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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Voters Like Coal Industry More Than the EPA
Voters
view the U.S. coal industry more favorably than the Environmental Protection
Agency and are closely divided when asked if the Obama administration’s
ultimate goal is to kill that industry. Fifty-one percent (51%) of Likely U.S. Voters view the
U.S. coal industry at least somewhat favorably. The latest Rasmussen Reports
national telephone survey shows that just 29% hold an unfavorable opinion of
it.
~~~~~~
60% Put Checks and Balances Ahead of Government Efficiency
Politicians
are often frustrated by the system of checks and balances built into American
government, but voters continue to strongly support that protection. A new Rasmussen Reports national
telephone survey finds that 60% of Likely U.S. Voters think it is more
important to preserve our constitutional system of checks and balances than it
is for government to operate efficiently. Twenty-eight percent (28%) place more
importance on efficiency, while 12% are not sure.
~~~~~~
Obama Finds Foreign Affairs Do Not Bend to His Whims
By Michael Barone
Foreign
policy is hard. That's a lesson Barack Obama has been learning throughout his
presidency. The world is not responding as he expected. It looks simpler from the
outside. Promise to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, proclaim yourself the
tribune of hope and change, receive the adulation of giant crowds in Europe and
accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama entered office, as many
presidents have, with the assumption that his predecessor's policies were
wrongheaded and could readily be reversed. Because he didn't look like
other presidents, in his phrase, he believed he could change unfriendly
leaders' attitudes toward America and would have special appeal to Muslims.
This has proved to be naive.
Many
if not most Americans, including some who didn't vote for Obama, believe that
the election of a black president was a step forward in American history.
But it doesn't have that resonance in much of the rest of the world.
Obama went to Cairo in early June 2009 to deliver a speech proclaiming a
"new beginning" of the relationship between America and the Arab and
Muslim worlds. Later that month he showed icy indifference to the Green
Movement protestors in Iran, presumably hoping that he could still change the
attitude of the mullah regime toward America by his willingness to engage in
direct negotiations.
His
expectations
were in vain. The mullahs showed they were interested not in talking but in
getting nuclear weapons. And polls show that attitudes in
many Arab and Muslim countries are now more negative to America than they were
when George W. Bush was president. Obama's multiple
responses to the Arab Spring uprisings and their aftermath have been part of
the problem.
Tunisia,
the first, presented few problems. In Libya he was content to, as one aide put
it, "lead from behind." This has resulted in the chaos
and disorder that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three
other Americans in Benghazi. Obama retired to the White House family quarters
while the attack was going on and jetted off the next day to a campaign event
in Las Vegas. Egypt is the largest Arab nation by far and one critical
to U.S. interests. Under Hosni Mubarak it remained at peace -- though it was a
cold peace -- with Israel. And it controls traffic and therefore the flow of
oil through the Suez Canal. When protests broke out against Mubarak in
January 2011, Obama at first said Mubarak's time had not passed, then a month
later said he must leave. When he did, Obama urged Egyptian military leaders,
with whom the U.S. military has close ties, to push toward elections. Those
resulted in a narrow victory in June 2012 for the one organized political force
in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood. President Mohammed Morsi then put in a new
constitution and put the military on a short leash. When vast numbers started
protesting against Morsi last month, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson supported
him. But Obama acquiesced in his ouster and called for elections soon. The
result is that Obama, as Kori Schake wrote in foreignpolicy.com, "has
achieved the hat trick of alienating all the factions in Egypt."
He
has probably done so in Syria, as well. There he predicted that Bashir Assad
would be quickly ousted and, when he wasn't, said he must go. But he denied the
Syrian rebels military aid until last month. Unfortunately, the rebels seem
weaker and more dominated by jihadists than they were one to two years ago. Now it must be said that it is
hard to anticipate how these protests and rebellions would turn out. Probably
most outside observers expected Assad to be ousted quickly, as other leaders
had been. But it can also be said that Obama entered office with
misperceptions that proved damaging. His assumption that he would be hailed in
Cairo in 2009 as he had been in Berlin in 2008 was always unrealistic. As
is his apparent assumption that everything will be fine if the United
States just withdrew, as our military did in Iraq when Obama failed to
negotiate a status of forces agreement in Iraq. Things have not turned
out fine there -- lots of sectarian violence lately -- or in Libya, Egypt or
Syria. And Iran gets closer to having nuclear weapons. Military intervention can be
costly. But so can withdrawing and leading, hesitantly, from behind.
~~~~~~
Cowardly Prosecutor: Lose At Trial But Declare Zimmerman
A Murderer Anyway by
Mark Horne
I
have heard a great many accusations against George Zimmerman, but I haven’t yet
heard one that claims Zimmerman never paid his Florida state taxes. The state
government pressed charges against Zimmerman. The basis for their pursuing
these charges (especially the murder charge) seems doubtful to many, but we have
to give the District Attorney some latitude in deciding what to take the trial.
Under normal circumstances, the prosecutor has a vested interest in only going
to trial in cases that he or she can reasonably win. Of course, when Federal
and media pressure is being applied, all bets are off.
But
the verdict was clear and there was no room for latitude. Zimmerman was not
guilty on all counts. More...
~~~~~~
The Rise of the Liberal Theocratic State
by Gary DeMar
Now
that moral issues have hit the liberal Left like a ton of red bricks, they are
trying to figure out how to extricate themselves from the weight of the pile.
They are being counseled to talk about values. Good enough. But whose values?
What values? Unless they change their views on homosexuality and abortion, to
name only two value-laden issues, they can only talk about values.
Those
on the Left value the pro-abortion position. They believe that homosexual
sodomy is a civil right. Don't expect them to change their position on these
two highly charged (im)moral issues. Their base rests on these two foundation
stones. James Carville is talking about how the Democrat Party needs to be
"born again," not in a religious sense but politically. What he's
really calling for is a face transplant. It will be the same liberal worldview
but with a new image. The big lie is on its way. The rhetoric will shift to
moral values of another type: the environment, helping the poor, health care,
and war and peace issues. For decades, liberals have been saying that religion
must be kept separate from politics, unless, of course, the Bible can be used
to support a liberal agenda. The always entertaining Cornell West of Princeton,
prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America,
cited the passage from Amos 5:24 that appears on the civil rights memorial in
Montgomery, Alabama: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness
like a mighty stream." For West, "justice" is using civil
government to take money from "the rich" and give it to the poor.
Theft, even if it's done by politicians, is not justice. In reality, the poor
are hurt by high taxes. It's spending, saving, and investing that makes an
economy grow. There would be no shortage of jobs if taxes were reduced by at
least 50%. read
more....
~~~~~~
IRS Employees Ordered to Send Tea Party Cases to IRS's
Only Obama Political Appointee By
Ryan Kierman and Michael W. Chapman
IRS
employees were ordered by their superiors--including Lois Lerner who pleaded
the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination rather than testify in
Congress--to send certain Tea Party tax-exemption applications to the office of
the IRS's Chief Counsel, which was headed by William Wilkins, who at that time
was the only Obama political appointee at the IRS, according to a letter
released today by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “As a
part of this ongoing investigation, the Committees have learned that the IRS
Chief Counsel’s office in Washington, D.C. has been closely involved in some of
the applications,” reads
a letter released today by the House committees on Oversight and Government
and Ways and Means. “Its involvement and demands for information about
political activity during the 2010 election cycle appear to have caused
systematic delays in the processing of Tea Party applications.” Read
More....
~~~~~~
Treasury: Debt Has Been Exactly
$16,699,396,000,000.00 for 56 Days By Terence P. Jeffrey
According to the Daily
Treasury Statement for July 12, which the U.S. Treasury released this
afternoon, the federal debt that is currently subject to a legal limit of
$16,699,421,095,673.60 has stood at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 for 56
straight days. That means that for 56 straight days the federal debt has
remained approximately $25 million below the legal limit.
Even though the portion of the federal
debt that is subject to a legal limit has not changed in almost two months, the
Treasury has continued to sell bills, notes and bonds at a value that exceeds
the value of the bills, notes and bonds it has been redeeming. More.....
~~~~~~
DOJ Refuses to Prosecute Case of 'Willful' Tax Records
Access By: Andrea Billups
The
Justice Department refused to act after being presented with evidence that a
government official had "willfully" accessed private tax documents,
it was reported Tuesday. The evidence against the person was laid out in a
letter from J. Russell George, the Internal Revenue Service inspector general. He
told top Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley he did not know why Justice had not
acted, The Washington Times reports. "We presented evidence of a
willful unauthorized access to the Department of Justice, but the case was
declined for prosecution," George wrote in a letter to Grassley. George
said there was evidence of three other cases of government officials accessing
tax documents since 2006, but that all three appeared to have been inadvertent.
His department suggested that one of those cases not be prosecuted, and the
Justice Department agreed, he said. Now Grassley, the ranking member of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, is looking for answers. "The public needs to know whether
the decision not to prosecute these violations was politically motivated and
whether the individuals responsible were held accountable in any other
way," he told the Times.
~~~~~~
Beginning of the Collapse' of Obamacare
By Greg Richter
Delaying
implementation of key parts of the healthcare law and losing the support of labor
unions are just the beginning of trouble for Obamacare, says Dr. Ben Carson. "It's gonna be a lot worse than this.
This is the beginning of the collapse," the retired Johns Hopkins
neurosurgeon said on Fox News Channel's "Your World" on Tuesday. "Usually when you roll out a big
program, you roll it out bit by bit. You determine what's working. You can
change things," Carson said. "But to try to roll out something this
massive without really knowing what the intricacies are is quite foolish."
Carson said he spoke with a high-level
White House official before the law was passed, telling the official that there
were some things he liked and that Republicans would support. He suggested
implementing those things first and then building on the program. "Because
if you just jam it through with one party in a rush-rush way you're going to
create animosity," Carson said he told the official. "And basically
the answer of this person was, 'This is Washington, and this is
politics.'" Democratic
Party strategist Joe Trippi, appearing with Carson, admitted that Democrats
passed the law in a rush fashion because that's when they had the votes. "Frankly,
they wouldn't have had the votes today," Trippi said. "They got it
passed when they could," Trippi said. "That's what politics is about.
Now they've got to fix it." Or, better yet, abolish it and do it in
workable peices.
~~~~~~
Sebelius: Obamacare Opponents Are Like Those Who Opposed
Civil Rights Legislation
Senseless,
divisive and patently untrue; more race baiting from the administration.
Addressing the annual NAACP convention in Orlando, Fla., Health and
Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that opponents of Obamacare are the
same kind of people who opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Her
comments on Tuesday came one day before the Republican-led House votes to delay
key provisions of the law. “The Affordable Care Act is the most powerful law
for reducing health disparities since Medicare and Medicaid were created in
1965, the same year the Voting Rights Act was also enacted,” Sebelius said.
“That significance hits especially close to home. My father was a congressman
from Cincinnati who voted for each of those critical civil rights laws, and who
represented a district near where the late Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth lived
and preached. “The same arguments against change, the same fear and misinformation
that opponents used then are the same ones opponents are spreading now. ‘This
won’t work,’ ‘Slow down,’ ‘Let’s wait,’ they say. [see above]
~~~~~~
Eric
Holder Doesn’t Care About Chicago Murders by Philip Hodges
In
his speech to the black sorority Delta Sigma Theta in D.C., Eric Holder said
that he was resolved to combat violence directed at youths in light of the
Zimmerman verdict:
“We
are resolved, as you are, to combat violence involving or directed at young
people, to prevent future tragedies and to deal with the underlying attitudes,
mistaken beliefs and stereotypes that serve as the basis for these too common
incidents. And we will never stop working to ensure that – in every case,
in every circumstance, and in every community – justice must be done.”
Really?
“In every case, in every circumstance, and in every
community?” Does Chicago count? Or just the cases that the media have twisted
into racial hate crimes? Read
more....
~~~~~~
"Arbitrary
power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to
licentiousness." --George
Washington
"House
Republicans plan to vote this week on a bill that would delay ObamaCare's
individual mandate, adding to the one-year delay of the employer mandate the
administration already announced. ... But even if President Obama were to sign
an individual mandate delay bill into law -- highly unlikely -- it would be
largely meaningless in terms of avoiding ObamaCare's long-term health care and
budget disasters. ... In practical terms, a one-year delay in the
individual mandate would go virtually unnoticed. The penalty for not buying
insurance next year is a tiny $95, hardly enough to convince the young and
healthy -- for whom the mandate was designed in the first place -- to buy
coverage if they weren't already so inclined. And those most likely to sign up
for benefits in the Obamacare exchanges won't care about the mandate either,
since they'll be older and sicker people who stand to benefit both from the tax
subsidies and the Obamacare market regulations that artificially lower their
premiums. ... It's why Obama was so willing to delay the employer mandate in
the first place -- since doing so virtually guarantees that hundreds of
thousands more people will end up at an Obamacare exchange after their
employers use the delay to drop coverage. It also helps explain why Obama is
letting states simply take the applicants' word for it that they don't have
coverage available to them at work and that their income really is as low as
they claim. Despite the fact that it opens the door to fraud, lax enforcement
guarantees more will sign up for Obama-Care subsidies. The fact is that the
problems with Obamacare run far deeper than the employer and individual
mandates. With or without them, the law will still drive up insurance
costs, massively increase federal spending, create huge doctor shortages,
impose $1 trillion in new taxes, hurt job growth, and do nothing to rein in
health care costs. This apparently is of no concern to Obama or Democrats. If anything,
they might welcome it, since the more expensive health care becomes, the more
Americans will be dependent on the government to afford it." --Investor's
Business Daily
~~~~~~~
University Prof Says God Is a White Racist by Tami
Jackson
Just
when you think you’ve heard it all, Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious
Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, claimed that “America’s God” is a
white racist in her July 14 editorial.
Professor
Butler wrote at ReligionDispatches.org:
The
not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman case has me thinking a lot about a
book I first encountered in seminary, Is God a White Racist?, by the Rev. Dr.
Bill Jones. As a budding seminary student, it took me by surprise. Now, as a
wiser, older professor looking at the needless death of Trayvon Martin, I have
to say: I get it. God ain’t good all of the time. In fact, sometimes, God is
not for us. As a black woman in an nation that has taken too many pains to
remind me that I am not a white man, and am not capable of taking care of my
reproductive rights, or my voting rights, I know that this American god ain’t
my god. As a matter of fact, I think he’s a white racist god with a problem.
More importantly, he is carrying a gun and stalking young black men.
When
George Zimmerman told Sean Hannity that it was God’s will that he shot and
killed Trayvon Martin, he was diving right into what most good conservative
Christians in America think right now. Whatever makes them protected, safe, and
secure, is worth it at the expense of the black and brown people they fear. Their
god is the god that wants to erase race, make everyone act “properly” and
respect, as the president said, “a nation of laws”; laws that they made to
crush those they consider inferior. When the laws were never made for people
who were considered, constitutionally, to be three-fifths of a person, I
have to ask: Is this just? Is it right? Is God the old white male racist
looking down from white heaven, ready to bless me if I just believe the white
men like Rick Perry who say the Zimmerman case has nothing to do with race? You
already know the answer: No. What poppycock. This professor questions
the nature of God predicated upon a verdict with which she disagrees? Anthea
Butler has the audacity to surmise what’s in the hearts and minds of millions
of Americans of faith. What Bible is this woman reading — the
Gospel according to Rev. Jeremiah Wright?
~~~~~~
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