Honesty and integrity are but two of the mandatory traits of leadership. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah possesses those traits in abundance. He takes on the establishment media in a great piece exposing the lies, and mis-truths that are being bandied around his home state.
Perhaps New York should listen to Senator Hatch, or even the State of Texas.
Broken clock politics again?
Any cursory search of the voting record of Arlen Specter will make it plain to anyone with an I.Q. above room temperature that he will be at home in the Democrat Party. He has consistently voted for taxes, against liberty, and for expanded government. Take a look at it here.
If, and it is a very big if in my opinion, the Republican Party is ever to regain any sense at all of integrity it should be cleaning house. Not waiting for people along the lines of The Specter of Evil to resign. Leadership, real leadership, is so lacking among the Republicans that I think it is like Humpty Dumpty. Broken beyond repair.
My good friend Texas Fred has repeatedly called for a new conservative party, and I agree.
Leave it to the Brother of Blood to tell it like it is!
Spring had arrived in earnest, the sun shone brightly and the sky was clear as sportsmen rode up the verdant woods to practice shooting and archery last Saturday. The Commonwealth Foundation’s Live Free PA event couldn’t have come happened on a better weekend.
That’s not just because of the weather. The men and women who arrived at the Eltonsville Sportsmen’s Association came to celebrate their right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment. The Commonwealth Foundation began planning the event about a year ago, but it happened to land on a date just a few weeks after Gov. Ed Rendell, D, began a new push for more gun control.
After target practice around midday, rock songwriter and guitarist Ted Nugent spoke to the Live Free participants, as he pushed back against recent calls for greater restrictions on gun rights. Consistent with his reputation, he was articulate and upbeat.
“Your life is a precious gift from God,” he said. “You deserve, and I believe we have a duty to protect and defend it.”
Recent high-profile crimes, particularly police shootings in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, have boosted the case for gun control in the eyes of some public officials. Mr. Nugent asked Americans to consider how firearms be more part of the solution than the problem.
He said jurisdictions in the United States with looser gun laws have lower crime rates than those that don’t. His assertion is backed by some prominent researchers, such as the University of Maryland’s John Lott. Mr. Nugent urged citizens to consider the good that gun ownership has done many crime victims.
“Anti-gunners side with rapists,” the musician and sportsman told his audience. “Either you like the rapists shot, or you like the rapists raping.”
He also said the push to limit gun purchases in cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh ignores the experience of other cities. Chicago, he noted, has enacted gun control to become an essentially “gun-free zone,” but has nonetheless seen crime rates skyrocket.
“Ed Rendell sees the dead bodies and wants more of this,” Mr. Nugent said. “I’m a different species. I don’t like increased innocent death. I like decreased innocent death.”
Mr. Rendell has won the support of police unions and other law-enforcement organizations for his the anti-gun case, but Mr. Nugent said he would have less success if he sought the backing of rank-and-file officers.
“In the vast majority of the instances,” he said, the anti-gun officers are “bureaucrats and desk jockeys.”
He has some firsthand knowledge of law enforcement, having served as a deputy sheriff in Michigan and a deputy constable in Texas.
After rousing the fervor of several dozen gun-rights supporters, he gave them a demonstration of his archery skills, refined by decades of practice. He landed several arrows perfectly on three targets shaped like a turkey, a deer and a bear.
It was a unique setting for a Commonwealth Foundation event. The organization spends most of its time defending Pennsylvanians’ economic liberties. But the think tank’s president, Matthew Brouillette, said “the other freedoms that we’ve got under attack” deserve attention as well.
“We don’t need a nanny state to tell us how to live,” he said. “We’re free Americans and should be treated as such by our government.”
As reported earlier here obama is still the number one “Gun Salesman” of the year! His attempts at misdirection via the use various lackeys has spurred the sale of firearms to heights not seen since the Clinton debacle.
John Sprague, the store manager at Johnson’s Sporting Goods in Adrian Township, gestures to half-empty shelves of ammunition behind the counter.
He said a campaign pledge by President Barack Obama to reinstate a weapons ban led to a rush on sporting goods stores to buy guns and ammunition, a buying trend that continues.
“Since before the election, when there was a good chance of (Obama) becoming president, sales went way up,” Sprague said Thursday. “I can’t keep most ammunition in stock.”
Because of demand, Sprague said, Johnson’s is temporarily limiting ammunition sales to one box of per customer.
Obama had pledged during his campaign to seek renewal of an assault weapons ban but has bowed to the reality that such a move would be unpopular in politically key U.S. states and among Republicans as well as some conservative Democrats.
Confronting a Mexican drug war that is “sowing chaos in our communities,” Obama signaled on April 16 that he will not seek renewal of the weapons ban, but instead will step up enforcement of laws banning the transfer of such guns across the border.
“He (President Obama) appears to be backing down, but sales are brisk,” Sprague said.
An Adrian Wal-Mart associate, who spoke Friday on the condition of anonymity, said the sporting goods department has difficulty keeping the 550-round boxes of .22-caliber ammunition in stock due to brisk sales. The smaller boxes of rounds, however, are more readily available.
“People want the large boxes,” she said.
A representative in the Adrian Meijer sporting goods department, who also declined to be identified, said he hasn’t seen a significant increase in ammunition sales since the election, and there is no rationing in effect at the store.
Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban prohibited the sale of ammunition clips with more than 10 rounds and a variety of rifles such as semi-automatic versions of AK-47s and AR-15s. Semi-automatic rifles fire a bullet each time the trigger is pulled. They differ from automatic rifles, which fire continuously as long as the trigger is pulled. Automatic rifles are illegal without a federal permit, and must be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The ban expired in 2004 during President George W. Bush’s administration, and a 10-year extension proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was voted down.
The difference between what defined assault from otherwise legal weapons, Sprague said, was optional accessories. Those included bayonet mounts, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and gun flash suppressors. Except for those additions, Sprague added, there was no mechanical difference between those rifles being legal or illegal during the ban.
Sometimes all it takes to make an illegal weapon legal, such as a 9 mm LAR-15, is to have two or more of those options removed from the instrument.
Sheriff Jack Welsh said problems with assault weapons in Lenawee County haven’t been an issue, before, during or after the ban.
“I saw no concrete evidence that the ban ever significantly reduced violent crimes,” he said. “Legitimate gun owners register their weapons. Unfortunately, whether there is a ban or not, some individuals will find ways to get weapons that are illegal.”
Welsh added he is against any fully automatic weapons being possessed or sold, and is in favor of background checks for any weapons purchased. He added that, if the Obama administration attempts to reinstate an assault weapons ban, he will pay close attention to the issue.
Sprague said FBI crime statistics show most crimes aren’t committed with assault weapons.
“Besides, most criminals cannot afford these types of guns,” Sprague added, pointing to rifles with price tags of more than $1,000.
Cambridge Township Police Chief Larry Wibbeler said he also never saw any increase or decrease in violent crime during or after the ban, adding the criminals who are after the assault rifles will usually locate them through illegal purchase or theft.
“If they (the criminals) want them, they’ll find a way to get them,” he said.
Wibbeler said very few fully automatic assault weapons have ever been confiscated in Cambridge Township.
An ongoing project exposing the impostor in chief, the administration, and the destruction of America by those sworn to protect the nation.
On 1 April 2009, Senate Republicans revealed that by 2016 the Obama deficit would reach $8.7 trillion, which is $2.9 trillion more than the deficits racked up by all presidents combined since 1789 (232 years).
In his latest international blunder, Obama, during his visit to the United Kingdom, was granted an audience with the Queen, during which he gave her an iPod as a gift. The Queen, however, has had an iPod since 2005. The embarrassing gaffe follows Obama’s gift to Prime Minister Brown of a box of DVDs that do not work in British DVD players.
On 2 April 2009, the Obama regime handed out instructions for reporters to join a conference call with Secretary of State Clinton and National Security Advisor Jones that included an 800 number for reporters to call. When they began calling the number, they all got a phone-sex business with a woman asking if the caller wanted to “get nasty.”
As the G-20 summit came to a close on 2 April 2009, Obama was sent away a humbled failure after he failed to achieve his primary goal of cementing a global economic stimulus plan between the 20 parties. Instead, all he got was approval for some loans to small countries and a series of embarrassments involving protocol gaffes.
On 2 April 2009, Russian dictator Dmitry Medvedev, speaking at the G-20 summit, referred to Obama as “my new comrade,” a foreboding description of the clearly disturbing friendship that has formed between the Russian strongman and socialist American president.
Standing on foreign soil in Strasbourg, France, Obama stunned Europe, America and the world by publicly and vehemently insulting his own country, stating that America’s “arrogance,” “dismissive” attitude and “derisive” actions are just cause for Europeans to despise America. No president in history has ever done such a thing.
On 1 April 2009, despite the Taliban’s insulting and highly negative response to Obama’s offering of an olive branch last month to what he termed “moderate Taliban,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered an “honorable form of reconciliation” to Taliban terrorists who she claimed wanted peace. One day later, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid called Clinton’s offer “a lunatic idea,” again causing the clueless Obama regime a great deal of international humiliation.
On 18 February 2008, Obama released a statement in which he said: “When I am President, it will not be business as usual when it comes to food safety.” In late March 2009, two million pounds of pistachios were recalled for salmonella poisoning from a California processing plant and the FDA instructed all Americans to avoid eating any pistachios or products containing pistachios they had on hand.
In early April 2009, Obama appointed Harry Knox, the homosexual leader of the Human Rights Campaign anti-Papal hate group, to the Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Knox routinely attacks Catholic groups, the Vatican and Pope for their stance on gay marriage.
On 7 April 2009, the government of Pakistan handed Obama another major setback in an on-going series of very public international embarrassments by denying the Obama regime’s request to conduct joint ground combat operations with Pakistan forces inside Pakistan. The request was personally delivered to Pakistan by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Obama special envoy Richard Holbrooke.
On 4 April 2009, in a news conference in Strasbourg, Austrian reporter Sonja Sagmeister asked Obama a question, to which he replied: “There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing…”, revealing that Obama actually believes the language spoken in Austria is called Austrian. In reality, of course, there is no such language; the primary language of Austria is German.
On 9 April 2009, after repeated questions from reporters about the pirate hostage crisis, Obama refused to answer, saying he could focus that day only on one thing: the housing and mortgage situation, despite his promising during the campaign that he was best qualified to handle multiple problems that might face his regime.
On 10 April 2009, Obama again refused to answer any questions on the pirate hostage crisis, and the London Telegraph called him “President Pantywaist” and the “new surrender monkey on the block,” two nasty insults that reflected Europe’s growing contempt for the pathetic president.
On 10 April 2009, the AP reported that Obama was throwing a 140-guest pizza party at the White House and that Obama ordered the pizzas to be made fresh in the White House by the owner and chefs from Pi Pizza. The catch: Pi Pizza is in St. Louis. Obama had the owner and chef gather up all the ingrediatents and pans and fly to the White House to personally prepare the pizzas, this as Americans are losing their homes and jobs and businesses.
On 7 April 2009, the Obama regime released to law enforcement an “assessment” that informed recipients of the report of how military veterans, gun owners, pro-lifers, pro-soveriegnty, anti-illegal immigration and other conservative Americans could be terrorists who might attack the homeland. The DHS document was roundly debunked by a variety of organizations as a piece of liberal trash meant to incite fear and distrust of conservatives.
On 14 April 2009, North Korea, despite Obama claiming repeatedly that he would get the to listen to reason, pulled out of the six-party talks, ordered UN inspectors out of the country, and announced it was restarting its nuke program.
On 13 April 2009, Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, admitted falsely reporting to the Congress that she had received only $12,000 from infamous Kansas late-term abortionist George Tiller, and that she really accepted $35,000.
On 15 April 2009, the Times of London reported on French President Sarkozy’s insulting remarks and very negative opinions on Obama, calling Obama’s ideas “rhetoric,” saying Obama is naive, that most of his proposals came from the Bush administration, that Obama’s climate plans were behind those of Europe and his tax plans were unsatisfactory. The stream of insults received wide coverage in the French press as well.
On 16 April 2009, NBC reported that the White House had requested Georgetown University cover up the IHS symbol for Jesus in Gaston Hall for Obama’s speech there. The university admitted this was true and that it had complied with the request from the Obama regime to places drapes over the symbol that would have appeared behind and above Obama during his speech.
On 16 April 2009, DHS Secretary Napolitano apologized to veterans for insulting them in her department’s 7 April 2009 “assessment” that veterans may become domestic terrorists and attack the homeland using their combat skills.
In April 2009, Obama declassified and ordered released for publication numerous top secret documents relating to the interrogation of terrorists that, among other things, revealed the CIA’s interrogation processes and which techniques are the most effective. For mer CIA Director Michael Hayden stated doing so aided and abetting the enemy, which is treason under the United States Code.
On 21 April 2009, David Axelrod, Obama’s top political advisor, stated “amti-Americanism isn’t cool anymore” among other countries due to Obama’s apologetic, anti-American statements made in the UK, Europe and Latin America. The irony and contradictory nature of the statement was apparently lost on Axelrod.
In a total reversal of his policy as stated the week before, on 21 April 2009, Obama said his regime is now open to the prosecution of Bush administration officials who stated the law allows for enhanced interrogation methods. The day prior, Obama went to the CIA and swore to them that he would protect them.
On the weekend of 19-20 April 2009 on CNN, Obama regime DHS Secretary Napolitano, a pro-illegal alien amnesty activist, lied by stating “crossing the border is not a crime per se” in refering to illegal aliens. In reality, 8 U.S.C. 1325 states very cleary that illegally crossing the US border is a crime: a misdeamor for the first offense and a felony for additional offenses.
A once top secret and now declassified CIA memo dated 30 May 2005 revealed that Obama lied when he stated that no intelligence gathered from captured al Qaeda terrorists via waterboarding had resulted in an attack being prevented. The memo stated that 9-11 operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed at first refused to cooperate under standard interrogation methods, but after being waterboarded revealed that a 9-11-style attack using East Asian terrorists was planned for Los Angeles and that the attack was thwarted because of the intelligence KSM surrendered during the waterboarding.
On 20 April 2009, Venezuelan Marxist strongman Hugo Chavez stated that, under Obama, socialism is now reaching the United States. Obama, at the Summit of the Americas, refered to the dictator as his “amigo” and warmly greeted the thug as a comrade, even accepting a book on the evils of the United States from him, which he said he would read.
On 20 April 2009, in an interview with the CBC, DHS Secretary Napolitano claimed that some of the 9-11 terrorists entered the US via Canada. This is an outright lie. As the 9-11 Commission reported, all of the 9-11 terrorists entered the US from abroad. She then stated that no terrorists have entered the US via Mexico, which is patently false according to the Director of the FBI in testimony before the Congress.
On 16 April 2009, Obama regime Department of Education Sec. Arne Duncan signed a Joint Statement of Exchange and Cooperation with the Chinese Minister of Education Zhou Ji. The Chinese government is listed by the State Department as a nation that operates massive and brutal “re-education camps” for dissidents, some of whom do not survive the horrific conditions and violence for which the camps are infamous. Obama claimed during his campaign that he would be the best human rights president.
On 22 April 2009, the Obama regime asked a federal court to throw out a lawsuit filed by Americans held hostage for 444 days by the terrorist regime of Iran during the Carter administration. The suit seeks $6.6 billion from the genocidal terrorist regime, but the Obama regime, siding with the terrorists, says an agreement between Carter and the terrorists disallows the suit.
On “Earth Day” 2009, Obama made two Air Force One (Boeing 747) flights and four Marine One (Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King) flights to places like Des Moines to make speeches about the importance of using less carbon-based fuel, like jet juel and helicopter fuel. He used more than 9,000 gallons of fuel during those flights and the aircraft dumped huge amounts of toxic pollutants into the air while doing so.
In April 2009, Obama appointed Rosa Brooks to the position of advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, a highly influential and coveted position which will grant her access to huge amounts of the nation’s most sensistive national security and military secrets. Brooks, a former LA Times columnist who has railed against Jews and a radical leftist who worked for billionaire extremist Socialist George Soros, has publicly sided with al Qaeda in its war against America. She has no military experience whatsoever.
On 20 April 2009, The New York Times reported that Obama was considering coverting the preferred stock it owns in banks that took TARP funds into common stock, which would give the regime voting rights on each bank’s policies and management, which is a key factor in socialism in that Obama would be able to control credit via controlling the banks, and thus the economy.
On 23 April 2009, Rasmussen Reports published a poll that said 58% of Americans believe Obama damaged national security by releasing the once Top Secret memos on enhanced interrogation techniques of al Qaeda terrorists. Only 28% said in the telephone poll that the release was helpful.
Just because this should never be forgotten, and we do remember that it was democrats that were running things…
Sixteen years ago we were reminded of the deadly danger of having the left-liberals in charge of the police state. The largest massacre of American civilians by the US government since Wounded Knee climaxed on April 19, 1993. The siege that had begun on February 28 with a botched ATF publicity stunt ended when the Branch Davidian church and home went up in flames, after an FBI-operated tank on lease from the military was driven through the building, pumping flammable CS gas for six hours into the place where women and children were cowering in fear. Chemistry professor George Uhlig later testified that the high concentration of the gas combined with poor ventilation subjected the women and children to conditions “similar to… the gas chambers used by the Nazis in Auschwitz.”
On April 12, the FBI had ruled out using gas because it was dangerous to children. A week later, Bob Ricks, FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge, said the gassing was “to make their environment as uncomfortable as possible until they do exit the compound.” This excuse came after weeks of throwing flash-bang grenades at the building when people tried to leave.
Attorney General Janet Reno said the gas attack “was not meant to be D-Day. This was just a step forward in trying to bring about a peaceful resolution by constantly exerting further pressure to shrink the perimeter.” This militaristic lingo was characteristic of the feds’ approach throughout the siege. The government had waged psychological warfare by blaring obnoxious music, shining glaring lights and cutting the Davidians off water, electricity, their friends, attorneys and the press. Firefighters were not permitted near the scene as the flames continued engulfing the home. When it was all over, the ATF stuck its flag up on the building to declare victory.
At a press conference on April 20, a day after the FBI gassed American civilians, President Clinton said he did not believe “the Attorney General should resign because some religious fanatics murdered themselves.” The press corps, in an unusually naked expression of solidarity with the government, applauded Clinton’s statement.
This underscores the dynamic of having this crop in power. If even the liberals are for a show of force, it must have been necessary. The blame was put on the “religious fanatics,” not the government fanatics, and the press and most Americans ate it all up.
The media slavishly pushed war propaganda in Bush’s first term, but they will prove even more sycophantic of Obama. Fair-weather left-liberals who often criticize the most violent side of the Republican state look the other way as their leader jails people without trial, builds civilian surveillance systems, and kills innocents.
Over the last eight years, muckraking liberal journalists dissected every word and deed of the Bush regime, but under Clinton very few were bothered about the unambiguously atrocious nature of the federal raid at Waco. They did not care that Lon Horiuchi, the sniper who murdered Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge in August 1992, had been brought to Waco. They were not jumping up and down about Janet Reno using internationally banned chemical warfare on American children. They did not condemn the FBI for using explosives in addition to flammable gas and then lying about it. They were not concerned what it meant for the militarization of law enforcement, and did not ask why David Koresh, who had befriended federal agents, was friendly with local law enforcement, and had opened the Davidian home up for inspection, was simply not arrested when he was jogging or visiting the bar. The liberals did not wonder why the excuse for the raid shifted from a meth lab to illegal gun ownership to child abuse. They assumed that, as much as the government might have messed up the raid, the fault was primarily that of the victims. The fact that the Davidians were different and armed – though no more armed than the average Texan – was enough to dismiss their suffering and excuse the death of 80 Americans, many of them children, at the hands of law enforcement.
Many mainstream conservatives also backed the administration after Waco, but the weak reaction by the left-liberals, who Americans rely on as the outspoken critics of police abuses, was more important. Incidentally, many libertarians, broadly defined, also took the government’s side. Notably, Objectivist Leonard Peikoff of the Ayn Rand Institute defended the state’s raid and demonized the victims.
When Democratic administrations murder, the law-and-order right is often split. The left is in denial or supportive. And the press tends to spin the story to make the administration seem soft.
The headlines today emphasize Obama’s rhetorical shift from the “war on terror” and his superficial changes in detention policy. The media push the notion that Obama has cut military spending, when he is doing the opposite.
Moreover, the continuity between the Clinton and Obama administrations is not encouraging. We have Hillary, who cheered on the belligerent foreign policy of her husband, the bomber of Belgrade, now in charge of State. We have a Justice Department even more committed to sovereign immunity than the last administration and headed up by Janet Reno’s Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.
Then there is the group the Democrats love to demonize: “Rightwing extremists.” Clinton built a proto-Bushian police state around fear of militias. We saw a major blow to federal habeas corpus, which liberals claim to love, when the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act passed in 1996, in response to Oklahoma City and the supposed epidemic of rightwing militias. When John Ashcroft was being confirmed as Attorney General, his very suggestion that the U.S. government could become “tyrannical” was mocked as ridiculous and extremist by Ted Kennedy and liberals nationwide.
Today, we’re seeing a return of anti-militia hysteria. Just as the federal government and its liberal defenders throughout the 1990s conflated patriotic Americans and peaceful separatists with dangerous “hate” groups and Rush Limbaugh’s listeners with Timothy McVeigh, we have the same kind of culture-war nonsense today.
The Department of Homeland Security recently circulated a report that warns against the “Rise in Right-Wing Extremism.” The document is apparently unclassified but nevertheless indicates it is “not to be released to the public, the media” or others who do not “need to know.” The libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano, who has roundly criticized the tyrannical usurpations of both Republicans and Democrats, writes:
The thrust of this report is that in the present environment of economic instability, returning military veterans, those who fear of the loss of Second Amendment-protected rights, those threatened by an African-American president, and those who fear “Jewish ‘financial elites’” could all be a fertile breeding ground for groups whose power and ideas the government hates and fears. The document is essentially a warning for DHS and FBI officials to be on the look-out for rootless persons looking for the comfort of groups as they may be a danger to American security.
The summary (unclassified) document is terrifying. One can only imagine what is contained in the classified version. This document runs directly counter to numerous U.S. Supreme decisions prohibiting the government from engaging in any activities that could serve to chill the exercise of expressive liberties. Liberties are chilled, in constitutional parlance, when people are afraid to express themselves for fear of government omnipresence, monitoring, or reprisals. The document also informs the reader that Big Brother is watching both public and private behavior.
Do you oppose the Federal Reserve? Support states rights? Hate the income tax? Support the right to bear arms? Know the Constitution better than our rulers? You are a likely suspect of a hate crime. You are in the same class as violent racists and terrorists.
With the upsurge in gun and ammo purchases and the mysterious rise in mass shootings, we can expect more efforts to lump violent agitators together with normal Americans who simply wish to defend themselves and their families. With growing resentment about Washington’s saddling future generations with debt, there will be more attempts to characterize Americans who hate paying ransom to a distant government with people who hate their country or want conflict. With the neglected veterans of Bush’s wars having trouble readjusting to society or simply dissatisfied with the increasingly socialistic country they come home to after being told they were defending freedom, we will see this tragedy caused by the federal government disgustingly twisted into a way to bolster that government.
Many Republicans are making a big stink about the DHS report, but others have pointed out that the administration has also warned about “left-wing extremists” and so it is no big deal. Most grassroots conservatives are rightly outraged, although they do not see the continuity from the Bush era. As I warned them on LRC precisely four years ago:
Conservatives today might be able to wrap themselves in the flag and condemn dissidents as traitors, but before they know it, another Clinton might come to power and they’ll be the ones again accused of assisting the enemy by opposing the State. They might come, once again, to see the difference between love of country and love of the government, only it might be too late to bask in the distinction, thanks to the anti-dissident political atmosphere they are helping right now to create. Today’s leftists, it is to be hoped, will remember the feeling of being branded a traitor, should a Democrat be in power during the next national crisis or war.
The next national crisis has come and the left has for the most part not learned its lessons. Now that their guy is in power, we are back to the peculiar political dynamic of the 1990s, when the left-liberal police state conducted atrocities and dissent was thin.
Of course in reality, the policies are bipartisan. Ruby Ridge happened and Waco was planned under Republicans, and Waco was whitewashed by the Republican Danforth Report. The Homeland Security Department and the Fusion Centers going after rightwing militia were begun in the Bush era. Under Bush the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which targeted many of the same groups today targeted by Obama, won the support of the overwhelming majority of Republican Congressmen. But what changes most is the way the public reacts to state violence, and with left-liberals at the throne police brutality and massacres tend to be more tolerated by the mainstream. It is somehow politically correct when a Democratic administration cracks down on the most marginalized people in society.
Meanwhile, the Obama regime is raiding medical marijuana clinics in violation of the spirit of campaign promises, continuing most dictatorial Bush terror policies, and scheming new ways to censor and control us. They want to take over the internet. They are contemplating more citizen disarmament, a move toward national service and more cradle-to-grave welfarism. By casting “rightwing extremists” as the Other, they can use this domestic bogeyman to expand upon the tools of oppression Bush constructed in the name of fighting the foreign bogeyman. It will aggravate the culture war and cause social division, but we must remember it is the state that is doing this dividing.
Obama has already killed a lot of foreigners. He has already broken key promises on civil liberties and transparency. He has already looted enough for five years of profligate spending. Let us hope his team does not react to “rightwing extremists” the way Clinton’s did at Waco. They would get away with it.
Coming soon to a place near you..?
Speaking of immigration, we may soon be welcoming a new group of residents to the U.S. Human Events editor Jed Babbin reports, “White House lawyers are refusing to accept the findings of an inter-agency committee that the Uighur Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay are too dangerous to release inside the U.S., according to Pentagon sources familiar with the action.” Obama has long promised to close Gitmo, but he recently ordered the review by all the national security agencies to determine the status of all detainees. The 17 Uighurs, for example, are members of the “East Turkistan Islamic Movement,” a terrorist cell, and were captured at an al-Qa’ida training camp. After review, the ruling on the field is that these terrorists are too dangerous to be released. But apparently, the White House has demanded that the review group re-do its findings to come up with Obama’s desired answer.
As Babbin writes, “Gitmo holds three classes of terrorist detainees: first, those that are held for prosecution of terrorist acts such as Khalid Sheik Muhammed; second, those who cannot be prosecuted and will be released or transferred to another country for trial or incarceration; and third, those who cannot be prosecuted (because the information against them is intelligence information inadmissible in court) but who pose such a danger that they cannot be released. The last category encompasses a large number of the Gitmo detainees.” Yet Obama thinks these nice folks would make great neighbors for some Americans — just not in the vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
One things for sure, the Gore is on the “change” bandwagon and it certainly appears that the current administration likes this form of change…
A series of highly publicized hearings and testimonials were held surrounding Earth Day this week to draw as much attention as possible to the liberal sham that is climate legislation. Even Al Gore showed up on Friday, though, oddly enough, it didn’t snow.
The heads of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Transportation Department and the Energy Department testified on climate change legislation — a bill that is 648 pages in draft form — before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. According to The New York Times, “The House measure, the most far-reaching piece of energy and environmental legislation to come before Congress in years, would require large changes in the way the United States generates electricity, manufactures products, heats and lights its homes and offices, and moves people and goods.”
Political grandstanding was the main order of the week, but passing the cap and trade bill will top the agenda over the coming weeks — with the hope that it will clear the full House before Memorial Day. Some more radical elements, though, would include stricter measures that limit emissions and heavily fine those deemed to be polluters. Either way, the economy will suffer the consequences for actions taken based on dubious theories. As Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) put it, “The debate is not about whether cap-and-trade legislation will raise energy costs; the only dispute is by how much. With a cap-and-trade scheme like that proposed by Chairmen Waxman and Markey, households can expect energy cost increases up to $3,128 per year. Your electricity bill will increase by 77 to 129 percent. Filling up your gas tank will cost anywhere from 60 to 144 percent more. The cost of home heating oil and natural gas will nearly double.” So much for Barack Obama’s oft repeated pledge to “cut taxes for 95 percent of workers and their families.”
In related news, Obama burned about 9,000 gallons of jet fuel on Earth Day to make his speech in Iowa about saving the planet.
Anthony Martin over at Columbia Conservative Examiner reviews the first one hundred days of the current administrations achievements toward the total destruction of the United States. This theme appears to be the mainstay across the board when one observes blogs as well as the MSM. Although some see it in diametrically different ways to be sure. Those suffering from various emotional and mental issues jump for joy and get “tingles” up their leg so joyful are they at the destruction of freedom and liberty. Not to mention the self flagellation that the impostor in chief brings upon our nation. Indeed, after observing what has been going on around the world as of late a friend from Germany emailed me asking if the United States was collectively suicidal.
Then, Mark Alexander releases the following from the Patriot Post
By Mark Alexander
Leon Panetta was certainly not appointed Director of Central Intelligence because of any related professional qualifications for the post. However, as the former White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, Panetta has the political gravitas to run interference for the Obama regime, to best ensure that nobody will depart the Agency reservation with anything that poses a problem for Obama’s agenda.
Of course, what could possibly pose a problem for a pathological socialist who launched his political career a few years back in the home of his terrorist neighbors, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn — and is now president?
Though Panetta lacks an intelligence background, at least he passed muster for the requisite DCI clearances. His boss, however, wouldn’t qualify for the clearance level required of a desk clerk at the Social Security Administration. (Is this a great country, or what?)
This week, Panetta greeted Obama in the lobby of the CIA’s Original Headquarters Building in advance of Obama’s teleprompted regurgitation of the most overtly partisan pile of political horse pucky in CIA history. Feigning impartiality, Panetta said, “We must be careful not to spend so much time and energy in laying blame for the past that it interferes with our ability to focus on the fundamental mission we have for today and for tomorrow.”
Notice Panetta did not say that we shouldn’t lay political blame. He just qualified how much time should be spent doing so.
Blame for what?
Last week, Obama released some carefully chosen top-secret memos regarding “enhanced interrogation” techniques used to interview a few al-Qa’ida guests at the fashionable “Chez Gitmo” resort located on the southeast shore of a nearby Caribbean island getaway. (OK, that may not be a fair representation of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp — and certainly not Castro’s island concentration camp — but the food, sanitation and amenities at Gitmo are much better than that of the detainees’ former dwellings in the dark, dank caves of mountainous Afghanistan.)
The memos pertained to the treatment of three particularly evil Gitmo detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. These three were subjected to waterboarding — the forcible introduction of water to the mouth and nasal passages in order to coerce a captive’s submission and cooperation. (It’s worth noting that thousands of our Special Forces and clandestine operators have been subjected to waterboarding as part of their “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape” training, and, like the Gitmo detainees, they survived.)
However distasteful you might find this practice, I would argue it is a bit more humane than al-Qa’ida’s terminal interrogation practice, decapitation.
While Obama released the information about the interrogation techniques, the information obtained by those techniques was redacted. Why, you ask?
Both the CIA and the Justice Department have confirmed that intelligence gathered from these detainees, particularly that from KSM (architect of the 9/11 attacks), saved American lives and property, especially information that thwarted planned attacks on Los Angeles and New York, as well as actionable intelligence that led to the arrest of an al-Qa’ida cell in the U.S. and the capture or death of a succession of al-Qa’ida principals in the Middle East and Africa.
Call it selective transparency. Despite the fact that the Bush administration succeeded with the interrogation policy in question, when it comes to Left-partisan politics, no good deed goes unpunished.
Speaking to CIA employees, Obama said, “I have put an end to the interrogation techniques described in those OLC memos, and I want to be very clear and very blunt. I’ve done so for a simple reason: because I believe that our nation is stronger and more secure when we deploy the full measure of both our power and the power of our values — including the rule of law.”
“Values”? Like the values which form Obama’s “vision for America.”
“Rule of law”? Everything the Obama administration has done and plans to do is an affront to constitutional Rule of Law.
In fact, the timing of the memos’ release has nothing to do with “values” or “rule of law.” Let me offer a different rationale for their release from any you’ve heard or read thus far.
While this memo folly seems to be another candidate for the Obama regime’s “ready, fire, aim” botched policy bin, it has a clever, if not obvious, purpose.
First, it serves to both appease and re-energize Obama’s ultra-Leftist cadres, those who made “waterboarding” a rallying point for their anti-Operation Iraqi Freedom protests. Indeed, withdrawal from Iraq was the most prominent theme of both Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign and his 2008 presidential campaign platform.
Second, and more than re-energizing his anti-war base, however, Obama timed and staged this political shenanigan to reignite the anti-Bush sentiment among a much broader cross section of his constituents. To accomplish this, he has left the door open for prosecution of Bush officials, including Condoleezza Rice, who approved of the policy.
In doing so, he hopes to regain the allegiance of his largest and most loyal constituency, Bush-haters, with the objective of deflecting a growing chorus of “buyer’s remorse” among those who elected him but are now increasingly disillusioned.
A charade it may be, but based on the media play it is receiving, Obama is accomplishing his shrewd political objective, which again, has nothing to do with waterboarding.
Obama’s Veep, Joe Biden, primed the pump for this farce in February, when he met with Panetta and CIA employees, and told them that Obama was going to “reverse the [waterboarding] policies that in my view and the view of many in this agency caused America to fall short of its founding principles and which gave al-Qa’ida a powerful recruiting tool.” (Note to Joe: No detainee had been subjected to waterboarding since 2003.)
On Monday, Obama stood in the same location at which Biden delivered his remarks, and completed the act.
To be more specific, both Obama and Biden staged their remarks in front of the north wall in the CIA’s Original Headquarters Building lobby. On the marble wall behind them is an inscription: “In honor of those members of the Central Intelligence Agency who gave their lives in the service of their country.” Under those words are 89 stars representing some of the CIA officers who have been killed in covert actions.
Watching that photo op, I was struck by Obama’s unmitigated “audacity,” that he would defile this solemn memorial by using it as a backdrop for delivering remarks to a handpicked audience — comments which served no other purpose than to amplify his anti-American political agenda.
At the entrance to the CIA’s OHB, not far from Obama and his teleprompters, there is another marble wall with the inscription “And Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free” (John 8:32). The fifth and longest serving DCI, Allen Dulles, had those words from Scripture inscribed there, and they would become the CIA’s motto.
One would hope that our nation would “know the truth,” and moreover, recognize that Obama and Biden are al-Qa’ida’s “powerful recruiting tool,” before our nation suffers another catastrophic attack.
More from the masters of mysandry and misdirection.
This week, in a typically misleading move designed to bolster their political agenda rather than reduce violent crime, the Brady Campaign released a report calling for background checks on “all gun sales in America, including at gun shows.” The Brady report was intentionally designed to correspond with, and bolster, a “gun show loophole” bill (S. 843) introduced this week by fanatical anti-gun Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). In fact, the Brady report was released at the press conference Lautenberg held earlier this week.
Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign, said in the group’s press release, “We can do this. It will have no impact on any law-abiding gun owner in the country.” Of course, that is absolutely false—the proposal will ONLY impact law-abiding gun owners, including any law-abiding person selling a firearm to a law-abiding buyer. Does Helmke really think that criminals, drug cartel members, and violent gang thugs are going to start legally purchasing firearms and submitting to a background check? Law-breakers, by definition, break the law. They are criminals; they are predatory, they operate outside of the law. You know that, we know that, Lautenberg knows that, even Helmke knows that.
Lautenberg’s new bill is essentially a re-introduction of the same bill he introduced in the 110th Congress—S. 2577. And as before, S. 843 calls for massive new government powers to register gun show customers, register gun owners, retain information on people who pass criminal records checks when buying firearms, heavily tax both gun collectors and gun sales, and require gun show promoters to police gun show customers, as if they were agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The bill is not about gun shows. Rather, S. 843 is a solution in search of a problem; numerous government studies have determined that gun shows are an insignificant or miniscule source of firearms misused in crime. For instance, a 2000 Bureau of Justice Statistics study, “Federal Firearms Offenders, 1992-98,” found only 1.7% of federal prison inmates obtained their gun from a gun show. Similarly, a 1997 National Institute of Justice study reported less than 2% of criminals’ guns come from gun shows.
In reality, gun shows are large, public events held in convention centers and banquet halls. But S. 843 defines “gun show” so broadly that it would include a person’s home. Merely “offering” to “exchange” a firearm at an “event” could be banned. The National Matches at Camp Perry and your local gun club’s Sunday trap shoot could be defined as “events” subject to the bill’s provisions. Even talking about a gun at an “event” could be seen as an “offer” to sell a gun. Even if you are not a dealer, but you display a gun at a gun show, and then months later sell the gun to someone you met at the show, you would be subject to the same requirements as if you had completed the sale at the gun show. The restrictions and regulations S. 843 would impose upon real gun shows, and upon gun owners’ personal activities that the bill would preposterously define as “gun shows” and “events,” are unprecedented. S. 843 actually imposes restrictions on “gun show” transactions well beyond those required for firearms transactions at a gun store. And running afoul of S. 843’s numerous, far-fetched provisions could send you to prison for years. Among other things, the legislation calls for:
Gun show customer registration: A person who attends a show, even without a gun, who even discusses the possibility of selling a gun, would be required to sign “a ledger with identifying information.” Gun show promoters would have to retain the ledgers indefinitely for inspection by the BATFE.
Absurd requirement on gun show promoters: Because a promoter cannot know whether a person who attends his show will discuss the sale of a gun, he will have to require every customer to sign the ledger, and check every customer’s identification to verify the information required on the ledger.
Invasion of privacy: In addition to records kept on gun show customers, this bill would allow the FBI to retain, for 90 days, personal information about people who clear instant checks when buying guns.
Gun collector registration: If you are at home with a collection of fifty or more firearms, it would be a five-year felony to “offer” or “exchange” a single gun — even between family or friends — unless you first registered with the BATFE and paid a fee, the amount of which would be at BATFE’s discretion.
The real objective of this legislation is to over-regulate gun shows out of business. Rest assured we will continue to actively monitor the bill and will apprise you of any developments.
Please be sure to contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to strongly OPPOSE S. 843! You can call your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121.
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