Current Events - August 23, 2013

 Mark Levin: A Modern-Day Constitutional Prophet

By David Limbaugh
When Mark Levin decided to write his book "The Liberty Amendments" to advocate a convention to propose a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution, he may not have realized how quickly and deeply his profound idea would resonate. But throughout the nation, people are inclining their ears. 

The first obstacle Levin faced was the widespread misconception that he is calling for a constitutional convention that could be hijacked by enemies of our founding principles and converted into a forum to hammer the final nails into our constitutional republic by fundamentally and radically changing our founding document. 

In fact, Levin's proposal couldn't be more at odds with that misperception. He is, first and foremost, a constitutionalist. His goal is neither to eradicate nor to substantially change the Framers' blueprint for government. It's to restore it with specific, defined amendments intended to re-establish the proper balance between the power of the government and the liberty of its citizens, with due emphasis on the latter. 

Levin is not arrogantly presuming to improve on the ineffable work of the Framers in crafting "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man" but humbly calling on his fellow patriots to recognize that we have strayed from the principles they enshrined in the Constitution and join him in his effort to advance the necessary correctives. 

The Framers didn't meet in Philadelphia in the 18th century with the burning desire to pass super-legislation to codify an ideological political agenda to establish fundamental rights in health care or education, and they certainly didn't want to guarantee, by law, certain economic outcomes. 

They met ostensibly to amend the Articles of Confederation and ended up scrapping it entirely and replacing it with our Constitution. 

They were determined to design a system of government that would maximize individual liberties. That would require establishing a government strong enough to protect citizens from domestic and foreign threats but no stronger than that, for they knew that historically, unchecked, tyrannical governments had been the enemies of freedom. 

Their challenge was to find that optimal balance between the power of government and individual liberties, so they created a system that divides and diffuses power between the national and state governments (through a system of federalism) and between coequal, competing branches of the federal government (the separation of powers), which hold one another in check. 

It was not the affirmative granting of rights that would establish liberties -- many meaningless constitutions have paid lip service to that endeavor -- but the imposition of defined, specific and enforceable limitations on the federal government. 

We must not lose sight of the fact that their overarching concern was liberty, an idea that gets little attention today -- apart from conservatives, constitutionalists and tea party patriots. 

What constitutionalists understand is that upholding the integrity of the Constitution and its designed system of limited government is essential to preserving our liberties, and usurpations of power by all three branches of government and by an out-of-control, unaccountable administrative bureaucracy have imperiled them. Constitutionalists abhor abuses of power by any and all branches, irrespective of the substantive political agenda being served by such usurpations. 

When King Josiah found a copy of the Jewish law in the Temple, which was being restored in 621 B.C., he was mortified by the extent to which the nation had departed from its teachings. He called for rededication to the law and a revival of its presence in the lives of the people. 

Mark Levin is a modern-day constitutional prophet whose purpose is not to revamp the Constitution. It is to revive it and refurbish it -- to restore the cracks in its foundation caused by lawless officials through the years who were more interested in guaranteeing outcomes than they were liberty. 

The goal of every one of Mark's proposed amendments is to restore the delicate balances the Framers originally designed; it is to restate and revivify the system of limited government they established by replacing bricks in specific places in our constitutional foundation -- bricks that statists have forcibly dislodged over time. 

The sagacious and prescient Framers knew that no matter how well they crafted the Constitution, no matter what kind of protections it included, it would always be vulnerable to the abuses of lawless men who simply refuse to honor its provisions. They also understood that experience would enlighten their successors as to possible pitfalls and weaknesses in the framework that could be breached by such scofflaws over time, so they provided specific methods for amending the Constitution to shore up those trouble spots -- always keeping in mind that preserving liberty was the greatest imperative. 

Today's statists have no regard for the Constitution or rule of law and have severely weakened it in many places, and as a result, our liberty, our prosperity and our very nation are in decline and in grave jeopardy.
Mark Levin is calling on us to take corrective steps -- through a process anticipated and expressly sanctioned by the Framers, no less -- to restore our system and reinvigorate our liberties. Let's pray his effort becomes an inexorable movement that sweeps the nation like the Great Awakening. 

http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2013/08/23/mark-levin-a-modernday-constitutional-prophet-n1671121/page/full

Yep: Justice Department suing Texas over voter ID law

Back in June, the Supreme Court struck down a big part of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional, ruling that Congress needs to identify places where racial discrimination at the voting booth is so endemic that it requires federal intervention to override a state’s sovereignty in conducting elections. The 1965 law originally required that states with a history of discrimination apply for DOJ permission or court approval before altering their voting laws, but the Justices threw out those 50-year-old definitions and essentially freed Texas from federal court supervision — and it didn’t take long for Attorney General Eric Holder to declare that he had no intention of abiding by the historical checks-and-balances norm supplied by the Supreme Court.
Now, the follow-through; here’s the DOJ statement:

The Department of Justice announced today that it will file a new lawsuit against the State of Texas, the Texas Secretary of State, and the Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety over the State’s strict voter photo identification law (SB 14). The United States’ complaint seeks a declaration that SB 14 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the voting guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

Separately, the Department is filing a motion to intervene as a party and a complaint in intervention against the State of Texas and the Texas Secretary of State in the ongoing case of Perez v. Perry (W.D. Tex.), which concerns the state’s redistricting laws. The United States had already filed a statement of interest in this case last month. Today’s action represents a new step by the Department in this case that will allow the United States to formally present evidence about the purpose and effect of the Texas redistricting plans.

“Today’s action marks another step forward in the Justice Department’s continuing effort to protect the voting rights of all eligible Americans,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “We will not allow the Supreme Court’s recent decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights.  The Department will take action against jurisdictions that attempt to hinder access to the ballot box, no matter where it occurs.  We will keep fighting aggressively to prevent voter disenfranchisement. We are determined to use all available authorities, including remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act, to guard against discrimination and, where appropriate, to ask federal courts to require preclearance of new voting changes.  This represents the Department’s latest action to protect voting rights, but it will not be our last.”

This whole rumpus originally got started, of course, because Texas wanted to change its election laws and require identification to vote, i.e., institute voter-ID laws — or, as progressives deem this simple and logical policy, The Most Obviously Racist and Discriminatory Idea of the Modern Age. As Charles Krauthammer put it a few weeks ago, “I think he’s got a very weak case.” More details from SCOTUSblog here.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/22/yep-justice-department-suing-texas-over-voter-id-law/

Why Are We Treating the Muslim Brotherhood Like The Victim in Egypt?

As the Middle East continues to fall apart, President Obama's stance on foreign policy becomes more confusing. Despite dubbing Egypt as the gateway to the Muslim world in 2009, the country is on the brink of civil war and the administration seems to be backing the Muslim Brotherhood while lecturing the military about "killing civilians." During the time Mohamed Morsi was in power, the United States sent F-16 fighter jets to the country and billions of dollars in aid. Shortly before the military overthrew Morsi, that aid was halted.

 But is it really innocent civilians and "peaceful protestors" who have been killed by the Egyptian military in the streets? Hardly, the Muslim Brotherhood is only making it look that way. The Brotherhood has been using the media to portray itself in a positive light while wreaking havoc on Coptic Christians, government installations and police. A young woman in Egypt, who asked to remain anonymous due to fears of the Brotherhood retaliating against her, contacted me this week to explain. I asked her if the violence in the streets was a result of the Muslim Brotherhood attacking people, rather than the military, she said yes. 

 "They [members of the Muslim Brotherhood] are firing first," she said. The young woman also explained how the sit-in of "protesters" was used by the Muslim Brotherhood to hide and portray themselves as victims. She said members of the Brotherhood would leave the sit-in, kill people in the streets and return to the sit-in all while telling human rights groups and journalists they were they ones being attacked. 

 "The marches graduated from inside the sit-in with weapons and attacking people in the streets. Then, they would return from these marches to hide in the sit-in. This was happening in front of the cameras. They were inviting local and foreign newspapers and human rights organizations to be a witness to the unfold of the sit-in," she said.

 Dr. Walid Phares, an expert on the Middle East and terrorism, also said the Brotherhood is portraying themselves as innocent and peaceful protestors when the opposite is true. The [Bolding is mine]  

"The Muslim Brotherhood strategy has always been to maneuver their foes and public opinion. In the Arab world they are known historically for their "khid'a doctrine" or deceit. Over the past decades since their inception in 1928, the Brotherhood practiced the policy of "the limited agenda" in public and the "long term agenda" among their membership. Today, after 33 million Egyptians marched twice against their rule on June 30 and again on July 26, and as the Egyptian Army is moving to disarming their militias and dismantling their armed embankments in Cairo and other cities, the Ikhwan (MB) are waging a worldwide propaganda campaign claiming that they are the victims of a military coup and that Egyptian military is persecuting them, killing unarmed civilians, including women and children on purpose," Phares told Townhall. "We've seen these tactics with Hamas and Hezbollah before: using civilians as shields and using the casualties as evidence of victimization. However the Egyptian interim Government, determined to fight terror and dismantle the violent networks, is now releasing videos and information about the deception tactics of the Brotherhood. More important, Egypt's civil society is producing significant investigative material to indict the organization and push back against its propaganda worldwide. But the most disappointing behavior, according to Egyptian civil society leaders has been the unprecedented partisan attitude of most mainstream media in the West particularly in the US. Egyptians, the liberals among them, are in disbelief about the cover up provided by respected media in America and some of its prominent politicians to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood."

Fox News contributor and award winning Middle East journalist Lisa Daftari explained earlier this week that the Egyptian military is trying to protect the people from terrorists. 

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/08/23/why-are-we-treating-the-muslim-brotherhood-like-victims-n1671738

NM Court Says Christian Photographers Must Compromise Beliefs

By Todd Starnes
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled Thursday that two Christian photographers who declined to photograph a same-sex union violated the state’s Human Rights Act. One justice said the photographers were “compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.”

In 2006 Vanessa Willock asked Elaine and Jonathan Huguenin, owners of Elane Photography, to photograph a same-sex “commitment ceremony” in the town of Taos.

Huguenin and her husband declined the job because their Christian beliefs were in conflict with the message communicated by the ceremony.

Willock found another photographer at a cheaper price but nevertheless filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission accusing Elane Photography of discrimination based on sexual orientation. She was later found guilty and ordered to pay thousands of dollars in fines.

“The Huguenins today can no more turn away customers on the basis of their sexual orientation – 
photographing a same-sex marriage ceremony – than they could refuse to photograph African-Americans or Muslims,” Justice Richard Bosson wrote in the court’s unanimous decision.

Bosson said the Christian photographers are now “compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.”

“Though the rule of law requires it, the result is sobering,” he wrote. “It will no doubt leave a tangible mark on the Huguenins and others of similar views.”

A recent Rasmussen survey found that 85 percent of Americans support the right of a photographer to refuse participating in a same-sex wedding.

Bosson said the case provokes reflection on what the nation is about.

“At its heart, this case teaches that at some point in our lives all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others,” he wrote.

He said the Constitution protects the rights of the Christian photographers to pray to the God of their choice and following religious teachings, but offered a sobering warning.

“But there is a price, one that we all have to pay somewhere in our civic life,” the justice wrote. “The Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people.”

Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal firm specializing in religious liberty cases, representing the photographers. Attorney Jordan Lorence said the ruling in effect means gay rights now trump religious rights.
“Government-coerced expression is a feature of dictatorships that has no place in a free country,” Lorence said. “This decision is a blow to our client and every American’s right to live free.”

Lorence said the New Mexico Supreme Court undermined the constitutionally protected freedoms of expression and conscience.

“If Elane Photographer does not have her rights of conscience protected, then basically nobody does,” he told Fox News. “What you have here is the government punishing someone who says, ‘I, in good conscience, cannot communicate the messages of this wedding.’”

Amber Royster, the executive director of Equality New Mexico, called the court decision a big victory.
“What it came down to is this was a case about discrimination,” she told Fox News. “While we certainly believe we are all entitled to our religious beliefs, religious beliefs don’t necessarily make it okay to break the law by discriminating against others.”

Royster said forcing a business that offers services to the public to abide by discrimination laws does not violate the First Amendment – and does not pit gay rights against religious rights.

“It’s about discrimination,” she said. “It’s not religious rights versus gay rights. We have a law on the books that makes it illegal to discriminate against LGBT persons. It makes it illegal for business to do that and this business broke the law by discriminating against this couple.”

Ken Klukowsi, of the Family Research Council, called the ruling profoundly disturbing.

“This decision may bring to Americans’ attention the serious threat to religious liberty posed by overbearing government agencies when it comes to redefining marriage,” he said. “Rather than live and let live, this is forcing religious Americans to violate the basic teachings of their faith or lose their jobs.”

Lorence said they are considering appealing the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This is very coercive, very authoritarian to crush those who do not agree and make public examples of them – and in a free society, that simply should not be,” he said.

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/nm-court-says-christian-photographers-must-compromise-beliefs.html

Greg Gutfeld slams media: ‘A dead Australian is just the price you pay to be politically correct’

On Thursday’s “The Five,” co-host Greg Gutfeld gave a scathing critique of the media for the absence of coverage of last week’s shooting of Australian baseball player Christopher Lane, allegedly killed by three Oklahoma teens who told police they were “bored.”

Gutfeld, author of “The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage,” said that absence was a product of the tragedy not fitting a particular media narrative.

“So by now you have heard of the murder of this young man from Australia, Christopher Lane,” Gutfeld said. “The media has a motive: boredom.  Yeah, when you’re bored, you kill people. But by blaming boredom, you can ignore recent tweets by one suspect who boasted hating white people. The suspected shooter reveled in gang signs and gang colors and bragged about knocking out five white people since the Zimmerman verdict.”

“If you aren’t familiar with this knocking out trend, it is where a gang cold-cocks strangers, sometimes killing them,” he said. “The media is staying away from this even though it’s a hate crime. It’s not their kind of hate crime. Given the tweets and this gang stuff, will the Justice Department see this as a hate crime? I don’t think so. It fits no storyline on HBO’s ‘Newsroom’ or ‘Law & Order’ — yeah, ‘Law & Order,’ the favorite show among shut-ins and their double-stuffed Oreos. They’re planning a Trayvon Martin episode, calling it an American tragedy.”

He took a parting shot at the media for the way it treats these tragedies in the black community, which is to turn a blind eye to them.

“But the other American tragedy are those producers and networks and hacks who accept violence through unconscious bigotry,” Gutfeld said. “They just don’t think it is fair to demand a community what it demands from their own. Even if the crime isn’t about race, and maybe it isn’t, it is an evil act rooted in destructive lifestyles and broken communities. In the media’s eyes, a black teen is invisible until he’s a body. And a dead Australian is just the price you pay to be politically correct.”

 http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/22/greg-gutfeld-slams-media-a-dead-australian-is-just-the-price-you-pay-to-be-politically-correct/#ixzz2co1KCiLM

The Hood Comes to Duncan, Oklahoma

Was it a thrill kill or part of a gang initiation? That would be the bushwhacking of Chris Lane, an Aussie college kid and baseball star. Lane was gunned down running along a country road near Duncan, Oklahoma, the other day. You know the story by now. 

Does it matter what motivated Allen Luna and James Francis Edwards, Jr., Chris Lane's accused killers, and Michael Dewayne Jones, an accessory, to off a young man with a promising future who was just going about the routine of his life on a summer's day?
In one sense it doesn't matter. Whether those three gangsta-infatuated creeps were thrill killing or murdering an innocent to be "made" (as the mob is fond of saying) as Crips just points to the rot -- the nihilism -- that has debauched subsets of American society. Terming this nihilism a cancer is cliché. Cancer isn't communicable, as best I know.

What the nation suffers is leprosy -- a scary cultural and societal decay that is only more advanced in many black and Hispanic urban communities. It's present, too, in a growing number of white underclass communities (here and in Europe). For too long, that leprosy has been spreading to the broader culture with all its attendant sickness.

We have the progressives to thank for the contagion. In fact, let's thank the left for Luna, Edwards, and Jones right now. Over the decades, the left's compassionate government policies have done to the black underclass what earlier Americans did to the Indians: made them dependents on Uncle Sam. Indians were welfare-ized and quarantined on reservations.
The nation's hoods and increasingly, barrios are modern-day reservations, where independence, initiative, self-worth, and self-respect have been stripped from residents. 

Where family, community, and church have been debased in favor of the government handout machine... and minority leaders who pimp their own people for gain. And... a white liberal political establishment that profits handsomely from subjugated minorities.

But human nature being what it is -- possessing deep needs for independence, self-sufficiency, and self-value -- means underclass blacks and Hispanics seek out perverse ways of expressing those needs. Gangs are replacements for families; they lend identity, security, and worth. They're enterprises where the ambitious, with talent and moxy, seek to better themselves -- albeit through violence and crime.

There's also the anti-traditionalism, anti-establishmentism, and permissiveness that grew out of the left and the left's spawn, the 60s youth movement. This ethos of break the rules and do as you feel hasn't liberated the nation's underclasses; it's robbed them of anchoring principles and certitudes. In smashing compasses, progressives have served only to cut adrift millions of Americans, launching them on a sea where everything's made up as one goes and right and wrong are matters of perception and opinion. 

The 60s ethos hasn't done much for the middle and upper classes, either -- at least, among those segments that subscribe to it. Relativism and juvenile self-obsession and indulgence only hastens rot.

Gangs and violence in underclass communities have been around long before Ellis Island, you say? True, indeed. But the Irish, Italians, and Jews, for example, didn't stay in the shanties and tenements. There was something called "upward mobility," which these ethnic groups aspired to. Poor immigrants and their families cycled through the nation's Hell's Kitchens and into the mainstream, adapting happily to the norms, values, and virtues that comprised traditional America.

Today, blacks and other underclass Americans are victims of generational poverty and welfare dependency. They're trapped not by lack of potential, but lack of social structures that instill virtues and channel their energies into constructive pursuits. Even government schools are nearly useless. The important social structures are family, neighborhood, and church; all were once the sinews binding poor communities together and giving poor kids the chance for better lives.

Does any sensible American really like rap or gangsta rap? Music full of anger, hate for authority -- the police, in particular -- and denigration of women. Full of talk of lawbreaking and killing. Full of idiotic preening and braggadocio about being unschooled and unmotivated toward conventional success. Does anyone think that wearing pants down around one's arse, tattooing one's body, and piercing one's nose, ears, tongue, nipples, and whatever else is indicative of anything other than the atavistic? Affectations that have seeped into the middle and upper classes.

Other than being a name on street signs and a day off in January, does Martin Luther King, Jr., matter much to urban black kids anymore? King who dressed in suits and spoke impeccable English? Who led a nonviolent civil rights movement and preached integration and unity among the races, not hate and division? Who wanted mainstreaming and conventional success for blacks?

Or Jackie Robinson, the subject of a recent movie, 42. One might dare say that Jackie Robinson is a stronger role model for nonblack kids than he is for poor black kids nowadays (if they even know who Robinson was and what he achieved).

The murder of Chris Lane makes apparent the advance of violent black urban culture into the hinterlands. Apparent -- not recent, and it's been further facilitated by the internet and social media.

The accused murderers and their accomplice were "wannabe" Crips, according to James Johnson, a black man, who reported that the three teens were hiding out in a car at -- of all places -- Duncan's Immanuel Baptist Church. Johnson says that the trio had threatened his teenage son on Facebook and feared his boy was next to be shot. Johnson says that Luna, Edwards, and Lane had attempted to recruit his son, but Johnson had shielded him from the teens. The trio, if Johnson is correct, had a "join or die" ultimatum for his son.

Said Johnson in a Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun report:

"I've been living here all my life and we never had this, but in the past few years gangs from Lawton have been coming here," Johnson said of the Crips.

Again per the Herald Sun, Johnson furnished this background about the accused killers:

Johnson's son also attends Duncan High School, where suspect Luna and Edwards Jr. were students. He said he knew both boys, and described them as "troublemakers" and "bullies" who had "no parental supervision."

Given the social media depicting the trio making ganglike gestures and one handling a rifle, these teens were infatuated by gang culture and gang violence. But Luna, Edwards, and Jones could have been more than taken with the Crips; they might have been initiating themselves into the gang.

The Crips and other street gangs often require an act of violence -- up to and including murder -- to initiate as a gangsta, or as the Crips say, become a "cuzz."

Robert Walker, a retired state and federal law enforcement officer and gang expert, runs the website "Gangs or Us," a gang identification resource.

Of the Crips and Bloods, Walker writes:

In the early 1980's, members of both gangs surfaced outside Los Angeles and the rest of California, primarily to sell cocaine. Investigative reports in 1991 placed Crips or Bloods in 32 States and 113 cities. However, these migrations are not orchestrated by any sort of national leadership. Instead, criminal acts often are committed or directed by individual leaders (who change frequently), rather than as the result of some hierarchical or collective decision making process.
The Crips is a loose association of some 200 gangs, many of which are at war with one another, and none of whom recognizes or exerts any kind of central authority. Individual gangs are equally marginal in their organization. Most are loosely knit coalitions of small, autonomous cliques. [Italics added.]

The Crips seem like Al Qaida precursors, with an emphasis on autonomy and independent action. The Crips, Bloods, and other gangs are opportunists, whose members have sought out communities (markets, if you will) where they can startup or dominate the drug trade.

That the Crips and gang culture enticed three Duncan juveniles and inspired them to commit a random act of murder is notable only because of the place and the victim. For Duncan citizens, Chris Lane's murder was novel and shocking. In inner-cities -- hoods -- across the land, senseless gang murders and mayhem are sorry ways of life.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/the_hood_comes_to_duncan_oklahoma.html#ixzz2coTApljh

Ebony Magazine Ramps-up War on Whites

The September issue of Ebony magazine has four tribute covers to Trayvon Martin with the headline "We are all Trayvon--Join the Movement to Save our Sons."

The first cover has Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton with Trayvon's brother Jahvaris looking like the million bucks they got in the settlement from the Twin Lakes Homeowner's Association.

The other three covers feature director Spike Lee, model actor Boris Kodjoe, and NBA star Dwayne Wade along with their respective sons, all wearing hoodies.

We can be sure the vultures at Ebony won't feel any pangs of conscience for their complicity in using pampered, rich kids to encourage more Trayvon Martins to go after white people.

Read this shameless rot from their website.

It's hard to believe that it was only 18 months ago that we lost Trayvon Martin. In the explosive time since that fateful night, February 26, 2012, generations of Black America have come to terms with the fact that we live in a country that often eats its young-our young.
To be 17, Black and male, specifically, is tantamount to a crime, so said the actions of a certain George Zimmerman, Trayvon's killer. After an emotional trial in the state of Florida, so too, it seems, said a jury of Zimmerman's peers. 
African-Americans across the country clenched their hearts at the news of Zimmerman's acquittal. Our president-a man who could have been Trayvon's father-spoke plainly about the pain of racial profiling and the injustices faced by Black males in this country.
What now? What now? 

What now, Ebony? How about tweets from thugs that your magazine provoked. Look at this tweet via Gateway Pundit from 'Jamesakabug' referring to the Chris Lane murder in Oklahoma:

"Ayeee I knocced out 5 woods since Zimmerman court!:) lol shit ima keep sleepin shit! #ayeeee"
According to one source: "Woods" is short for peckerwoods... white people... So Edwards was bragging about knocking out white people after the Zimmerman verdict.

What now? Ask Chris Lane's family in Australia or the 13-year old savagely beaten last month in Florida. Or how about the mother of a baby shot at point blank range in Georgia? 

Here are the most recent "I am Trayvon" wannabes that Ebony's racist propaganda continues to inspire.

March 14, 2013--Tyrone Woodfork, 20--Tulsa Oklahoma, charged with first-degree murder for beating an elderly couple to death, Bob and Nancy Strait. Bob served in WW II as a paratrooper.
March 21, 2013--Dominique Lang, 15, De'Marquise Elkins, 18--Marietta, Georgia, charged with the murder of one-year old Antonio Santiago and the shooting of his mother, Sherry West.
July 9, 2013--Lloyd Khemradj, Julian McKnight, and Joshua Reddin--Gulfport Florida charged with the aggravated battery of a 13-year old on a school bus.
August 16, 2013--Chancey Allen Luna, 16, and James Francis Edwards Jr.,15, Michael Dewayne Jones, 17-Duncan, Oklahoma, charged with the murder of 22 year-old Chris Lane while he was jogging.
August 19, 2013--Quintin Vicks, 18--Miami, charged with first degree murder for the killing of a security guard in Miami-Dade.

The public needs to hold Ebony's owners and editors responsible for inciting violence. If we can blame hate-filled videos, the schools, poverty and rap for these crimes, why not add these race hustlers to the list.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/ebony_magazine_ramps-up_war_on_whites.html#ixzz2coTTlHpM

WW II vet survived Okinawa; beaten to death by black teens

An 88-year old veteran of World War II, wounded in the leg at Okinawa, was found beaten to death outside of his lodge in Spokane, Washington.

USA Today:

An 88-year-old World War II vet who was wounded at Okinawa has died from head injuries suffered in a beating outside his lodge in in Spokane, Wash., apparently by two teenagers.
Delbert Belton, known as "Shorty," died Thursday from head injuries suffered in the attack Wednesday night outside the Eagles Lodge.
Police say they received a call about an assault and found the victim sitting in his car.
KXLY-TV quotes witnesses as saying two black male suspects attacked Belton as he was about to head inside the lodge to play pool. KHQ-TV reports that police believe the assault was a random attack.
Police, who have examined surveillance footage, say they are looking for two possible suspects between the ages of 16 and 19.
A friend, Ted Denison, told The Spokesman-Review that Belton was shot in the leg during the fighting in Okinawa in 1945.
"He was a tough old bird, I'll tell you that," he told the newspaper.
The newspaper says Belton was waiting outside the lodge for a friend because he did not want her to walk in alone.

A "random attack," is it? There have been a growing number of these "random attacks" this summer, in big cities and small towns. But we're not supposed to make it a race thing, right? These are kids just walking around - "bored," don't you know - until they come upon some random victim. We're supposed to ignore the fact that the victim is white and the perps are black because everyone knows there's no racial element to these crimes.
Now, if Shorty had been black and the kids white...well, you don't need much of an imagination to figure out how that would play out in the media.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/ww_ii_vet_survived_okinawa_beaten_to_death_by_black_teens.html#ixzz2coTvIm2u

DHS Employee Tasked With Buying Weapons Has a Website Dedicated to Murdering White People

Ayo Kimathi is an employee at the Department of Homeland Security. His job description? Purchasing ammunition and weapons. He's also the owner of waronthehorizon.com, a website dedicated to advocating the murder of white people. He's also a homophobe.

The website was discovered by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has been listed under the Hate Watch page.

By day, Ayo Kimathi works for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a small business specialist in a unit that buys such items as handcuffs, ammunition and guns.
Off-duty, he calls himself “the Irritated Genie.” He’s a gay-bashing, revenge-seeking black nationalist who advocates on his website – War on the Horizon – the mass murder of whites and the “ethnic cleansing” of “black-skinned Uncle Tom race traitors.”
“Warfare is eminent,” the website declares, “and in order for Black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites – more than our Christian hearts can possibly count.”
A former supervisor of Kimathi’s at the DHS told Hatewatch, “Everybody in the office is afraid of him.”
“This guy is filled with hate,” the supervisor continued. “People are afraid he will come in with a gun someday and go postal. I am astounded, he’s employed by the federal government, let alone Homeland Security."

Kimathi was given permission to launch a website he told supervisors would be used to sell concert tickets.
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has responded to the site and Kimathi's DHS employment as "unflippingbelievable."

So, the Federal Government, er, We The People, are employing someone at the Department of Homeland Security whose side job is running a hate website advocating ethnic cleansing and other despicable acts?! This official is promoting a race war. His fellow employees say they’re “astounded” he is employed by the taxpayers. His side “job” running the “War On the Horizon” website was reportedly approved by supervisors. Really, Fed? Really?
Friends, let your government know we deserve better; we demand better. We’re paying the tab.
Unflippingbelievable.

Hey, remember when DHS issued an entire report about "right-wing extremists?" Maybe they should issue a report about the black supremacist working in their ammunition department. 

 

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/08/23/homeland-security-employee--has-a-website-dedicated-to-hating-white-people-n1671808

How Oberlin Manufactured the Hate-Crime Hoax of the Year

By Michelle Malkin

Busted. Stone-cold busted. Just as I suspected, "progressive" pranksters at Oberlin College have been definitively unmasked as the perpetrators of phony campus "hate crimes" that scored international headlines in March. The blabbermouth academic administrators who helped fuel the hysteria are now running for cover.

The Associated Press, The New York Times, MSNBC, Yahoo News and the Huffington Post were among the media outlets that trumpeted the story of supposed racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism run amok at my alma mater. Throughout the winter, anti-black and anti-gay graffiti, swastikas, and a shadowy figure in a "KKK hood" surfaced on the tiny campus outside Cleveland, Ohio. Black Entertainment Television News decried the hate outbreaks and "KKK sighting."

Because of my firsthand knowledge of Oberlin's long history of self-manufactured hate-crime incidents, the fake-hate-crime alarm bells went off immediately for me when I read the reports. Back in the 1990s, race-obsessed nutballs at Oberlin College cooked up a horrid hate-crime hoax. Asian-American students claimed that a phantom racist had spray-painted anti-Asian racial epithets on a campus landmark rock. It turned out that it was a warped Asian-American student who perpetrated the dirty deed.

Student newspapers were filled with complaints about imaginary racism. One Asian-American student accused a library worker of racism after the poor staffer asked the grievance-mongering student to lower the blinds where she was studying. A black student accused an ice-cream shop owner of racism after he told the student she was not allowed to sit at an outside table because she hadn't purchased any items from his store.
My suspicions about the latest "hate" crime were bolstered by police statements that the "KKK hood"-wearing menace was actually a female student wrapped in a blanket. Hollywood darling and Oberlin alumnus Lena Dunham was undaunted, however, in ginning up emotional calls for Obie solidarity on Twitter, which the AP dutifully reported as "news." My warnings and reports on previous Obie hoaxes, alas, were not deemed AP-newsworthy.

The orgy of self-flagellation swelled. Liberal grievance-mongers applauded the administration's decision to shut down classes. Faculty, students and opportunists took to the airwaves and the Internet to bemoan "white privilege," institutional bigotry, lack of diversity, yada, yada, yada.

And now, the rest of the story. According to police reports published by Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller News Foundation this week, two students had 'fessed up to most of the incidents (and fellow students suspect they are responsible for all of them). The Oberlin Police Department identified the hoaxers as Dylan Bleier (a student worker bee for President Obama's Organizing for Action and a member of the Oberlin College Democrats) and Matthew Alden. Bleier told police the pair posted inflammatory signs and a Nazi flag around campus to "joke" and "troll" their peers.

Investigators "caught them red-handed" trying to circulate anti-Muslim fliers, and a search of Bleier's email confirmed he had used a fake account to harass a female student. Cops told Oberlin President Marvin Krislov, but he failed to pursue any criminal action. The two students were removed from campus before the bogus "KKK" brouhaha and news-making shutdown.

Krislov not only remained silent about the two pranksters, but he also stoked the fires of political correctness and helped fuel the false notion that real bigotry had pervaded the campus. The spring edition of the Oberlin College alumni magazine opened with a self-congratulatory essay from Krislov titled "A Fitting Response."
After perversely bragging about the "national and international news" headlines on the "bias incidents (that) disrupted our campus community," Krislov clucked that "similar things have occurred at other colleges." Which, of course, is inadvertently true. As I've reported for 20 years, American college campuses are the most fertile grounds for fake hate.

Krislov then praised "students, faculty, staff, alumni and fellow Oberlin residents" who "turned hate into an opportunity to educate." Of course, "hate" had nothing to do with it. And the police reports suggest that Krislov knew it. The rash of "intolerance" that littered the Oberlin campus was a symptom of juvenile delinquency and perverse self-delusion. Instead of examining their guilt in coddling hate-crime hoaxers, Krislov giddily promoted new efforts "strengthening the emphasis on diversity."

There are other adults who deserve to be called out. As Cornell law professor and blogger William Jacobson, who has pressed the administration for months about the cover-up, notes: "Oberlin continues the wall of silence which delayed for months disclosure of the hoax. It's time for Oberlin to reveal who knew what, and when, particularly as to the oversight exercised by the Board of Trustees."

Sad to say, this is the sorry state of liberal arts colleges in America today: Extreme identity politics, multiculturalism and pedagogical self-indulgence are creating a generation of race trolls enabled by tenured cultural Marxist punks raking in beaucoup bucks. The bursting of the higher-ed bubble can't come fast enough.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/08/23/how-oberlin-manufactured-the-hatecrime-hoax-of-the-year-n1671394/page/full 

The Subtlest Racism

An activist at Oberlin College invents evidence of a racial crime that never happened.

By Charles C W Cooke
The progressive insistence that America remains a deeply racist nation occasionally takes on an air of desperation, transmuting itself in its more difficult moments into the perverse, almost infantile, asseveration that if America is not sinful, it should be. On rare occasions this instinct spills over into straight-up mendacity, which is exactly what happened this year at Oberlin College, whose long nightmare of “campus racism” — swastikas, profane attacks on Black History Month, and even a sighting of the KKK — culminated in the predictable revelation that the whole affair had been a nasty hoax perpetrated by an overzealous Organizing for Action volunteer.

Worse, the website Legal Insurrection, which smelled a rat from the beginning, confirmed that “school officials and local police knew the identity of the culprits, who were responsible for most if not all of such incidents on campus, yet remained silent as the campus reacted as if the incidents were real.”

Fake hate crimes, which occur primarily on college campuses, are a peculiar feature of American life. Hoaxers operate on a bizarre premise: If evidence to support their political claims isn’t available when they need it to be, well then, they’ll just have to “find” some. Deep down, the hoaxer knows that his fellow citizens are racist and terrible; he knows that the downtrodden are suffering at the hands of people unlike him; and he knows that there is “so much more work to do.” And so, if his campus isn’t beset by the disgraceful bigotry of which he knows everyone is secretly guilty, then he’ll have to invent some against which heroically to fight.

The beauty of this trick is that there are an awful lot of people out there at a higher level of influence who feel precisely the same way — people who will jump like starved heroin addicts to devour the rare fix with which they’ve been provided. Chris Matthews has run so short of actual evidence that the people of the United States are as monstrous as he hopes they are that he was recently reduced to explaining with a straight face that conservatives are disrespecting the president by using his last name. The prospect of some real campus racism is an oasis against the desert, offering as it does the chance to play Rosa Parks on television and, crucially, to assuage a small part of the crushing disappointment and misplaced guilt that the MSNBC set apparently feels for not having been born during the civil-rights movement.

The method by which the architects of fake hate crimes elect to raise awareness is functionally indistinguishable from that of the show trial. As dictators of all stripes justify their behavior on the grounds that the message is more important than are the facts of the case — or, for that matter, than is the sacred innocence of the falsely accused — so the perpetrators of “hate crime” hoaxes have their own elevated ideologies, into whose service real lives must be pressed. Objective truth is just a casualty of the plan — an inconvenience that must be ruthlessly subjugated to the narrative. It would presumably come as an unpleasant surprise to these miscreants that their behavior carries the very whiff of totalitarian mania that they believe themselves to be denouncing. But it does.

It carries hints of mental illness, too. One of the guilty students at Oberlin, Dylan Bleier, appears genuinely to have regarded himself as a freedom fighter. Bleier was a member of the Ithaca White Allies Against Structural Racism, which he characterized as existing to “eradicate structural racism in Tompkins County [N.Y.], via forums discussing racism.” “Structural racism” is essentially a way of saying “invisible racism” without sounding like a ghost hunter. That is to say that, in the absence of actual racism, those whose worldview requires bigotry to be ubiquitous in America have moved to more sophisticated pastures, alternating between arguing that pretty much everything is racist and “discovering” that foundational and colorblind concepts such as free speech, trial by jury, the right to bear arms, and the rule of law are in fact tools of racial oppression.

An Obama volunteer and self-professed “atheist, pacifist, environmentalist, libertarian socialist, consequentialist,” Bleier, expressing joy when president Obama discussed the Zimmerman trial, tweeted that “Zimmerman is just the tip of the iceberg, a single highly visible symptom of the racist system that is ‘succeeding’ in the US.” Those wondering to what he was referring must understand that George Zimmerman’s “racism,” of which there is no objective evidence whatsoever, is “visible” only to people who can see such things. These are the same savants who were thrilled when Maureen Dowd proved herself capable of hearing a phantom racial word, “boy,” at the end of Joe Wilson’s “you lie” interruption in 2010. And if you can see what nobody else can — if you are able to provide that key piece of spectral evidence that will convict the dastardly witch or save that eternal soul — then you had sure as hell better show the jury.

This phenomenon, people maintaining their views regardless of the evidence to the contrary, is inextricable from the peculiar way in which Americans who readily admit that they “never thought” they’d see a black president in their lifetime refuse to alter their assessments of their country’s racial virtue now that they find themselves in a black president’s second term. It is related, too, to the red-faced insistence of many that the trial of George Zimmerman demonstrated that there are legions of Americans out there just itching to take advantage of a loophole in self-defense law and gun down a person of another race. And the ugly truth is that they want this to be true. Not for nothing did the New York Times invent the term “white Hispanic” or Touré risibly demand that Zimmerman be referred to as a “Peruvian American.” The facts didn’t suit the case — so the facts had to change.

Ultimately, Touré, Dowd, Bleier, and a sad and flighty cast of other hustlers, are in the business of being heroes. And, while the deck is stacked in favor of those who cry “Witch,” there is little incentive for them to stop. Meg Lanker-Simons, an activist and student at the University of Wyoming who sent fake rape threats to herself, not only enjoyed being the much-comforted victim of the “disgusting, misogynistic” attack that she had contrived but also got to lead the speeches condemning it. At Oberlin, Bleier and his partner in crime, Matt Alden, watched as their deception went national. Actress Lena Dunham made an issue out of the fracas on Twitter; MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry devoted substantial airtime to the scandal, inviting Ta-Nehisi Coates on to discuss racism at large; CNN and the New York Times covered the protests.

Closer to home, the Asian/Pacific American Alumni Association wrote to “express our solidarity” with the students who spoke out, and students at Williams College wrote to Oberlin during the sham and assured their contemporaries a few states over that they were “not alone in [their] struggle.” In that letter from Williams, signatories observed that, “as a family, we are stronger than the demons that we face.” Little did they know that, once again, the demon being faced in Ohio was not racism, it was not anti-Semitism, and it was not bigotry. It was mendacity.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356527/subtlest-racism-charles-c-w-cooke 

D.C. Government May Subsidize Pot for Poor

Government health officials in Washington, D.C., may foot the bill for medical marijuana for the city’s poorest patients, according to a new rule proposed by the Department of Health.

In a public notice filed last week and first reported by the Washington Times, the city DOH proposed a rule that would mandate that medical marijuana dispensaries adjust the price of pot on a sliding scale for patients who cannot afford it.

The dispensaries would have to use 2 percent of their revenue in order to make up for the difference in price, according to the rule.  Patients who could prove to the city that they earned 200 percent or less of federal poverty level wages could qualify to purchase medical marijuana on a sliding scale.

The pot would have to be discounted at least 20 percent, the rule states.

According to the Times, medical marijuana currently costs $380 to $440 an ounce in the city, which allowed sales to begin last month.

The Department of Health did not immediately return calls requesting comment from ABC News.
The rule is set to take effect in 30 days.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/08/d-c-government-may-subsidize-pot-for-poor/

College Costs Will Keep Rising Under Obama Plan

Colleges’ exploitation of young Americans through rapidly rising and increasingly exorbitant fees is a national scandal that can no longer be ignored. In his college tour this week, President Barack Obama is speaking at length about what he intends to do about it, after promising “tough love” on higher education for the last two years. 

Some of what he proposes is good in principle; some is very bad.

He wants to expand access to information on colleges by having the Department of Education issue a ranking of institutions relating outcomes to costs. The government has the power, via the Internal Revenue Service, to get some interesting data on college graduates’ earnings, and providing that data to consumers would be useful. Even independent college rankings -- such as those published by U.S. News & World Report and Forbes (the latter compiled by my Center for College Affordability and Productivity) -- could be improved with more data. 

Tying federal funding after 2018 to the new federal ratings, which in turn incorporate performance measures such as graduation rates, may be a step toward giving colleges incentives to take cost reduction seriously. But the potential for unintended and damaging consequences is high: If the key to federal funding is raising graduation rates, colleges may lower already abysmally low standards. 

Similarly, the proposed funds for promoting educational innovation are, in principle, a good idea. But previous federal education spending in this area has had a pretty dismal result.

Easy Money

Without any federal aid at all, cheap or free online courses are appearing all over. The accrediting agencies will probably try to stall this innovation, because it isn’t controlled by their member universities. A better approach would be to reconsider federal sanctioning of assistance to unaccredited schools, for example.
The president’s proposal has one very bad idea: a forgiveness boon for those paying off loans right now. The proposal, limiting loan payments to 10 percent of income, potentially relieves millions of students from repaying part of their obligation. So why not major in fields the economy values least -- anthropology or drama instead of engineering or math -- if you don’t have to worry about earning enough to pay off your student loans over a certain period? 

The idea simply raises incentives for future students to borrow more money, if they know their obligation to pay it back is capped. That, in turn, allows colleges to keep raising costs. 

Obama proposes to ignore or worsen the root cause of much of the explosion in student costs: the federal financial assistance programs that encourage schools to raise costs and that haven’t achieved their goals of providing college access to low-income Americans. 

Two recent studies highlight the problem. First, the National Center for Education Statistics released data suggesting that federal college financing is growing rapidly. Now 84 percent of full-time undergraduate students get some aid. Average grant assistance for dependent full-time undergraduate students (unmarried, younger than 24) was $10,600 in 2011-12, up 34 percent in just four years -- four times the inflation rate.
Middle-class kids who were previously denied Pell grant aid are now increasingly getting it: In 2011, 17.5 percent of dependent students from families with $60,000 to $80,000 in annual income received Pells, compared with a mere 1.6 percent just four years earlier. A number of federal aid programs -- for example, tuition tax credits and the PLUS loan program -- now disproportionately serve students from relatively affluent families. According to College Board data, total federal student financial assistance programs totaled $56.8 billion in 2001-2002, compared with $173.8 billion a decade later, an astonishing compounded annual rate of increase of 11.7 percent.

Increased Spending

A new study by Dennis Epple, Richard Romano, Sinan Sarpca and Holger Sieg for the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that the impact of these aid programs is clearly different from what federal policy makers intended. “We show that private colleges game the federal financial aid system,” they conclude. Every dollar in new financial aid to students leads to about 40 cents less spent by the colleges on institutional financial aid -- so students benefit far less than federal policy makers intended. 

In 1987, Secretary of Education William Bennett argued that more federal aid leads to higher tuitions, enabling schools to increase spending. This seems broadly consistent with the latest research results. The net attendance impact of these federal programs, according to the study for NBER, is “modest.” In short, these programs haven’t substantially spurred student access to colleges, all the while burdening taxpayers and student borrowers. 

The ballooning federal aid increases schools’ spending. The researchers don’t analyze changes in university spending, but an examination of other evidence suggests that money isn’t going primarily into improving instruction. Colleges have gone on a building spree (financed in part by amassing large debt -- more than $220 billion at schools whose bonds are rated by Moody’s alone), and pay and perquisites for top university administrators has risen sharply. 

Obama’s “tough love” on higher education should begin by reversing the financial aid explosion that has contributed to this spending binge and, more importantly, to the system that has produced a generation of young debtors with mediocre job prospects. The president is looking at the tip of the iceberg, not its bigger base. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-22/college-costs-will-keep-rising-under-obama-plan.html

Rangel: ‘No reason why a young person should have to pay for college education’

On Martin Bashir’s Thursday MSNBC program, New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel said that no students should have to pay for college.

Rangel was reacting to President Barack Obama’s higher education proposal rollout that would put in place requirements for students and institutions to receive federal financial aid assistance.

Rangel explained to fill-in host Joy Reid that he support Obama’s plan, particularly the accountability components.

“I think it’s exciting, and certainly it’s going to bring in accountability,” he said. “You know, we have universities scattered all over the world. Sometimes you think that tuition means nothing to a large group of people who pay these enormous salaries to college presidents. But if you’re talking about production, if you’re talking about what is the college really giving someone that doesn’t want a worldwide education, they just want to be able to compete. This makes sense.”

Rangel, however, told Reid those reforms alone weren’t enough and would offer college to Americans for free.

“But you know something, Joy?” Rangel continued. “There is no reason why a young person should have to pay for college education, because who does it benefit except a nation? Who are we competing against? Not ourselves, but China and other industrialized countries, they decide what they need, and they provide the incentives. Here we don’t have nurses and doctors, and then when a person gets out of health school, I mean out of medical school, they can’t get the money to pay off their debt. It doesn’t make sense.”

 http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/22/rangel-no-reason-why-a-young-person-should-have-to-pay-for-college-education-video/#ixzz2co2FqvN4

A New Strategy to Take on ObamaCare

A coalition of conservatives believes that 'delay' is more likely to succeed than 'defund.'

By Kim Strassel
The Republicans determined to defund ObamaCare are getting a little competition in the ideas department. Maybe there's hope for progress against the president's health-care law after all. 

The question of how the GOP should handle ObamaCare has of late been dominated by those who want the party to strip funding from the law, then shut down the government unless President Obama agrees. The Defund Republicans aren't a large faction of the conservative movement, and their plan is deeply flawed. Their strength has been in exploiting the notable lack of alternate strategies for undercutting the unpopular health law. 

That's changing. A swelling coalition of conservative activists—card-carrying members of the "repeal ObamaCare" campaign—are lighting up the movement with a different approach. The plan aims to leverage public support, play on Democrat weaknesses, and, most notably, sidestep a shutdown fight that would damage the GOP even as it failed to kill the law. Meet the "Delay coalition." 

The rallying cry of the Defunders is that this moment is the GOP's "last chance" to put the brakes on ObamaCare. Yet by that very logic, the GOP strategy had better offer a chance at success. Shutdown doesn't. Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats will never agree to tank their signature achievement. The White House is salivating over the chance to pin a shutdown on Republicans, since honest polls show the public is opposed to shutting down government over ObamaCare. Even the Defund ringleaders admit—at least in private—that this fight isn't going to end with a defunded law. 

The Delay strategy is at least aimed at an achievable goal. Its outlines are contained in a letter engineered by Heather Higgins, CEO of Independent Women's Voice. The letter was crafted with the aid of influential repeal activists—Phil Kerpen at American Commitment, Grover Norquist and Ryan Ellis at Americans for Tax Reform, the Galen Institute's Grace-Marie Turner, Jim Capretta, Ken Hoagland, Avik Roy, the list rolls on—and now has more than 40 signatures. The letter calls on congressional Republican leaders to use one of this fall's legislative fights to impose a one-year delay of ObamaCare's individual mandate, exchange subsidies and taxes.

The political calculus is that delay, unlike defund, pushes Democrats to do something that many are already inclined to do. The president himself has endorsed delay for key parts of the bill—the employer mandate, out-of-pocket-caps, income verification requirements. Unions, the bedrock of the liberal base, are demanding wholesale changes in the law. Vulnerable Senate Democrats know the ObamaCare exchanges are a pending disaster, and they are terrified of political fallout. Twenty-two House Democrats in July voted with Republicans to delay the individual mandate.

An ObamaCare delay, the coalition argues, is also in line with public opinion. Whereas shutdown would prove a complex and messy PR job, the public is already highly educated on the big ObamaCare issues. A majority opposes provisions like the individual mandate, and is worried by the exchanges. The president's own delays have handed Republicans powerful messaging tools. They can enlist the public to pressure Democrats to grant individuals the same mandate reprieve Mr. Obama has gifted to business, and to delay exchanges that lack the verification and security procedures necessary to protect taxpayers and confidential information. 

Delay proponents maintain this strategy answers the "last chance" question. A one-year delay would kick these provisions to the heat of the 2014 midterms, a point at which Democrats will be more loath to continue. It provides Republicans the opportunity to make 2014 another referendum on ObamaCare, furthering their cause of holding the House and retaking the Senate—at which point they'd be far better positioned to dismantle the law. A government shutdown would only hurt their election prospects.

The Delay coalition is far from unified on specifics. Some argue that the best moment for this fight is within the coming debate over government funding. Some see the moment in the debt-ceiling brawl. Others wonder if there's leverage in the president's desire to renew unemployment benefits.

There's an internal debate over whether Republicans should push for a delay of the entire law, or isolated pieces. And there's disagreement over tactics, emphasis and the chances of success. All of which is healthy.
Most of the signatories to the Delay coalition letter are also on record supporting a House vote to defund ObamaCare. They, too, advocate putting the heat on the left. But they argue that, if and when a defund bill fails to proceed in Harry Reid's Senate, Republicans need a savvy and proactive alternative to shutdown, one that has a chance of success.

That's an honorable tactical position, and one that any conservative who wants to kill this law should at least consider. Perhaps there are even better ways than "delay" of undermining the law. We won't know until the GOP calls a truce in its circular firing squad and starts talking smart strategy. The inexcusable tragedy of this August recess is that Republicans are so busy fighting one another over how to pressure Democrats that they've utterly failed to pressure Democrats. Headlines are nice. Victories are better. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323665504579027210584151346.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond

 The Obama Regime

The president has become dictatorial in nearly every area of governance.

Slowly at first, then all of a sudden, the Obama administration has devolved into the Obama regime. Obama does whatever he wants. Those pesky impediments on his predecessors — namely, federal law, the separation of powers, and the Constitution — have proved as tough as tissue paper in containing Obama’s ambition to impose statism on America. From Obamacare to unions to telephones, it’s basically another day, another decree.

“I have to figure out what I can do outside of Congress through executive actions,” Obama reportedly told the Congressional Black Caucus last month. In Jacksonville on July 25, Obama announced, “Where I can act on my own, I’m going to act on my own. I won’t wait for Congress.” As Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere explained: “The president is done caring about congressional Republicans calling him a dictator.”

Obamacare’s internal contradictions threaten to tear it apart, like a crippled satellite re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. Even committed collectivists such as Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa Jr. and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean are fleeing.

But Obama still tries to keep Obamacare in orbit — by fiat. In a move that, ironically, aligns him with the oft-bashed 1 percent, Obama gave employers with payrolls of more than 50 employees another year to offer health insurance. So, savings for CEOs and another year without coverage for their workers.

But nothing in Obamacare, a.k.a. the “Affordable Care Act,” empowers Obama to waive this mandate. Section 1513(d) clearly declares: “The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.” Why stop at 2014? Why not excuse employers for five years? And why no relief from the individual mandate for America’s beleaguered rank-and-file?

When congressional Democrats screamed that Obamacare’s costs might prompt staff resignations, supposedly triggering a brain drain, Obama decided to extend subsidies to members of Congress and their employees. (Obamacare’s brain drain on companies now shedding workers seems not to worry Democrats a whit.) For 2013, this totals some $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families. Thus, Obama will bail out legislators who make $174,000 annually and aides whose 2012 earnings averaged $81,419 in the House alone, Legistorm.com estimates.

While taxpayers may weep for America’s brave Hill staffers and their selfless bosses, Obama and the Office of Personnel Management rescued them illegally. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “OPM has no authority to pay for insurance plans that lack FEHBP [Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan] contracts, nor does the Affordable Care Act permit either exchange contributions or a unilateral bump in congressional pay in return for less overall compensation. Those things require appropriations bills passed by Congress and signed by the President.”

Consequently, any Democrat or Republican who accepts this lawless perk will be guilty of receiving stolen goods.

Once again, Obama, Mr. 99 Percent, sided with big business, at the expense of patients, when he autocratically gave the nasty, greedy insurance companies an extra year to charge patients higher out-of-pocket expenses and delayed Obamacare’s $6,350-per-individual and $12,700-per-family limits on such charges. This means fatter coffers for Aetna and Blue Cross and thinner wallets for working-class sick people. And Obama also perpetrated this without legislative authority.

Obama made three recess appointments to the five-member National Labor Relations Board on January 4, 2012, even though the Senate was not in recess — it technically was on a break, but holding pro forma sessions. Hence, the D.C. Circuit Court concluded last January 25 that those nominations were “constitutionally invalid.” Without those members, the NLRB lacked a quorum. That rendered bogus its decisions during the previous year. Regardless, the NLRB issued 112 rulings after the D.C. Circuit delegitimized those three members. Last May 16 and July 17, respectively, the Third and Fourth Circuit Courts of Appeals backed the D.C. Circuit’s opinion. The Senate on July 30 confirmed fresh NLRB appointees, who now compose a proper quorum. They are sifting through the wreckage of 18 months of board decisions that the Fourth Circuit vacated as illegal.

By June 15, 2012, Congress had failed to adopt the so-called DREAM Act. So what? Obama that day brazenly abandoned his duty to enforce existing law and instead shielded from deportation illegal aliens up to age 30 whose parents brought them here before age 16. Without legislative approval, Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program granted de facto amnesty and even work permits to at least 800,000 such illegals. According to official statistics through March 2013, of the 472,004 applicants for “deferred action,” just 1,377 were denied and 268,361 applications had been approved.

Just last week, Obama unveiled a brand-new $6 billion cell-phone tax to fund high-speed Internet links for government schools. Rather than support legislation for this tax, Obama expects his appointees to the Federal Communications Commission to impose it by edict. As White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said during the Obamas’ annual pilgrimage to Martha’s Vineyard: “Unfortunately, we haven’t seen a lot of action in Congress, so the president has advocated an administrative, unilateral action to get this done.”
There is a way to get things done in Washington, and this is not it. Then–Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a reliably liberal jurist, put it well in Clinton v. City of New York (1998): “There is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes.”

Obama sees things differently. For him, the Constitution is for chumps, and the law is for losers. In History of the World Part I, Mel Brooks observed: “It’s good to be the king.” Yes, but it’s better to be Obama.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356514/obama-regime-deroy-murdock

GOP 2.0: RNC pushing tech to hit back in 2014

The RNC’s blistering 2013 “Growth and Opportunity Project” report hammered the party for its perceived inability to connect with American voters, in particular the younger demographic.
The GOP's solution? Facebook.

The Republican National Committee recently hired former Facebook engineer Andy Barkett to fill the newly created post of chief technology officer. Barkett told FoxNews.com he’s spent the past few weeks working to address the “digital divide.”

“We’ve been building stuff,” Barkett told FoxNews.com. “At Facebook there are signs that ‘say move fast and break things.’ That was the mantra I had in my mind going into things.”

Barkett said he is developing new tools and platforms, data warehouses and databases. It's essentially a massive, synchronized new infrastructure that one would expect to find at a bank or corporation -- but not necessarily in the U.S. government.

“It’s not a single piece of software. It’s dozens of pieces of software,” he said. “We’re going to release tools in the next couple of months, but we’ll keep updating them. We’ll never stop.”

'At Facebook there are signs that ‘say move fast and break things.’ That was the mantra I had in my mind.'

- Andy Barkett, former Facebooker and CTO for the RNC

The changes should roll out soon, too: “We’re looking to put stuff out by the end of year, for the 2014 elections,” he told FoxNews.com.

Barkett has his work cut out for him. The Growth and Opportunity Report -- an “autopsy” of the 2012 election that was released in March -- excoriated the party, highlighting its failure to attract younger voters and the lack of digital systems that many say helped elect President Barack Obama.

“Technology is second nature to young voters. Using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram is important, but we also need to be actively looking for and utilizing the newest and most cutting-edge social media platforms to engage this generation,” the report reads.

Barkett told FoxNews.com he plans to do exactly that, working with companies like Twitter, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and more, and building digital tools in the cloud with Amazon and Microsoft, Cloudspace and Rackspace. The goal is to help the party find new demographics, build long term relationships with voters, and better communicate with Americans under 30.

“Young voters need to be attracted to the Republican Party by both the message and the candidate. Obama was seen as ‘cool’ in 2008, and his popularity spread like wildfire among young voters,” the report said.

New tools will help. New staff will, too: Noting that digital now plays an important role in strategy too, the RNC also hired Chuck DeFeo to be its chief digital officer and made him a deputy chief of staff.

These critical change follows a 2012 Election Day mishap that demonstrated a real GOP weakness – its need to be “more sophisticated” with data and corroboration. Mitt Romney’s key program, code-named ORCA, was meant to be a high-tech means for campaign volunteers to track who voted and alert its headquarters in Boston if voter turnout was low. The system instead buckled for 90 minutes under the strain and resulted in a mass panic by Romney workers.

Zac Moffatt, then the campaign’s digital director, told the Boston Globe that the problems were not “election determinative” and the campaign still had reports from 91 percent of counties, as well as information about 14 million voters by the end of Election Day.

Moffatt, also the co-founder of the data firm Targeted Victory, declined to comment when questioned by FoxNews.com.

Unlike Obama’s digital operations, which are largely owned and controlled by his campaign organization, according to the Washington Post, the RNC’s system will be there for the entire Republican party.

“We will build many tools to help on all ends of our new permanent campaign including how to share data better, tools to help with Get Out The Vote efforts and more,” GOP spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski told FoxNews.com.

Some Democrats say that the GOP has a habit of promising great technology and eventually not succeeding. The GOP hopes Barkett’s experience at the social network will change that.

“At Facebook, they release changes to the live site twice a day, sometimes more. We might not be quite that fast,” Barkett said. “But we’ll never stop.”

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/08/23/gop-rnc-pushing-tech-to-hit-back-in-2014/?intcmp=features#ixzz2cntY3PWP

When I was a rich kid, we were all pro-communist

When I was a rich kid living in Great Neck, NY, I remember standing on the lawn of my girlfriend's house and listening to her parents talk about how my girlfriend's grandfather fought for the communists in Spain.  They were proud of him.  While the father puffed his pipe on the lawn of their estate, they pontificated on their sympathy for poor people and their desire to have a classless society.

They actually didn't know any poor people except the maid and the gardeners.  They feigned sympathy for the poor because it made them feel more generous.  Gramps thought that by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, he was bettering society.  He gave about ten percent of his income to charities and acted like he was donating ninety percent and had switched living establishments with the poor.  He didn't know that communists wreck the fabric of ambition and destroy Darwin's principle of the survival of the fittest, substituting it for survival of the weakest, which makes society feeble and non-productive. 

My dad was sympathetic to socialism, and due to his influence, I semi-agreed with my girlfriend's family.  I believed in communism and what would eventually become Obama's simplistic fair share.  I thought that Senator Joe McCarthy was a beast because he was tough on communists and made it difficult for some spoiled screenwriters to get jobs after betraying our country.  Hollywood cries; people in communist countries die.  I didn't realize that Senator Joe was defending the American way and supporting Emerson's self-reliance rather than the nanny state.

In my sixties I played tennis with Ben Gitlow, the son of the original president of the American Communist Party.  Even he had turned against the party.  The party was not kind.  It hurt those it pretended to help.  Only inexperienced fools who knew nothing about government remained loyal to the Communist Party. People like Ben and his dad, who had actually met with Stalin, knew that communism wrecked the economy and stole one's life force, one's soul. 

Communists back then pretended, like Obama today, to defend the middle class and spitefully attack the rich.  But communism actually decimated the middle class and created a new power-class out of the communist faithful.  It is a party built on jealousy.  The communists, like the Occupy Wall Street crowd, are so jealous of the rich that they are willing to destroy the business structure of Wall Street without leaving themselves a viable path to success.  Imagine those unemployed rich kids and rapists setting up a new business model on Wall Street.  Failure, thy name is inexperience and youth. 

Jews, of which I am one, are particularly prominent among American communists.  Maybe it's because they feel that communism is the antidote to fascism.  They don't care that communism killed five times as many people as fascism.  Nazis were small potatoes compared to communists.

Communist Jews follow communism's founder, anti-Semite Karl Marx.  They forget that Jews were never really popular in communist countries.  It was ironic to see communists rationing their food in the USSR while rich limousine liberals in New York insulted capitalism as they pretended to be men of the people.

How stupid that many communists are academics.  You'd think that they'd be smarter than that, but they can't get out of the way of their own envy and hatred of successful people.

What's ironic is that Nazism bears a terrible reputation, whereas communism gets a pass.  Communism hides behind the lie that it is trying to give everyone a fair shake and improve life on earth.  Liberals are derivative of communism and also think of themselves as great healers, when in reality they are wreckers of society and destroyers of the competitive urge of capitalism.

Both Nazism and communism hate the bourgeois and bury themselves beneath a blanket of totalitarianism.  Both are government-heavy and restrict individual freedoms.  Nazism, communism, socialism, and liberalism are imperialistic and create an ideological theocracy on Earth.  It's like deductive logic -- everything from the top, no inductive pragmatism.  It's time we woke up and realized that communism is as bad as Nazism, that Obama's liberal policies are the death knell of society.

In the seventies, my liberal parents visited Russia and discovered long lines for bread and bedbugs in their supposedly four-star hotel.  In fact, they could get water only every second day and had to brush their teeth with Coca-Cola or lemonade.  Yet all the liberals back in America looked up to the USSR.  They believed that communism was nice to the masses who were really starving in the streets.  Yet I don't remember any New Yorkers brushing their teeth with soda.

Communists have done more ill than fascists.  Yet the liberals still pat them on the back.  They make anti-Nazi movies like Inglorious Basterds.  They make pro-communist movies like Warren Beatty's Reds.  They make Nazis out to be monsters and communists into loving people who give out bread to the poor. 

Back in the real world, Che Guevara, America's rock star, was shooting people in the back of the head.  And Fidel Castro has taken a thriving economy and buried it in his arrogant demand for power. 

The Nazis starved many Jews to death.  Chairman Mao starved more of his own people.

Communism is fascism's sister.  It's time that they were recognized as twins and that the liberals stopped seeing communism through rose-colored glasses.  Democrats remind me of the Beatles' Strawberry Fields, where "Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout."

What they don't realize is that when you don't "get hungabout" the failures of communism, you end up hanging from a tree of your own neglect, dying in a noose of naïve optimism and the sophomoric fair-sharing of an unworkable society.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/when_i_was_a_rich_kid_we_were_all_pro_communist.html#ixzz2coaG8whc