier in habits than the general population -- would have great difficulty getting health care without insurance. The Oregon Health Study is evidence that at least in that state Medicaid-eligible people without insurance -- a "pretty sick" population, one state official said -- nevertheless managed somehow to get care that produced results about as good as those who won the lottery.

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Why We Need Nukes; And Why Obama Is Wrong by Frank Camp

It’s been said that one should never bring a knife to a gun fight. What that means is that if there is a fight about to go down, you want to be the one with the strongest, most sophisticated weapon. If your enemy has a better weapon than you, your elimination is certain. You want to go in with the best odds. This makes sense, even in an everyday context; you want to be the best; better than your competitors. Even more, this mentality means everything when it comes to national defense. Ever since the invention of nuclear weapons, there have been those who decry their use, and even their existence when inert. One could definitely argue the merits and the disadvantages of nuclear weapons having been created in the first place; but that’s not the point. The point is that they do exist. Now, what do we do? In the age of nuclear weapons, it is essential—specifically given the fact that we are in a constant war with terrorists; and several countries would just love to eliminate us—that we keep a high profile. We need to have the most nuclear weapons, and we need to have the most powerful nuclear weapons. This is basic defense strategy. Coming as a surprise to no one, the Liberals have a distorted understanding of this issue.

During his current “Sorry about America” world tour, President Obama gave a speech in Berlin, in which he discussed the elimination of nuclear weapons:

“We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.  (Applause.)  We may strike blows against terrorist networks, but if we ignore the instability and intolerance that fuels extremism, our own freedom will eventually be endangered…Peace with justice means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapon…And so, as President, I’ve strengthened our efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and reduced the number and role of America’s nuclear weapons.  Because of the New START Treaty, we’re on track to cut American and Russian deployed nuclear warheads to their lowest levels since the 1950s…After a comprehensive review, I’ve determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third.  And I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.”

Were we living in a perfect world, full of love, humility, and free candy for all, this might be an understandably worthy goal: to eliminate nuclear weapons. However, that is certainly not the world in which we live. That being the case, can we afford to eliminate nuclear weapons; even by a third? The answer is a resounding NO.  We are surrounded by countries and organizations that would jump at the chance to wipe us out completely: North Korea, Iran, possibly Pakistan, Al Qaida; and despite what the President seems to believe, Russia. Russia has been leaning further and further towards Cold War era posturing, and I have absolutely no faith that they will follow any treaty. The President has an obligation to protect our nation, and it would not be wise to continue this hippie-fueled run at elimination of nuclear weapons. Because no matter how much we don’t want to have to use them, there will come a time when we have to. If we try to be PC, and achieve “peace through nuclear elimination,” we will fall.

As Margaret Thatcher said: “A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.” It may seem counterintuitive to think that nuclear weapons help keep us safe, but living in a post-nuclear world, that is exactly the case.

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Obama Administration Cuts Oil Development on Federal Land  By: Sandy Fitzgerald

The Obama administration is calling for cutting the amount of federal lands open for oil shale and tars sands development in the Western states, a plan that industry officials say may force companies to look overseas for opportunities. A new Bureau of Land Management plan calls for allowing 700,000 acres of land for development. This is a drastic cut from the Bush administration, which had set aside 1.3 million acres, and the oil industry is outraged by the change. "What they basically did was make it so that nobody is going to want to spend money going after oil shale on federal government lands," said Dan Kish, Senior Vice President of Institute for Energy Research.

Oil shale drilling is different from the hydraulic fracking process being used in places like the Bakken shale region in North Dakota or the Niobrara in Colorado. Fracking breaks through lwyers of shale rock and pumps out oil. But oil shale refers to the rock itself. When companies subject the rock to pressure or high temperatures, either by leaving it in place or removing it, oil develops. Colorado Wildlife Federation Spokesman Todd Malmsbury said the process raises a great deal of concerns about the impact on the region's water and land. "Water is the most important resource we have in the West," Malmsbury said. "If we pollute that water, if we deplete that water, it's going to hurt everyone out here."

The Bureau of Land Management said it is not against the oil shale and tar sands development, but is restricting the amount of public lands until the processes prove safe, and may release more federal lands in coming years if it is safe to do so. But Kish said the reduction will force the energy industry to look elsewhere, even in other countries, for development. "The Chinese are inviting companies in, companies that may have done business in the United States if we'd had a better approach," said Kish. "And we don't even know the total extent (of the potential for oil from shale in America) but it's basically around a trillion barrels...which would be as much as the world has used since the first oil well was drilled 150 years ago."  “The Colorado River has nothing left to give, and it’s not in the public interest to allow water-guzzling mining projects to mangle and pollute the productivity of this vital watershed any further,” said John Weisheit, Living Rivers’ conservation director.

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The Real Reason George F. Will Is Irritated With Obama By Anthony Wile

Big news, from my point of view. Late this week, conservative columnist George F. Will wrote an editorial that compiled a list of what we call dominant social themes, even though he didn't explain them as such. The list was required to buttress accusations he was making about US President Barack Obama's reportedly disappointing speech in Berlin. We've already commented on the speech in staff reports but I wanted to write this analysis as a follow-up. First, attendance at Obama's speech was minute compared to the number who had flocked to his appearance in Berlin during his presidential campaign in 2008 – around 4,000 reportedly versus the more than 200,000 estimated by Berlin police in 2008.  Second, the reviews of the speech were almost universally negative, and Obama is clearly losing his "mojo" with the mainstream Western media. Most simply described the speech as hesitant, unemotional, disengaged, etc. The best defense Chris Matthews could come up with was that the glare of the sun had rendered Obama's teleprompters unusable and therefore, he'd had to read the speech from the page, a skill that he lacks.  But the biggest surprise was that Obama was going to seek a further reduction in the respective nuclear arsenals of Russia and the US. This was an unusual statement not because of the large size of the reduction, up to one-third of stored weaponry, but because it was part of the larger performance that George Will rightly categorizes as "surreal."

If Obama had built his speech around, say, a new Marshall Plan for Europe (which has been mentioned from time to time), it might have sounded vaguely pertinent. Europe, or at least its southern part, is suffering a great deal of pain from its euro-imbalance with the north. Unemployment in Spain, Greece, Portugal and even France is reportedly approaching an intolerable level. But Obama didn't choose to focus on current woes. Instead, the big news was about how he was going to negotiate an arms reduction with Russia. It was as if being in Berlin had confused Obama and his speechwriters about the era in which they were functioning. It sounded as if he'd been temporarily transported back in time to the 1980s. The Cold War was a big deal in the 1980s. The USSR looked as implacable and nasty as ever. It had invaded Afghanistan and its leaders showed no signs of reducing their hostility to the West.

Berlin has been the site of many triumphs for US presidents. Ronald Reagan's speech was widely regarded as a historical triumph and so was John F. Kennedy's and for the same reason. Speaking "truth to power" in the USSR's own backyard was a peculiarly courageous act. Or at least seemed so. Not this time. By building the big news of his speech around a promise to seek a further arms reduction with a reduced Russia, Obama merely contributed to a sense of what Will rightly calls "detachment." The USSR is no longer a big bully in Europe because the USSR doesn't exist any longer. Sure, there are good reasons to want a further arms reduction with Russia, but is that currently a main preoccupation on the global stage? It's not even something that the Obama administration itself has set up as a central diplomatic issue. If you're going to make a big announcement aimed at solving a critical problem, shouldn't you define it in advance? How can you propose a solution to an issue you haven't even been raising? That wasn't the only problem with the speech. Here's how Will put it:

Obama hits a wall in Berlin ... The question of whether Barack Obama's second term will be a failure was answered in the affirmative before his Berlin debacle, which has recast the question, which now is: Will this term be silly, even scary in its detachment from reality?

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65% Think Government Should Cut Spending to Help Economy

Concern that the government will do too much to help the economy is at its highest level since last fall.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 43% of Likely U.S. Voters are more worried that the federal government will do too much rather than not enough in reacting to the nation’s economic problems. That's up from 39% in March and the highest level of concern since September.  Slightly more  (48%) still fear that the government won’t do enough to help the economy. 

56% Think Government Agencies Cut Popular Programs First

Last week’s airport delays prompted complaints that the federal government was targeting areas that hurt the public the most to increase opposition to government spending cuts. Most Americans agree and also think Congress’ quick response to the delays highlights how the legislators look out for themselves first.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% of American Adults think that when government agencies are forced to cut their budgets, they generally cut popular programs first to make the cuts seem more significant. Just 17% disagree, but 27% are not sure.

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