2nd Amendment for Some: Feinstein’s Gun Control Bill Exempts Government Officials
The Weekly Standard reports that the elected representatives aiming to infringe on citizens’ right to self-defense have exempted themselves from gun control legislation proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein. Nowadays, those of America’s self-imagined ruling class are acting more like aristocrats than servants of the people.Should anyone take this to be unfounded, knee-jerk reaction, the author of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban Dianne Feinstein once said if she could get Americans to turn in all their guns, she would do it. Meanwhile, the former concealed-carry permit holder explained that she once armed herself so that, “If somebody was going try to take me out, I was going to take them with me.”Now that it is established that the main legislator at the forefront of the reflexive gun control push is a one-time pistol packing, would-be gun-grabbing politician, the exemptions proposed for government officials should be all-the-more stark in their hypocrisy. This assessment is reinforced by citing a prominent left-wing source:
The Huffington Post confirmed these exemptions. “[T]he bill includes a number of exemptions: It exempts more than 2,200 hunting and sporting weapons; any gun manually operated by a bolt, pump, lever or slide action; any weapons used by government officials and law enforcement; and any weapons legally owned as of the date of the bill’s enactment.”
The bill’s provisions would halt “the sale, manufacture and importation of 158 specifically named military-style firearms and ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. It would also ban an additional group of assault weapons that accept detachable ammunition magazines and have at least one military characteristic,” according to the Huffington Post.What about background checks for all politicians? If gun control is going to be so effective, why do government officials need special exemption and armed protection? If all men are created equal, as President Obama made a big show of mentioning in his second inaugural address, why do the laws apply unevenly to citizen and citizen-legislators?
The left-leaning website added: “Other new provisions include requiring background checks on all future transfers of assault weapons covered under the bill and eliminating the 10-year sunset that allowed the original ban to expire.”
Because they’re not laws, that’s why. They’re fiat.
The United States never had a feudal society on its shores, but the current crop of elites is trying to change all that. It has taken nearly a century of European institutions, such as the central banking system vociferously opposed at the Constitutional convention, and a deterioration of federalism based on state sovereignty and individual rights, to bring America to the brink of the world’s tyrannical status quo.
The nation has progressed far along the road to serfdom; and the incremental deterioration of the last line of defense against Leviathan unbound is imminent, as blue-blooded statists are poised to make permanent the series of oppressive measures passed under the auspice of crisis. The arbitrary rule of their fellow men was specifically revolted against by the Founders, who are yet revered by the majority of the population despite the best efforts of the ruling class’ megalomaniacs.
As Americans instinctively cling to the Second Amendment, we need to place the debate over why citizens have the right to bear arms front-and-center: it is because the underlying right to self-defense protects individuals’ other inalienable rights — life, liberty, and property. It is time to renew the ideological underpinnings of our Constitution, and not just point to the document as self-evident truth. As we have seen all-too-often to our chagrin, there are far too many citizens who do not get what once passed for “common sense.”
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/01/32661-feinstein-gun-control-bill-to-exempt-government-officials/
President worried that media just isn’t liberal enough
Perhaps the second term of the Obama presidency will wind up being an era of bipartisan unity after all. One hopeful sign comes with a recent interview done by The New Republic with the President, in which he identifies an area where the POTUS and his Republican opponents clearly seem to agree. The media is just too darned biased.“One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates,” he tells editor Frank Foer and owner and publisher Chris Hughes. “If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”But it’s not just Fox or Rush who are to blame. Nearly as culpable are those who ostensibly provide both sides of the debate, because… well, you know:
The president also faulted nonpartisan media outlets for their adherence to “he said, she said” journalism, which places equal blame on Democrats and Republicans when, according to the president, Republicans should bear more blame.See? That’s the problem with the media! You can’t just go around reporting on the views of both parties, or even blaming one party more than the other. In order for media coverage of politics and governments to truly be fair, they need to point out that Barack Obama is always right, the Republicans are always wrong, and the Democrats would be getting so much more done if the GOP would only stop trying to block their agenda. Is that so much to ask?
“[T]hat’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity,” Obama told Foer and Hughes. “And so the default position for reporting is to say, ‘A plague on both their houses.’ On almost every issue, it’s, ‘Well, Democrats and Republicans can’t agree’—as opposed to looking at why is it that they can’t agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing?”
Look, the national media has a lot of problems, and there’s no doubt about it. And the problems are not found exclusively at MSNBC or Fox. Print media has essentially died, no longer commanding the resources to do the kind of reporting – particularly on local stories – which they once took charge of. Television news seems all too often to have become jealous of the success of the Real Housewives franchise and begun emulating them wherever possible. But if the President wants to call them out for bias, he’s going to have to do a bit more credible job than that.
For full disclosure, it should be noted that the interview above was conducted, in part, by Chris Hughes, who is listed as “an Obama donor who worked on the 2008 campaign,” and who bought The New Republic last year and now runs it. So… balance.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/27/president-worried-that-media-just-isnt-liberal-enough/
NLRB: We will continue to act despite the Appeals Court decision
Mark Gaston Pearce, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, issued the following statement in reaction to today’s DC Appeals Court decision that President Obama use of recess appointments to install three people on the NLRB last year was unconstitutional. The action renders the board without a quorum to act and potentially invalidates a year’s worth of actions and rulings by it. Pearce indicated that the NLRB will attempt to continue on regardless:The Board respectfully disagrees with today’s decision and believes that the President’s position in the matter will ultimately be upheld. It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.Pearce, in short, is indicating that the NLRB’s strategy is to act as if the court’s ruling that the appointments were unconstitutional somehow only applies only to the particular case that went before the Appeals Court and hope that the White House can get the Supreme Court to quickly review the case.
In the meantime, the Board has important work to do. The parties who come to us seek and expect careful consideration and resolution of their cases, and for that reason, we will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.
It’s a pretty brazen strategy, but consistent with a broader administration strategy to simply ignore the court’s ruling.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/nlrb-we-will-continue-to-act-despite-the-appeals-court-decision/article/2519736#.UQVf2mfAEtU
PK's NOTE: Do you really think this isn't happening? Think again. They're doing it and no one is stopping it and the media is in on it.
Progressive Congressmen Gather to Plot Agenda: Alinsky Invoked
A major focus of this blog is to expose how radical and Marxist groups have huge influence on Democratic Party policy.
One key transmission belt for socialist policy, from the Marxist left, to the floor of the US Congress, is Progressive Democrats of America – a tool of the notorious Institute for Policy Studies and the US’ largest Marxist organization, Democratic Socialists of America.
Tim Carpenter, PDA’sNational Director, for example, is a former leader of Orange County Democratic Socialists of America.
According to PDA’s website:
Since its founding in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in July 2004, PDA has aggressively worked an “inside/outside” strategy, networking progressive Democratic elected officials inside the Beltway with grassroots Democrats and progressive movement activists across the country.By using this ”inside-outside” strategy, the Democrat Party hard left, conspire with their Marxist allies to organize marches and demonstrations in the streets to create the illusion of widespread public support for the “progressive” Congress members own radical agenda.
By using the confrontational tactics of legendary Chicago radical Saul Alinsky, congressional far leftists, mostly from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are able to bully their few remaining moderate Democrat colleagues into toeing the “Party Line.”
On January 19, 2013, in Washington, D.C., Progressive Democrats of America, gathered with left-leaning members of Congress and social movement leaders, Progressive Central: The Peoples’ Inauguration, to lay out the organization’s agenda for the next four years.
According to Cole Stangler of the Institute for Policy Studies/Democratic Socialists of America allied Chicago based journal, In These Times:
Progressive Democrats of America, whose allies in Congress come from the activist wing of the 76-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, engages in what it calls an “inside-outside” strategy of connecting the demands of progressive social movements to legislative action from members of Congress…According to Cole Stangler, several PDA backed Democrats boasted to the conference of plans to introduce several pieces of legislation, in the 113th Congress, that will enjoy “widespread support on the American left.”
Progressive Central: The Peoples’ Inauguration, the third such gathering in the group’s eight-year existence, embodied that “inside-outside” spirit, as PDA-backed members of Congress spoke on panels with activists from the labor, peace and environmental movements at the University of the District of Columbia’s law school. At other times during the conference, attendees mingled outside in a hall that featured tabling from groups like CODEPINK, Public Citizen and Democratic Socialists of America.
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), said he would introduce a full employment act. Conyers would also again introduce a version of the so-called “Medicare-for-all” bill, which would create a single-payer universal healthcare system.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), promised he would introduce a constitutional amendment to affirm that corporations are not people, in addition to supporting a bill that would strengthen the Voting Rights Act. McGovern, like other PDA allies in Congress, also said that defense cuts would be a priority, telling the audience to rousing applause, “If I had my way, I would shut down every U.S. military base in the Middle East right now.”
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), committed to introducing a bill, backed prominently by the National Nurses United union, to implement a tax on all financial transactions, the so-called Robin Hood tax.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told In These Times that he was worried his party leadership might agree to a future budget deal that could include cuts to Social Security.
“I’m concerned,” Grijalva said. “But none of that’s going to pass without Democrats, so I think for the Progressive Caucus and our 70-odd members, holding the line can be huge leverage in this discussion. I’m optimistic about the role we can play. This is where the outside-inside [strategy] is so critical, because the pressure from the outside, not just on progressive members of Congress but on all members of Congress, is going to be critical to holding the line.”
“I’m a Saul Alinsky guy, you know, that’s where I learned this stuff,” said Grijalva. “There’s gotta be some victories regardless of how small they are. Sometimes the victory with this group is going to be keeping the worst from happening.”
http://www.trevorloudon.com/2013/01/progressive-congressmen-gather-to-plot-agenda-alinsky-invoked/
Washington DC, where cash is king
In
a recent Sean Hannity program entitled, Boomtown, his 2 guests used the
entire hour to show how corrupt Washington DC politics has become.
"While one out of every 6 Americans wonder where their next meal is
coming from, Washington DC has the highest rate of fine wine consumption
in the United States," said author Peter Schweizer of the Government
Accountability Institute. Mr. Schweizer also pointed out that one out of
four Americans has a mortgage that is underwater, while 7 out of 10 of
the wealthiest counties in the
nation are in the DC area. Furthermore, DC now has the highest per
capita income in the US, recently passing Silicon Valley. How was this
wealth created in a geographical area that doesn't produce a product or
create anything the public wants to purchase? Other boomtowns in our
history became prosperous because they offered something to build upon.
DC, however, offers nothing but connections to power and patronage. The
result is a permanent political class invested in the growth of
government as they grow their personal portfolios.
According to Steve Bannon of Breitbart News, Hannity's other guest, an aristocracy has taken over because of greedy officials who parcel out patronage to relatives, friends and business associates. The federal government employs 245,000 people, and the average pay and other compensation is about $120,000. Keep in mind, in addition to the president and vice-president there are only 435 members of Congress and 100 Senators. That leaves over 244,000 others being paid handsomely by the taxpayers, most of whom earn considerably less than the people working for them. The Founders of this great nation never intended that our elected leaders would run for office in order to make a career out of it and enrich themselves like potentates along the way. In the spirit of national service, people would leave their businesses, come to Washington and use their leadership skills to improve the lives of their fellow Americans. After a few months or years, they would return to their chosen professions, having done their part for their country. Not anymore! These days, because corruption has become so bold and virtually accepted, the best and the brightest view politics as a road to riches, flocking to the nation's capital to get their pot of gold.
The public has been lulled into believing that the 2 political parties are actually fighting about differences in ideology, while it seems they're really fighting for more personal wealth. Though we look at political maps indicating red and blue, i.e., Republican and Democrat, the fact is, the most important color is green. Access to power is the job of lobbyists, and they have enough green to pave the way to the highest echelons. Lobbying takes place on K Street in DC, only a stone's throw from the White House and the Capital. Representing hundreds of successful companies, all of whom need influence in those powerful committee rooms, lobbyists spread the wealth around lavishly in order to buy favors. Forget about love of country; these deals are all about love of money! For example, when we view politicians taking one side or another on a budgetary issue, it's similar to professional wrestling because the outcome is predetermined, and each side gets a piece of the action. Many members of Congress (House and Senate) have relatives who are registered lobbyists.
One Florida Congressman, who's been in office since 1971, is the leader of a subcommittee that controls defense spending. He has a daughter-in-law who has been a lobbyist for defense contracts for more than a decade and has been very successful in her efforts. How about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? He has several family members who have been lobbyists for a number of companies. One of his sons has lobbied on behalf of several groups who have secured $50 million in earmarks. Another son is working on a $5 billion venture involving a Chinese effort to develop an energy project in the desert of Nevada, and his father personally helped to push the project through. Does the senator view his actions as corrupt? If he does, he's not concerned about any damage it might do to his future. That's because there are no term limits and he has no fear of losing an election. Moreover, since corruption appears to be the rule, rather than the exception, his colleagues are not likely to take a stand against him.
Hannity's program may not have told us something we didn't already know, but it did so more elaborately and alarmingly. Nevertheless, with so many people on the public dole, my fear is that they don't care how much largess their reps are accumulating as long as those public assistance checks are in the mail. God help us!
According to Steve Bannon of Breitbart News, Hannity's other guest, an aristocracy has taken over because of greedy officials who parcel out patronage to relatives, friends and business associates. The federal government employs 245,000 people, and the average pay and other compensation is about $120,000. Keep in mind, in addition to the president and vice-president there are only 435 members of Congress and 100 Senators. That leaves over 244,000 others being paid handsomely by the taxpayers, most of whom earn considerably less than the people working for them. The Founders of this great nation never intended that our elected leaders would run for office in order to make a career out of it and enrich themselves like potentates along the way. In the spirit of national service, people would leave their businesses, come to Washington and use their leadership skills to improve the lives of their fellow Americans. After a few months or years, they would return to their chosen professions, having done their part for their country. Not anymore! These days, because corruption has become so bold and virtually accepted, the best and the brightest view politics as a road to riches, flocking to the nation's capital to get their pot of gold.
The public has been lulled into believing that the 2 political parties are actually fighting about differences in ideology, while it seems they're really fighting for more personal wealth. Though we look at political maps indicating red and blue, i.e., Republican and Democrat, the fact is, the most important color is green. Access to power is the job of lobbyists, and they have enough green to pave the way to the highest echelons. Lobbying takes place on K Street in DC, only a stone's throw from the White House and the Capital. Representing hundreds of successful companies, all of whom need influence in those powerful committee rooms, lobbyists spread the wealth around lavishly in order to buy favors. Forget about love of country; these deals are all about love of money! For example, when we view politicians taking one side or another on a budgetary issue, it's similar to professional wrestling because the outcome is predetermined, and each side gets a piece of the action. Many members of Congress (House and Senate) have relatives who are registered lobbyists.
One Florida Congressman, who's been in office since 1971, is the leader of a subcommittee that controls defense spending. He has a daughter-in-law who has been a lobbyist for defense contracts for more than a decade and has been very successful in her efforts. How about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? He has several family members who have been lobbyists for a number of companies. One of his sons has lobbied on behalf of several groups who have secured $50 million in earmarks. Another son is working on a $5 billion venture involving a Chinese effort to develop an energy project in the desert of Nevada, and his father personally helped to push the project through. Does the senator view his actions as corrupt? If he does, he's not concerned about any damage it might do to his future. That's because there are no term limits and he has no fear of losing an election. Moreover, since corruption appears to be the rule, rather than the exception, his colleagues are not likely to take a stand against him.
Hannity's program may not have told us something we didn't already know, but it did so more elaborately and alarmingly. Nevertheless, with so many people on the public dole, my fear is that they don't care how much largess their reps are accumulating as long as those public assistance checks are in the mail. God help us!
Obama’s war on academic standards
By Michelle MalkinAmerica’s downfall doesn’t begin with the “low-information voter.” It starts with the no-knowledge student.
For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity and social justice. “Progressive” reformers denounced Western civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed ability grouping of students (tracking) bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling and multicultural claptrap.
Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers — empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates — are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children’s school curriculum. It’s being done in the name of federal “Common Core” standards that do anything but raise achievement standards.
Common Core was enabled by Obama’s federal stimulus law and his Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” gimmickry. The administration bribed cash-starved states into adopting unseen instructional standards as a condition of winning billions of dollars in grants. Even states that lost their bids for Race to the Top money were required to commit to a dumbed-down and amorphous curricular “alignment.”
In practice, Common Core’s dubious “college- and career”-ready standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America’s schoolchildren.
Over the next several weeks and months, I’ll use this column space to expose who’s behind this disastrous scheme in D.C. backrooms. I’ll tell you who’s fighting it in grassroots tea party and parental revolts across the country from Massachusetts to Indiana, Texas, Georgia and Utah. And most importantly, I’ll explain how this unprecedented federal meddling is corrupting our children’s classrooms and textbooks.
There’s no better illustration of Common Core’s duplicitous talk of higher standards than to start with its math “reforms.” While Common Core promoters assert their standards are “internationally benchmarked,” independent members of the expert panel in charge of validating the standards refute the claim. Panel member Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas reported, “No material was ever provided to the Validation Committee or to the public on the specific college readiness expectations of other leading nations in mathematics” or other subjects.
In fact, Stanford University professor James Milgram, the only mathematician on the validation panel, concluded that the Common Core math scheme would place American students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. In protest, Milgram refused to sign off on the standards. He’s not alone.
Professor Jonathan Goodman of New York University found that the Common Core math standards imposed “significantly lower expectations with respect to algebra and geometry than the published standards of other countries.”
Under Common Core, as the American Principles Project and Pioneer Institute point out, algebra I instruction is pushed to 9th grade, instead of 8th grade, as commonly taught. Division is postponed from 5th to 6th grade. Prime factorization, common denominators, conversions of fractions and decimals, and algebraic manipulation are de-emphasized or eschewed. Traditional Euclidean geometry is replaced with an experimental approach that had not been previously pilot-tested in the U.S.
Ze’ev Wurman, a prominent software architect, electrical engineer and longtime math advisory expert in California and Washington, D.C., points out that Common Core delays proficiency with addition and subtraction until 4th grade and proficiency with basic multiplication until 5th grade, and skimps on logarithms, mathematical induction, parametric equations and trigonometry at the high school level.
I cannot sum up the stakes any more clearly than Wurman did in his critique of this mess and the vested interests behind it:
“I believe the Common Core marks the cessation of educational standards improvement in the United States. No state has any reason left to aspire for first-rate standards, as all states will be judged by the same mediocre national benchmark enforced by the federal government. Moreover, there are organizations that have reasons to work for lower and less-demanding standards, specifically teachers unions and professional teacher organizations. While they may not admit it, they have a vested interest in lowering the accountability bar for their members. …This will be done in the name of ‘critical thinking’ and ’21st-century’ skills, and in faraway Washington, D.C., well beyond the reach of parents and most states and employers.”
This is all in keeping with my own experience as a parent of elementary- and middle-school age kids who were exposed to “Everyday Math” nonsense. This and other fads abandon “drill and kill” memorization techniques for fuzzy “critical thinking” methods that put the cart of “why” in front of the horse of “how.” In other words: Instead of doing the grunt work of hammering times tables and basic functions into kids’ heads first, the faddists have turned to wacky, wordy non-math alternatives to encourage “conceptual” understanding — without any mastery of the fundamentals of math.
Common Core is rotten to the core. The corruption of math education is just the beginning.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/01/23/malkin-obamas-war-on-academic-standards/
PK'S NOTE: Why not? It's a fake award anymore anyway. Hillary and Benghazi anyone? Obama gets one in his first year of office?
Nobel Peace Prize urged for Hillary-- and Bill
Like no cabinet secretary before, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is being sent off with a huge thank you from the Democratic Party and some of her supporters are even urging the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to give the award to her and her husband Bill Clinton.A new petition on Change.org calls on the committee to present the prize to Hillary for her work around the world for President Obama and Bill Clinton for his post-presidential international involvement.
"President and Mrs. Clinton have had a lasting impact upon promoting peace in this world. Both have reached out to the poor and economically deprived nations of this world and emphasized the need for tolerance for women's and minority rights," reads the new petition.
While conservatives have hit Clinton for being an ineffective diplomat, Democrats consider her one of the best ever secretaries of state and deserving of the Nobel prize.
Meanwhile, Democrats are doing something few have ever seen before: They are urging supporters to sign an online thank you petition to Hillary Clinton.
"Tell Hillary: Thank you for your service," reads the online petition. "Add your name to tell Secretary Clinton that she did a great job! Hillary Clinton is stepping down as Secretary of State, and taking a well-deserved break after years of service to America. Let's take a moment and thank her for her service as Senator, Secretary of State, and a strong voice for justice in an ever-changing world. Help us reach 250,000 strong thanking Hillary for her service to our country."
http://washingtonexaminer.com/nobel-peace-prize-urged-for-hillary-and-bill/article/2519728#.UQVtRWfAEtU
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