Uninstall Firefox

By Dennis Prager
....As Princeton Professor of Jurisprudence Robert George warned on my radio show, today the left fires employees for opposition to same-sex marriage. Tomorrow it will fire employees who are pro-life ("anti-woman"). And next it will be employees who support Israel (an "apartheid state").
The reason to boycott Firefox is not that it is run by leftists. Nor is the reason to support the man-woman definition of marriage. It is solely in order to preserve liberty in the land of liberty.
.....The battle over Firefox is the most important battle in America at this particular moment. If you use Firefox, uninstall it. Instead use Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, Safari, or try Pale Moon for Windows, which is based on the Firefox engine and will import all of your bookmarks. For mobile devices, you can try Puffin.
America can have liberty or it can have Firefox. Right now, it cannot have both.

PK'S NOTE: And Ms. Powers IS a liberal.

Liberals' mob rule

By Kirsten Powers
Last week brought a chilling reminder of how mercilessly some liberals will work to silence and marginalize people who hold views with which they disagree.
...Another incident of muzzling those without the proper worldview received less attention. Kickstarter, the nation's biggest crowd-funding site,refused to accept a film about convicted abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell unless descriptions of his crimes were removed.
After producers Phelim McAleer and his wife, Ann McElhinney, complained publicly, embarrassed Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler claimed on Twitter that the allegation was false. Strickler released an e-mail accepting the Gosnell film, but failed to mention that it was accepted only after the filmmakers withdrew in frustration. The producers released e-mails from Kickstarter demanding that references to stabbing babies and "similar language" be removed. The "acceptance letter" came March 28, the day after the producers withdrew their proposal.
Kickstarter explained its reasoning for blocking the movie by writing, "We understand your convictions … however … our Community Guidelines outline that we encourage and enforce a culture of respect and consideration, and we ask that that language specifically be modified."
Somehow, making a movie recounting the crimes of a convicted abortion doctor is disrespectful and inconsiderate. Kickstarter would only speak off the record, but its explanations were dissembling and contradictory. That might be because Kickstarter's standards aren't exactly rigorously enforced. An album titled Incest is the Highest Form of Flattery was fine. The movie Die Sluts Die telling "the story of ... sex crazed friends ... murdered in unusual and creative ways," ditto.
What type of movie on late-term abortion do our meddling gatekeepers want? Kickstarter accepted After Tiller, a hagiography of the abortionists who took over when Wichita doctor George Tiller was murdered. The film presumably doesn't belabor the process of late-term abortion, where babies are often stabbed in the neck with scissors and the contents of their skulls suctioned out. One wouldn't want to violate Kickstarter's culture of respect and consideration. Or provide factual information.
Kickstarter, like too much of the news media, wants only one version of the late-term abortion story told. If Gosnell hadn't killed the babies outside the mothers' body and instead kept them inside as is standard procedure for the After Tiller docs, he would not have been charged with murder. He'd be the hero in a film Kickstarter would happily fund.

Barack Obama’s War on Free Speech

By Katie Pavlich
In May 2013, when the IRS’ Lois Lerner publicly admitted and apologized for inappropriately targeting conservative tea party groups, President Obama said, “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous. It is contradictory to our traditions, and people have to be held accountable.”
He didn’t mean it, which is probably why he used the word “if.” Just a few months later in an interview with his biggest fan, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Obama brushed off the scandal as faux outrage from conservative groups while advisers continue to declare the White House had no involvement in the targeting.
“They’ve got a list, and suddenly everybody’s outraged,” Obama said.
Today, IRS officials are still dragging their feet when it comes to getting tea party and other patriot groups their tax-exempt status. One of the largest tea party groups in the country, Tea Party Patriots, waited three years before finally receiving their tax-exempt status in February 2014. Conveniently, the IRS’ slow response to hundreds of groups waiting for an answer comes just before the 2014 midterm elections, when tea party groups could have a big impact.
But Obama’s squelching of free speech doesn’t only apply to purely political opponents, but to the press as well.
When my book about Operation Fast and Furious came out in April of 2012, the Soros funded non-profit group Media Matters wrote a long hit piece in an attempt to discredit my work. When Free Beacon reporter C.J. Ciaramella asked Media Matters for comment about a specific issue in the book, he was referred to Justice Department Public Affairs staffer Katie Dixon for information.
DOJ had done something similar when former DOJ attorney and whistleblower J. Christian Adams wrote a book exposing Obama’s overtly racial Justice Department. Adams filed a Freedom of Information Request to find out if there had been any documented collusion between the folks at Media Matters and the DOJ Public Affairs Office. Information returned by the request showed Media Matters writer Matt Gertz working with former DOJ Spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler on attack pieces against journalists publishing stories embarrassing to the administration. I was one of them.
Two years later in the summer of 2013 news broke that DOJ attorneys were monitoring hundreds of phone lines and emails belonging to reporters at the Associated Press and other news outlets. Reporters and executives at Fox
News were also monitored, with the most egregious case being against Fox News Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen. Not only was Rosen monitored to the point DOJ knew where he was located throughout the day, but the phone records attached to lines running to his parents’ house on Staten Island were seized. In a DOJ affidavit to a judge, Rosen was classified as a criminal co-conspirator. Further, the Obama administration has prosecuted more people under the Espionage Act for leaking valuable, relevant information from inside the government than any other administration in history, combined.
At the end of 2013, we learned Center for American Progress founder and former-Clinton adviser John Podesta would be returning to the White House as an adviser for Obama. Podesta also happens to be a longtime advocate of the fairness doctrine. In 2007, his far-Left think tank published a report detailing how the FCC could be used to snuff out conservative voices on the radio while replacing them with liberal opinions. These are the same liberal opinions that have failed over and over again in the free market place of ideas due to a lack of listeners.
Fast-forward to a few months after Podesta is back in the White House, and we find out the FCC wants to conduct a “study” which would put government bureaucrats inside newsrooms to monitor how editors and reporters collect and choose stories for consumer consumption. The FCC argued the study was necessary to ensure Americans were receiving the “critical information” they need in today’s society.
The true goal of “studies” like this isn’t to get people “critical” information, but to stifle free speech and put a chilling effect on the newsgathering industry. Luckily, thanks to the work of Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who exposed the study from the inside out, it died (for now). I suggest Pai start preparing for his IRS tax audit now.
Some of the most important stories in America right now—Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, the NSA, etc.—wouldn’t have been exposed without the alternative new outlets we have today. Allowing the government, with the president’s support, to dictate or intimidate what we say or when we say it, is unacceptable.

Will IRS Targeting Send Someone to Jail?

By Amy Payne
It’s time to talk tough on the IRS—after all, it’s tax season. But the sad reality is, the investigation of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups has gone nowhere.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said this week that “Somebody at the IRS violated the law. Whether it was Lois Lerner or not, we’ll find out.”
Lerner was head of the division that grants nonprofit status—and she has been at the center of the controversy since it became known that conservative groups’ applications were being held up and flagged for special scrutiny.
Today, the House Ways and Means Committee is reportedly working on a letter that will refer Lerner to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation. The Wall Street Journal reports that the letter will cite criminal activities, including “violating taxpayers’ constitutional rights,” “misleading investigators,” and “exposing private taxpayer information.”
But what does that mean? Would the Obama Justice Department take up such an investigation?
Not likely, says Heritage legal expert Hans von Spakovsky.
“The House should not expect the Holder Justice Department to do anything,” von Spakovsky told The Foundry. “It does not seem that DOJ has been conducting a serious criminal investigation of the IRS targeting or of Lois Lerner, and it seems highly unlikely that Eric Holder will do anything about such a referral.”
There is still the possibility that the House could vote to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate in testifying—and von Spakovsky says it would be difficult to enforce that, too.

The House should hold Lerner in contempt because, under the applicable law in the District of Columbia, she waived her Fifth Amendment right when she voluntarily gave a “lengthy interview” to the Justice Department without a grant of any immunity. The House will then be forced to go to court with its own lawyer, because it is also very doubtful that Eric Holder will fulfill his legal obligation and duty to enforce the contempt citation in court.

This all bothers Kevin Kookogey, who has been in a long and costly battle with the IRS since his fledgling organization—aimed at mentoring high school and college students in conservative philosophy—was targeted in 2011.
“I’m quite frustrated with Congress—I don’t think they’re serious about this case,” Kookogey told The Foundry. When he testified before Congress last year, Kookogey said, congressional staffers behind the scenes told him their goal with the inquiry was “to use this IRS matter to push for tax reform.”
“My constitutional rights were violated…and members of Congress are telling me they’re using this to push for tax reform?” he said. “I’m for tax reform, but…I think their own political advantage would be accomplished better if they just pursued the truth.”
Sure, April is a convenient time to spotlight the IRS. But Obama’s IRS has brought the spotlight on itself—and Americans who were targeted with the power of the federal government deserve to see a real investigation.

PK'S NOTE: But, hey, we're getting some money out of the deal .... nooo, we're probably giving them money to like us like we do with all enemy countries so we're actually paying them to take parts to bomb us.

Selling them the aircraft parts to bomb us

By Ethel C Fenig

Over 100 years ago Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, predicted "the capitalists will sell us the rope which we will use to hang them." That insight into the thinking of immoral leaders when dealing with essentially moral and/or naive counterparts sprang to mind when I read in Asharq Al-Awsat, an Arab paper published in London,

US Treasury approves sale of aircraft parts to Tehran

A spokesman for US-based Boeing said Friday that it had received approval to sell aircraft parts to Iran, as part of the partial easing of US sanctions against the Islamic Republic agreed in the interim nuclear deal last November.

The spokesman, representing the world’s largest aircraft company, said Boeing had been issued a license by the US Treasury department to sell parts needed to ensure the safety of the aircraft. (snip)

The last plane Boeing sold to the country, a 747-100, was delivered three months before the 1979 hostage crisis that resulted in the first round of US sanctions, and it has not done any acknowledged business with the country since. Most commercial aircraft have a service life equal to about 25 years with proper maintenance.

As a result, Iranair has one of the poorest safety records of any flag carrier worldwide, with more than 200 accidents causing over 2,000 deaths being reported since 1990 according to state news agency IRNA. In 2010, two-thirds of Iranair’s fleet was banned from flying to the European Union due to safety concerns.

If a permanent nuclear deal is reached, resulting in the complete lifting of the sanctions, analysts expect Iran would need to order hundreds of aircraft. Expert-level talks to reach a permanent deal recommenced in Vienna Friday.

All of this new commercial activity with Iran is, of course, the result of President Barack Obama's (D) administration's wishful thinking that reducing sanctions will so charm Iran that they will return the love to the US and, as the cliché has it, we'll all end up holding hands, sing kumbayah and peace will reign upon the two lands and their nuclear weapons will turn into food for all. Uh, no.

Yes, commerce between friends, or even those not avowed enemies, does make hostilities more difficult. But not impossible. So while the US does express a public neediness of "Like me, oh please like me and let's all be friends" Iran doesn't operate from the same emotional or strategic arena. Obtaining these airplane parts, even if they are for commercial, rather than military, aircraft is bound to be interpreted by Iran as a triumph of its negotiating skills, a validation of their superiority and the rightness of their cause compared to the US.

With this pubic validation the Iranians should have minimal difficulty purchasing parts for their military planes, especially from the Europeans who are already dealing with them.

And when the Iranians violate their end of the agreement, their extraordinarily skilled negotiators--and make no mistake, they are extremely skilled at this--will have no trouble making wrong look right and the US wrong. And the US and/or its allies will be the ones who suffer.

PK'S NOTE: This article is long but it is here in its entirety because it's important to read. Please read the whole thing.

Meet the 2016 Republican Nominee

By Darren Jonescu

How does the Republican Party establishment choose its presidential candidate? Typically, constitutionalists accuse their establishment rivals of being moderate, risk-averse, stubborn old fools who lack faith in conservative principles. This is a soothing interpretation, as it begins from the hypothesis that the contest between conservatives and the GOP elite is a family feud.

But there is another hypothesis -- less soothing, but, at least from an outsider's bird's-eye view, more reconcilable with the facts. This hypothesis is that America has reached a stage of progressive soft despotism in which the only important family feud in national politics is between the fundamentally allied factions of the Washington establishment itself.

The great advantage of despotism is its predictability. In nations whose leaders have forsaken the manners and morals of representative government, the future can mean only two things: the present, continued, or the present, escalated. Thus, if my alternative hypothesis is correct, it becomes possible to identify the 2016 Republican presidential nominee "a priori," if you will, with no need for rumors or speculation.

My only proviso is that we keep in mind the central difference between traditional despotism and progressive soft despotism, namely that in traditional despotism, the personal character and whims of the man with the fancy title are paramount, whereas today's is a ruling establishment game, in which major directional decisions are made by committees of mutual back-scratchers who outlast any of the figureheads they prop up to front the organization for a while. Thus, whereas in a monarchy, popular democracy, or old-fashioned tyranny, the particular identity of the leader is everything, in soft despotism the standard-bearer is less significant for who he is than for which interests he advances for his handlers.

By "interests" here I mean only "specific agenda items." Of course the true, fundamental interest of progressive establishmentarians, all German philosophical rationalizations aside, is simply to control and stabilize the masses, i.e., to maximize their usefulness while minimizing their threat. This essential goal is as invariable as the feelings that fuel it, namely fear and greed. Thus to predict the establishment's practical moves is as simple as looking away from the increasing artificiality of electoral politics -- polls, "momentum," "electability," and well-timed scandals -- to observe the broad pattern of outcomes that remains consistent through successive campaigns.

That pattern, in American politics, is as obvious as it is unspeakable in polite society, namely the gradual imposition of a permanent progressive authoritarian state with unlimited executive power, answerable to no imperatives of human nature, and administered by unelected technocrats.

America's national political establishment is factionalized along lines that correspond to what remains of the nation's unofficial "two-party system." But what the competing factions lack in uniformity of emphasis and vocabulary -- "polite society" means different things to different men -- they more than make up for in unanimity of overarching purpose.

Let's be clear: we are not talking about lizard-men meeting in a vat of jelly in the White House basement. These are ordinary men with ordinary moral weaknesses who, having in one way or another found themselves within reach of the world's biggest cookie jar, developed an irresistible habit of dipping in -- for financial advantages, regulatory favors, careers, self-importance, and in general for the means to permanent, risk-free status as kings of their various little hills. In other words, they are men who have found, on the "honor among thieves" principle, that they have more in common with one another than with the cookie bakers they are robbing blind, and therefore a greater vested interest in covering for one another than in defending the rights of bakers.

By induction from the major public policy initiatives these men actively or passively promote, we may conclude that, surface frictions aside, the American ruling class seeks: (a) to shrink the range of unregulated human action; (b) to narrow men's moral horizons in order to foster conscienceless resignation to their parasitocracy; (c) to reduce citizenship to compliance and conformity; and (d) to promote "security," variously defined, as a primary social goal that trumps all considerations of self-determination, human dignity, and private property.

These goals are embodied in various forms by the elite, and then either trumpeted as "idealism" (Democrats) or finessed as "realism" (Republicans) via the elite's kabuki theater of competing electoral dummies, dhimmis, and dandies. In short, these men have turned electoral politics into the comforting charade of which Tocqueville wisely forewarned, in which "the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master, and then relapse into it again." (Democracy in America, Bk. IV Ch. vi.)

As is well known, the Democratic Party takes the lead on the goals cited above, continually shifting the vanguard just a little farther towards the socialist tyranny with which their leading lights always sympathized internationally, and which they now advocate boldly at home. In our quest for the establishment's current mainstream, however, we ought to think conservatively, and look not to the daring vanguard, but to those points of alliance between the establishment's two public faces.

That is, if you want to gauge the long-term trajectory of the ruling class, listen to the Democrat professors and activists who are calling for the criminalization of non-progressive opinions, the confiscation of all firearms, or the regulation of journalism based on socialist-defined "critical information needs." But if you are seeking a snapshot of today's ruling class status quo, with a view to what they plan to accomplish in 2016, watch the GOP establishment. For they -- and by "they" I mean the party elders, corporate insiders, and pandering "conservative media" fixtures -- show us precisely where the Democrats and Republicans are essentially allied on current objectives.

Therefore, if one gets over the mental habit of imagining presidential politics are what they were when Calvin Coolidge won, or even when Ronald Reagan won -- after a war against the establishment, which learned a lesson from this defeat that it would never forget -- one can fairly certainly identify the next Republican nominee.

The trick to reading the Washington elite is to avoid overemphasizing the differences between Republicans and Democrats, which are minimized when the GOP establishment gets its way. A great egret has a longer neck than a little egret, but we call them both egrets because what unites them is plainly more essential than what distinguishes them. The same goes for great progressives and little progressives.

(The current Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue is often cited as an exception, even by establishment standards. Obama represents the lawless vanguard, to be sure. But if he is so far away from the mainstream establishment, then how do you explain all those cheerful Boehner-Obama photo ops, his signature power-grab being upheld as constitutional by a Republican-appointed Chief Justice, or all the establishment "conservative" pundits fawning over him in 2008 as though he were a combination of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Cary Grant. My hypothesis, by contrast, explains these seeming incongruities very neatly. Obama is not the establishment mainstream -- yet.)

A thought experiment: try plotting U.S. presidential politics on a Venn diagram. I provide a template below.

Populate the two circles with the major policy positions and of any plausible Democrat and Republican presidential candidates. Policies that fall within the intersection of the two circles represent what the two sides of the ruling class substantially agree upon right now, thereby revealing the heart of today's Washington establishment. The GOP faction of the establishment, therefore, can be counted on to promote the candidate they regard as falling most reliably within that intersection. (Notice that this means the candidate himself need not be a full-fledged member of the establishment; they are merely looking for the man whose positions most closely match their priorities.)

For example, the left circle alone will contain the terms "transgender rights," "federally funded abortion," "gun confiscation," and "tax increases." The right circle alone will contain "religious freedom," "anti-abortion," "gun rights," and "tax cuts."

The intersecting area will contain several items which, whatever else the candidates who embrace them may say, will truly define those candidacies, in the sense of revealing why the ruling elite favor those men as presidential nominees. (For example, Mitt Romney was the only candidate in the 2012 primaries who was hopelessly compromised on ObamaCare; thus, on my hypothesis, he was the obvious choice for an establishment that intended not to challenge that most unpopular lurch towards authoritarianism too vigorously.)

Anything else the establishment candidate may represent, beyond the items in that intersection, will be useful optics for idiosyncratic purposes, and something for conservatives to cling to. This is not negligible, but its role is mainly aesthetic, putting a partisan face on an establishment agenda.

Nevertheless, the surest window to the establishment's "soul" is that middle section of your Venn diagram, where we find the "bipartisan" goals the Republican candidate will most assuredly stand for.

So here he is, the 2016 GOP nominee:

He supports a "path to citizenship" for illegal immigrants. This drops anchor for the progressive captains of the ship of state, eventually inflating the electorate with millions of people lacking education or cultural heritage related to individualism and property rights, while deflating manufacturing costs with low-skill, low-literacy workers.

His position on manmade climate change is "evolving," drifting and shifting somewhere along the continuum from "climate change may be real" (Jeb Bush, 2011) to "when you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role it’s time to defer to the experts" (Chris Christie, 2011).

He criticizes ObamaCare as "failed legislation" (who could call it anything else?) but finesses any concrete talk of fundamental reversion. He advocates a watered-down version of the establishment's thin gruel of "Repeal and Replace" -- something along the lines of "Tweak and Touch-up," with "free market solutions" as a euphemism for a heavily regulated pseudo-market analogous to cap-and-trade.

He is insistent that no one should impugn the motives and patriotism of the Democrat candidate -- any Democrat candidate -- and that "we all want what's best for America." When asked during a presidential debate whether his Democratic opponent would make a good president, he says "Yes, but...."

He supports the Common Core agenda for nationalizing education standards, claiming that this is necessary to keep America "competitive," and to ensure that "everyone has a fair chance to learn the skills needed in today's economy." He plays to conservatives by saying the problem with education is the teachers unions and "lack of choice." Improving quality and providing choice are his euphemisms, just as in healthcare, for standardizing methods and outcomes to the point where every American child's fate will henceforth be molded by a centralized spiritual death panel -- this will be called "equal opportunity."

He supports the "vitally important" work being done by the "patriots" at the NSA, while promising "vigorous safeguards" to ensure that none of their top-secret methods of collecting every scrap of electronic communications data and other private information ever overstep the bounds of "legitimate" privacy concerns -- where no concern voiced to date meets the threshold of legitimacy.

He is absolutely silent on the question of whether the federal government has any responsibility to abide by its constitutional (i.e., legal) limits, and indeed rarely mentions the Constitution at all, and never as an essential concern.

There he is, your next GOP presidential candidate -- a man the establishment can live with.

Am I cheating by not providing an exact name? But what's in a name, when that name is attached to a man who is, for all practical purposes, merely a vessel for an agenda devised by self-seeking manipulators behind the scenes? An agenda designed to concentrate more power within the federal government, and ultimately within the executive branch. Not the constitutional agenda for which the president was meant to be a vessel, but a "transformative" agenda designed to protect the social position and wealth of the permanent ruling class America was never supposed to have.

Might events falsify my hypothesis? Unlike the global warmists, I hope so. Failing that, might constitutionalists find a way to slay the monster at last? That doesn't seem likely, to be honest. More realistically, perhaps they can minimize the damage pre-emptively during the 2014 congressional primaries and elsewhere. The establishment, a centralized authority monster, will be weaker in those areas it considers less vital. Their attention and resources cannot anticipate and repel every "minor" challenge -- at least not until they have finished apportioning all practical authority to themselves.

Whatever you do, don't assume that any candidate who espouses a few items on the Republican side of your Venn diagram is satisfactory. That section then becomes the ruling class's shiny distraction. Keep your eye on the intersection of the circles, where the two mildly competitive factions of the progressive elite follow their bliss together -- at their nation's expense.