Proposed IRS Regs Would Immediately, Unlawfullyand Permanently Muzzle Conservatives
…..Not only has Obama faced zero accountability for these arguably impeachable offenses, he has since doubled down. With jaw-dropping gall, his administration has now moved to officially weaponize the IRS against conservatives once and for all.
Despite the furor over the IRS assault on conservative groups leading up to the 2012 elections, this man - a despotic radical who's turned our constitutional republic into one of the banana variety - has quietly released a proposed set of new IRS regulations that, if implemented, will immediately, unlawfully and permanently muzzle conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations and their individual employees. (The 501(c)(4) designation refers to the IRS code section under which social welfare organizations are regulated).
The new regulations would unconstitutionally compel a 90-day blackout period during election years in which conservative 501(c)(4) organizations - such as tea-party, pro-life and pro-family groups - would be banned from mentioning the name of any candidate for office, or even the name of any political party.
Here's the kicker: As you may have guessed, liberal lobbying groups like labor unions and trade associations are deliberately exempted. And based on its partisan track record, don't expect this president's IRS to lift a finger to scrutinize liberal 501(c)(4)s. Over at a Obama's "Organizing for America," the left-wing political propaganda will, no doubt, flow unabated.
These Orwellian regulations will prohibit conservative 501(c)(4) organizations from using words like "oppose," "vote," or "defeat." Their timing, prior to a pivotal election, is no coincidence and provides yet another example of Obama's using the IRS for "progressive" political gain.
Although these restrictions only apply to 501(c)(4) organizations for now, under a straightforward reading, they will also clearly apply to 501(c)(3) organizations in the near future.
Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel Action - one of the many conservative organizations to be silenced - commented on the breaking scandal. "One of the core liberties in our constitutional republic is the right to dissent," he said. "But desperate to force his radical agenda on the American people, Barack Obama and his chosen political tool, the IRS, are now trying to selectively abridge this right, effectively silencing their political adversaries."
Specifically, here's what the proposed regulations would do to conservative groups and their leaders:
- Prohibit using words like "oppose," "vote," "support," "defeat," and "reject."
- Prohibit mentioning, on its website or on any communication (email, letter, etc.) that would reach 500 people or more, the name of a candidate for office, 30 days before a primary election and 60 days before a general election.
- Prohibit mentioning the name of a political party, 30 days before a primary election and 60 days before a general election, if that party has a candidate running for office.
- Prohibit voter registration drives or conducting a non-partisan "get-out-the-vote drive."
- Prohibit creating or distributing voter guides outlining how incumbents voted on particular bills.
- Prohibit hosting candidates for office at any event, including debates and charitable fundraisers, 30 days before a primary election or 60 days before the general election, if the candidate is part of the event's program.
- Restrict employees of such organizations from volunteering for campaigns.
- Prohibit distributing any materials prepared on behalf a candidate for office.
- Restrict the ability of officers and leaders of such organizations to publicly speak about incumbents, legislation, and/or voting records.
- Restrict the ability of officers and leaders of such organizations to make public statements regarding the nomination of judges.
- Create a 90-day blackout period, on an election year, that restricts the speech of 501(c)(4) organizations.
- Declare political activity as contrary to the promotion of social welfare.
- Protect labor unions and trade associations by exempting them from the proposed regulations.
"We would even be prohibited from criticizing the federal bureaucracy. If this new set of regulations goes into effect, Liberty Counsel Action - all conservative 501(c)(4)s for that matter - will be forbidden to 'oppose' or 'support' anything in the political arena and we'll be prohibited from conducting our 'get-out-the vote' campaigns or issuing our popular voter guides.
"Further," continue Staver, "individual employees of conservative groups will be banned from speaking or messaging on incumbents, legislation, and/or voting records - or speaking on the nominations of judges or political nominees being considered by the Senate. This also includes taking on state and local politicians."
"These are the same tactics used by the Obama administration to illegally target conservative 501(c)(4) organizations during the last two election cycles, only now the strategy has been greatly intensified and formalized.
"You may recall that former President Richard Nixon was famously forced to resign for improperly using Executive Branch assets for political purposes.
"Rather than preparing a solid defense to confront these serious allegations, a brazen Barack Obama has chosen instead to reconfigure his illegal tactics into a set of 'regulations' on nonprofits, opening the door for an IRS crackdown on select organizations," Staver concluded.
Indeed, once caught abusing his executive authority to target the very U.S. citizens he's sworn to serve, even a nominally honorable man would immediately reverse course, resign and accept the consequences of his illegal actions.
But we're not talking about an honorable man.
We're talking about Barack Hussein Obama.
PK'SNOTE: Steve and I saw this yesterday. Intense, powerful, well-done. It makes me want to understand the why's. I don't see how any viewer would come away not feeling like we are cocooned from a lot of what really goes on and absolutely grateful that there are those who take this up for us.
Some Thoughts on “Lone Survivor”
By Daniel DohertyThis is one of those movies that stays with you. I saw it Friday night, and it’s been with me ever since.
Like so many, I had read the book when it first came out. Thus I knew what happened, and was deeply moved by Marcus Luttrell’s story when I first came across it six years ago. So when I learned that Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg were going to turn “Lone Survivor” into a feature film, I was excited.
However, watching the story unfold on the silver screen was a different kind of experience. And a sobering one at that.
At times, I had tears in my eyes. At other times, I was on the edge of my seat hoping -- no, praying -- these four men would all make it out alive. Of course, only one of them did.
At one point in the drama -- which I think perfectly encapsulates a major theme of the film -- a wounded Matt Axelson (played by Ben Foster) says under his breath to an approaching squad of Taliban fighters: “You can die for your country. I’m going to live for mine.” It was clear in the film that despite the long odds against escape, there was never recognition -- by any of these men -- that they would not return home to their families and loved ones. They were determined to live. And indeed, they had much to live for, as the filmmakers went to great lengths to show us. A viewer would need a heart of stone not to be moved by what these men went through, and by what they did for one another to survive once the mission was compromised.
When I left the theater, all I wanted to do was meet these four young Navy SEALS -- to shake their hands and say thank you -- although I knew that was clearly not possible. I wanted to tell them that although I could never directly understand what they went through, I was so moved by their heroism, selflessness and compassion that I would pray for them, and would always remember what they did.
How many other American soldiers have made similar sacrifices for our country, I wondered? Certainly too many to name, let alone remember properly. Experiencing this film, I felt the same way I did after watching “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers” for the first time: a mixture of pride and astonishment at the capabilities of the American Warrior under fire.
So, go and see this film, my friends. Experience the power of "Lone Survivor" for yourselves -- and you will understand why everyone is talking about it.
Obama’s use of executive power faces reckoning at Supreme Court
By Kevin Bogardus and Ben GoadNothing less than the boundaries of executive power are at stake Monday, as the Supreme Court considers whether President Obama violated the Constitution during his first term.
Oral arguments slated for Monday will center on a trio of recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that were deemed unconstitutional by lower courts.
If they uphold the decision, experts say the justices could endanger hundreds of NLRB decisions.
Even more significant are the ramifications for future presidents, with the court poised either to bolster or blunt the chief executive’s appointment powers.
“Rulings like this have implications that last for centuries,” said Michael Lotito, an employment and labor attorney and co-chairman of Littler Mendelson's Workplace Policy Institute.
When the Commander-in-Chief is a narcissist
By Thomas Lifson
No wonder the media are pushing the Chris Christie bridge story so hard; the revelations about President Obama's conduct in office in Robert Gates's new book are frightening. America's national security is in the hands of a flat-out self-obsessed narcissist. Via Moe Lane and Ace of Spades, we learn what happened when Admiral Mullen and General McChrystal asked for 5000 more troops for Afghanistan early in Obama's first term, to arrest a deteriorating situation:
[JCS Chairman Admiral Michael] Mullen and I repeatedly discussed with the infuriated president what he regarded as military pressure on him. "Is it a lack of respect for me?" Obama asked us. "Are [Petraeus, McChrystal and Mullen] trying to box me in? I've tried to create an environment where all points of view can be expressed and have a robust debate. I'm prepared to devote any amount of time to it-however many hours or days. What is wrong? Is it the process? Are they suspicious of my politics? Do they resent that I never served in the military? Do they think because I'm young that I don't see what they're doing?"
It is all about him and his political fortunes, you see. Maetenloch of Ace of Spades comments: "The possibility that Mullen and McChrystal really thought the 5,000 enablers were necessary doesn't seem to have occurred to him."
So unfamiliar are Obama and his vice president with military culture that they think they need to give "orders" so that their policies will be carried out. Gates writes:
That Sunday meeting was unlike any I ever attended in the Oval Office. Obama said he had gathered the group principally to go through his decisions one more time to determine whether Mullen and Petraeus were fully on board. The commanders said what he wanted to hear, and I was pleased to hear my proposal being adopted.
Then came an exchange that is seared into my memory. Biden said he was ready to move forward, but the military "should consider the president's decision as an order."
"I am giving an order," Obama quickly said.
I was shocked. I had never heard a president explicitly frame a decision as a direct order. With the U.S. military, it is completely unnecessary. As secretary of defense, I had never issued an "order" to get something done; nor had I heard any commander do so. Obama's "order," at Biden's urging, demonstrated the complete unfamiliarity of both men with the American military culture.
God save the United States. We have three more years of these clowns in charge.
America Does Not “Need a King”, America Needs a President
By Rebecca Furdek....Do we want meaningless love or meaningful leadership?
Our distrust in government is not simply because the President is not up to the busy job, but because our government as a whole has grown to an inconceivable and unsustainable level. And people don’t like it. In 2013, a record number of Americans believe the federal government simply has too much power. Worse yet, our government doesn’t know how to relinquish power. Our government doesn’t know how to stop. And in that lies our current failure.
So, what’s a proper President to do?
For the answer, let us return to history. Let us return to George Washington.
As the Revolutionary War came to a close, King George III asked American-born painter Benjamin West what George Washington planned to do after winning independence. West replied, “They say he will return to his farm.”
“If he does that,” said the king, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”
White House week ahead: Iran, NSA spying and the economy
By Susan CrabtreePresident Obama begins the week trying to stave off new sanctions legislation in Congress after his administration, along with five other world powers, finalized a deal with Iran Sunday to freeze parts of its nuclear program.
....In addition, on Monday, Obama will host Spanish President Mariano Rajoy Brey at the White House to discuss promoting economic growth, support for the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, cooperation with NATO and Latin America, as well as shared challenges in North Africa and the Middle East.
Tuesday, he plans to huddle with his Cabinet in the morning and spend the afternoon hosting the 2013 NBA champions, the Miami Heat, to the White House to honor the team on winning their second straight championship title.
...During the week, the president will also continue to press House Republicans to pass an extension of unemployment insurance as part of his 2014 theme of fighting income inequality.
...Obama will end the week by addressing another key issue on Friday, when he unveils changes to the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance programs that have sparked domestic and international outrage since leaker Edward Snowden started disclosing aspects of the spying last summer.
Critical votes on federal spending, jobless pay this week in Congress
By Susan FerrechioCongress will consider a massive federal spending bill as well as a plan to pay for a year-long extension of federal jobless benefits this week.
Senate Democrats will also make quick work of confirming the third of President Obama's nominees to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court under new rules that have weakened the filibuster.
The House and Senate have until Jan. 15 — giving them just three days including Monday — to pass legislation that will fund the federal government for the remaining nine months of fiscal 2014 and they are on track to do it in the coming days.
The One Thing the System Fears More than Unemployment
By John Ransom...It looks like the Fed decided to cut down QE is spite of the poor jobs market. And that can only mean the Fed theoreticians are beginning to be worried about inflation.
The reduction in labor force in the U.S. is comparable to losing the state of Maryland or Missouri in terms of productivity and GDP. We are missing between $250 and $300 billion in lost GDP because of these jobs losses, which is right around 1.5 to 2% of GDP growth. Not coincidentally, that’s the same number that has been historically missing from Obama's stewardship of the economy.
And things are getting worse, not better.
The missing workers in August of 2012 were 4.4 million. Now it's grown 5.9 million according to an estimate from the union run Economic Policy Institute (EPI). It’s worth noting that only 1,374,000 jobs have been created since Dec 2012, while an additional 1,500,000 workers have left the workforce according to the EPI estimate.
...And it’s inflation that the Fed dreads more than unemployment.
They just proved it.
Voter fraud? What voter fraud?
By Rick MoranBarack Obama's election not only caused the oceans to recede, but the dead to rise from the grave.
At least, that's what an investigation by New York officials revealed when they sent out dozens of agents to vote in a New York election.
John Fund:
Liberals who oppose efforts to prevent voter fraud claim that there is no fraud - or at least not any that involves voting in person at the polls....Just what did the investigators uncover?
But New York City's watchdog Department of Investigations has just provided the latest evidence of how easy it is to commit voter fraud that is almost undetectable. DOI undercover agents showed up at 63 polling places last fall and pretended to be voters who should have been turned away by election officials; the agents assumed the names of individuals who had died or moved out of town, or who were sitting in jail. In 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, the testers were allowed to vote. Those who did vote cast only a write-in vote for a "John Test" so as to not affect the outcome of any contest. DOI published its findings two weeks ago in a searing 70-page report accusing the city's Board of Elections of incompetence, waste, nepotism, and lax procedures.
You'd think more media outlets would have been interested, because the sloppiness revealed in the DOI report is mind-boggling. Young undercover agents were able to vote using the names of people three times their age, people who in fact were dead. In one example, a 24-year female agent gave the name of someone who had died in 2012 at age 87; the workers at the Manhattan polling site gave her a ballot, no questions asked. Even the two cases where poll workers turned away an investigator raise eyebrows. In the first case, a poll worker on Staten Island walked outside with the undercover investigator who had just been refused a ballot; the "voter" was advised to go to the polling place near where he used to live and "play dumb" in order to vote. In the second case, the investigator was stopped from voting only because the felon whose name he was using was the son of the election official at the polling place.
By J Christian Adams
A smiling and smarmy Hilary Shelton of the NAACP took to The Kelly File last night to compare Debo Adegbile to John Adams. Adegbile is President Obama’s radical nominee to head the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. While at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Adegbile oversaw the inexcusable defense of cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, among other radical policies.
Shelton and other NAACP officials are trying to repair the endangered nomination by comparing Debo Adegbile to John Adams. Adams, you see, represented British solider Hugh White who fired into the crowd in Boston, killing Americans. Adams took on the unpopular representation at White’s criminal trial.
Nice try, Hilary, but Debo Adegbile is no John Adams. While everyone has a constitutional right to a court appointed lawyer ...Mumia had been convicted and represented by counsel at his trial decades earlier. The NAACP was involved in a federal habeus corpus challenge to his conviction thirty years later. This was a civil case, not a criminal one. At this stage of court proceedings, there is no constitutional right to counsel. This is particularly so when a murderer loses before the federal trial court, and appeals an adverse decision. Adams, in contrast, was representing White at the first stage of a criminal proceeding where we now believe the accused has a fundamental right to court appointed counsel.
...If John Adams appeared at rallies for the British against the colonists and talked about how proud he was to represent a British solider, the comparison might be more accurate. That’s exactly what NAACP lawyers working for Debo Adegbile did. (Video here.)
Adams was content to keep his work inside the courtroom, making sure that Hugh White enjoyed a fair criminal trial where all the rights of Englishmen were respected. Adegbile presided over a racially toxic campaign to discredit American law enforcement officers as racist.
...If Adams had adopted the Tory cause outside the courtroom and lashed out at the insanity of the colonists, Shelton’s comparison would be true. Had Adams crusaded against the American colonists on the streets of Boston, Shelton would have a point. But he didn’t. Adams was a patriot.
And what did the NAACP LDF do outside the courtroom? They peddled the corrosive and divisive notion that police departments around the country are infested with bigots and racists. This explained, you see, why Mumia was wrongly convicted in the pervasively racist Philadelphia. They incorporated Mumia’s grievances against America as their own.
The NAACP took Mumia’s case because they agreed with what Mumia was saying about structural racism in America. The NAACP was charmed by Mumia’s celebrity status among the left, and the NAACP fundraised off of it.
Iran: A Bad Nuclear Deal Gets Worse
By Joel B PollakThe negotiators from the P5+1 nations (the U.S., plus the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) have managed to make the bad deal reached with Iran in Geneva in November over its nuclear program even worse. On paper, the deal still eases sanctions for six months, though effectively Iran will benefit from eight months of easing, having enjoyed a currency revival for the two months between the time the deal was announced and Jan. 20, the time that negotiators finally decided the deal would take formal effect.
In the interim, the Iranian government also announced that it would install new centrifuges to improve its enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade, and that it would continue construction on the Arak heavy-water nuclear facility. Iranian leaders have also said that they expect sanctions to be lifted entirely and that the world has effectively recognized its right to enrich uranium. Certainly, the P5+1 have torn up existing UN Security Council resolutions that prohibited any enrichment of uranium by Iran at all, for any reason.
Those resolutions were necessary because Iran purposely deceived the world about its nuclear activity and nuclear facilities, and the final details of the interim deal do not require Iran to come clean about the full details of its program. Instead, it offers limited inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency--but, as the Wall Street Journal notes, does not allow inspectors access to military facilities where nuclear development has taken place. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is threatening a veto of any new sanctions from Congress.
In sum: another victory for Iran, made sweeter by the fact that President Barack Obama is acting as Iran's best advocate in the U.S., with his left-wing supporters in the media warning that any course other than the one the White House has taken will lead to war. Supporters of the bipartisan effort to strengthen the existing sanctions regime say have 59 Senators willing to commit formally to new legislation, and say that they have more than the two-thirds of votes necessary to override Obama's veto. A showdown looms--and the Iranian regime just laughs.
White House, Iran warn Congress against additional sanctions
Iran vowed to maintain its nuclear infrastructure and threatened to boost its uranium enrichment capabilities just hours after announcing that it had agreed to a deal to halt some aspects of its contested nuclear program.
Iran and Western nations announced on Sunday that they had agreed to an interim deal to halt portions of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for some $7 billion in sanctions relief.
Secretary of State John Kerry celebrated the interim agreement, which will officially begin on Jan. 20.
However, Iranian officials threatened to ramp up nuclear activities should they feel the West is violating the accord.
“We will in no way, never, dismantle our [nuclear] centrifuges,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the country’s state-run television station on Sunday, according to New York Times reporter Thomas Erdbrink.
“Iranians endured sanctions for 10 years, resisted, so the world would respect our right to enrichment, this is now the case,” Araqchi was quoted as saying. “This game is played in our court. We cannot lose and return to enrichment as we wish.”
Araqchi reiterated that Iran has a right to enrich uranium, one of the key sticking points in the deal, and predicted that the deal has less than a 50 percent chance of success.
“We don’t need enrichment right from the Americans, who are they to give that right?” Araqchi said. President Barack Obama “said the upcoming talks have a 50-50 percent chance of success, I say its even less.”
Test is part of a new arms race for super fast weaponry
China’s military last week conducted the first flight test of a new ultra-high speed missile vehicle aimed at delivering warheads through U.S. missile defenses, Pentagon officials said.
The test of the new hypersonic glide vehicle was carried out Jan. 9 and the experimental weapon is being dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The hypersonic vehicle represents a major step forward in China’s secretive strategic nuclear and conventional military and missile programs.
..The United States, Russia, and China are all engaged in a hypersonic arms race. All three nations are developing high-speed aerospace vehicles. India is also developing a hypersonic variant of its BrahMos cruise missile.
Hypersonic weapons use cutting edge technology for flying and maneuvering at ultra-high speeds in space and air. Future weapons will include powered and unpowered hypersonic vehicles fired from the last stages of ICBMs and submarine missiles, and from the bomb-bays of strategic bombers. Hypersonic cruise missiles and surveillance drones also are expected.
The military advantages of hypersonic craft include precise targeting, very rapid delivery of weapons, and greater survivability against missile and space defenses.
...Fisher said that in addition to China’s hypersonic weapons and other weaponry similar to the arms in the U.S. Prompt Global Strike program, China is also building its strategic military capabilities to support its global power projection.
The Chinese are “actively seeking global military power to challenge the United States, and it is not yet in any mood to talk, or engage in arms control, about it,” he said.
...The White House is refusing to release the official text of the nuclear deal, despite requests from reporters and members of Congress.
By Susan Jones
President Obama says he will use his upcoming State of the Union Address to "mobilize the country around the national mission of making sure our economy offers everyone who works hard a fair shot at opportunity and success."
In his weekly radio address on Saturday, he outlined some of the steps he'll take to make 2014 "a year of action."
"Working folks are looking for the kind of stable, secure jobs that went overseas in the past couple decades. So next week, I'll join companies and colleges and take action to boost the high-tech manufacturing that attracts the kind of good new jobs a growing middle class requires," Obama said.
Federal government paid more than double the retail price
Taxpayers paid nearly $175 million for vacuum erection systems (VES), commonly known as “penis pumps,” from 2006 to 2011, according to an inspector general report released on Monday.
The federal government paid more than double the retail price for VES, the Department of Health and Human Services IG found. Medicare prices for the systems, the report said, “remain grossly excessive compared with the amounts that non-Medicare payers pay.”
Medicare paid 473,620 VES claims during calendar years 2006 through 2011, according to the IG report.
Health care policy experts said the revelations in the IG report are a troubling indication of what they describe as wasteful spending in federal health programs.
“The fact that taxpayers have spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the past decade on penis pumps via Medicare is obscene and insulting – even more so when you consider that this is an arena of Medicare expenditures rife with fraud and where the government doesn’t even bother to assess medical necessity,” said Ben Domenech, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute.
“This is a perfect example of what happens when government becomes the be all and end all of human existence – a system where everyone has a right to a taxpayer-funded penis pump.”
No comments:
Post a Comment