Park Service Paramilitaries
The government has King John’s idea of public lands.
By Mark Steyn
...Is this for real? It’s not King Barack’s land; it’s supposed to be the
people’s land, and his most groveling and unworthy subjects shouldn’t
require a dispensation by His Benign Majesty to set foot on it. It is
disturbing how easily large numbers of Americans lapse into a
neo-monarchical prostration that few subjects of actual monarchies would
be comfortable with these days. But then in actual monarchies the king
takes a more generous view of “public lands.” Two years after Magna
Carta, in 1217, King Henry III signed the Charter of the Forest, which
despite various amendments and replacement statutes remained in force in
Britain for some three-quarters of a millennium, until the early
Seventies. If Magna Carta is a landmark in its concept of individual
rights, the Forest Charter played an equivalent role in advancing the
concept of the commons, the public space. Repealing various restrictions
by his predecessors, Henry III opened the royal forests to the freemen
of England, granted extensive grazing and hunting rights, and eliminated
the somewhat severe penalty of death for taking the king’s venison. The
NPS have not yet fried anyone for taking King Barack’s deer, but it is
somewhat sobering to reflect that an English peasant enjoyed more
freedom on the sovereign’s land in the 13th century than a freeborn
American does on “the people’s land” in the 21st century.
...According to Gowdy, blocking off public lands is not a shutdown
requirement, but “more troubling” to the South Carolinian is the fact
that NPS has been acting as an “arbiter of what is constitutionally
permissible
speech
rather than applying a content neutral policy and regulations equally and fairly to everyone”
...“I clearly expressed my concern regarding disparate enforcement by NPS
in the name of the First Amendment,” he wrote. “This statement applies
as much now as it did then: ‘At the bottom of it all is the issue of
fair and equal
application of the law because from this vantage point, it appears that there are at least two very different sets of rules.’”
...Again, yep. The real action next year will be in the Senate. That
fight won’t be won or lost in this shutdown. Obama wants Democrats to
re-take the House, but that isn’t likely. He may have engineered the
shutdown to scramble the signal, but it’s unlikely to do that, even with
the current bad polls for Republicans. We’re more than a year away from
the election.
It may be that Obama has engineered the rolling budget fights to give
himself handy battles to use strategically and to win himself total
power over spending. It may be that he wants default to give him some
room to maneuver and amass more power within the chaos, but chaos is by
its nature unpredictable, and defaulting will have consequences that he
does not foresee — for him. In an environment in which Congress no
longer passes real budgets, a “clean” CR and a “clean” debt ceiling hike
would probably accomplish his goal of having unprecedented power over
spending, at least as long as the debt ceiling isn’t breached again.
That’s a big goal that does change a lot. He can’t be allowed to achieve
it.
The repetitious nature of these spending fights, and the sheer
futility of following every single move, 99% of which turn out to be
irrelevant to the outcome, leave me agreeing with Silver again.
The folks you see on TV are much too sure of themselves.
They’ve been making too much of thin slices of polling and thinner
historical precedents that might not apply this time around.
By Silvio Canto, Jr.
By any executive 101 standard, President Obama is failing and failing big:
1) Hold your subordinates responsible; and,
2) Make adjustments.
...Let's look at Secretary Sebelius's performance, as Tom Bevan posted:
"Sebelius' department had 3½ years to prepare to implement the Affordable Care Act.
No one ever suggested that commandeering one-sixth of the American
economy would be an easy task. (Many Republicans suggested the opposite
and were dismissed as killjoys for their efforts.) But after the debacle
of the last two weeks, liberals and Democrats-not conservatives or Republicans-should be calling for Sebelius's head."
By Cynthia Yacowar-Sweeney
....Hastings
School chose to replace Christmas festivities with African
"drumming." Given the insistence on an African theme, why did the
school not choose African "music" instead, like the magnificent and
magical music of Mali that was outlawed by Islam when al-Qaeda took
control there? Why drumming? Here's why.
According
to the more authentic and reliable hadiths -- traditions or deeds
attributed to Mohammed that provide the basis of sharia or Islamic law,
after the Koran -- musical instruments are all regarded as tools of Satan (Bukhari, vol.2, book 15, hadith 70) and forbidden in Islam, except for the daf drum (Abu Dawud, book 15, hadith 3306).
Singing,
which was not a Christmas-replacement option for Hastings School, is
also forbidden in Islam (especially for women), as it "produces hypocrisy (Abu Dawud, book 41, hadith 4909) in the heart" and is considered to be the voice of Satan. Both musical instruments and singing lead man astray and deviate from the path of Allah. Those who use musical instruments will be destroyed and "transformed into monkeys and pigs" (Bukhari, vol. One hadith from the sacred collection called Hadee's-e-Qudsi Ahmad (19:5) commands Mohammed "to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance."
...Hastings
School just happens to be part of the Louis Riel School Division, which
changed its music curriculum to accommodate Islam back in 2011. In
doing so, the division did not stand up for Canadian values. A dozen
recently arrived Muslim families to Canada demanded that their children be excused
for Islamic reasons from the elementary school compulsory music and
co-ed physical education programs. These families would not allow their
children to be exposed to singing or playing musical instruments, as this is not permitted in Islam.
By Leo Rennert
The 2013 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons -- a little-known outfit that's just starting to locate
and destroy Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. It will be many months
before any conclusions can be reached about the success or failure of
its work. But, in a pattern that's become all too familiar, the Nobel Peace Prize panel made a decision based on a hope and a prayer -- not on firm accomplishments of lasting importance and value.
There was a time when the award of the Nobel Peace Prize went to winners with scintillating records of having advanced the cause of peace and human rights.
Los Angeles public schools are encouraging teachers and staff to wear badges that identify them as “LGBT allies” and supporters of the pro-gay movement.
...School officials did not specify what steps they would be taking to encourage teachers
to extol students on the basis of their sexual orientation, nor did any
local media ask about teachers who decline to join in the observance.
By James Lewis
It
looks like the fix is in. The mullahs will certainly get their nukes
and ICBMs, and neither Israel nor the Saudis (who are scared to death of
the mullahs) will rely on American protection as long as Obama is in
office.
...Even
today, Obama is supporting the radical Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle
East, in spite of its defeat by a modernist alliance in Egypt. Indeed,
the U.S. has just cut off supplies to the armed forces of Egypt, the
biggest political force for stability. In Syria, the news is now out that yes, we are supplying the 60,000 jihadis who are trying to overthrow Assad, Russia's ally.
Obviously
we are siding with the barbarians in the jihad war. We have given up
any moral justification for our foreign policy. In Obama's world, as the
ACORN Manual proclaims, "Might is right." Until Obama's is gone, the world will grab any life preserver within reach.
...In
sum, the safety and security we have provided the world for seventy
years is crumbling. Countries at great risk are looking to Moscow for
military protection. Russia is still much weaker than it was when the
Soviet Union looked dominant, but it has two big sources of clout: Its
military and its energy supplies. Russia is also the only nation that
can intimidate the mullahs -- it is far more willing to use its full
range of weapons than the United States. Putin has proven that in
Chechnya.
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