Is the President Incompetent or Lawless?

Is the President Incompetent or Lawless?

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It has been well established under the Constitution and throughout our history that the president's job as the chief federal law enforcement officer permits him to put his ideological stamp on the nature of the work done by the executive branch. The courts have characterized this stamp as "discretion."

 

Thus when exercising their discretion, some presidents veer toward authority, others toward freedom. John Adams prosecuted a congressman whose criticism brought him into disrepute, an act protected by the First Amendment yet punishable under the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Thomas Jefferson declined to enforce the Acts because they punished speech, and pardoned all those convicted. Jimmy Carter asserted vast federal regulatory authority over the trucking and airline industries, and Ronald Reagan undid nearly all of it.

 

The president has discretion to adapt law enforcement to the needs of the times and to his reading of the wishes of the American people. Yet that discretion has a serious and mandatory guiding light — namely, that the president will do so faithfully.

The word "faithfully" appears in the oath of office that is administered to every president. The reason for its use is to assure Americans that their wishes for government behavior, as manifested in written law, would be carried out even if the president personally disagrees with the laws he swore to enforce.

 

This has not always worked as planned. President George W. Bush once famously signed into law a statute prohibiting federal agents without a search warrant from reading mail sent to persons other than themselves — and as he was literally holding his pen, he stated he had no intention of enforcing it. That was a rejection of his presidential duties and a violation of his oath.

 

But today, President Obama has taken the concept of discretion and so distorted it, and has taken the obligation of faithful enforcement and so rejected it, that his job as chief law enforcer has become one of incompetent madness or chief lawbreaker. Time after time, in areas as disparate as civil liberties, immigration, foreign affairs and health care, the president has demonstrated a propensity for rejecting his oath and doing damage to our fabric of liberty that cannot easily be undone by a successor.

Item: He has permitted unconstitutional and unbridled spying on all Americans all the time, and he has dispatched his agents to lie and mislead the American people and their elected representatives in Congress about it. This has resulted in a federal culture in which the supposed servants of the people have become our permanent and intimate monitors and squealers on what they observe.

 

Item: He has permitted illegal immigrants to remain here and continue to break the law, and he has instructed them on how to get away with it. His encouragement has resulted in the flood of tens of thousands of foreign unaccompanied children being pushed across our borders. This has resulted in culture shock to children now used as political pawns, the impairment of their lives and the imposition of grievous financial burdens upon local and state governments.

 

Item: His agents fomented a revolution in Libya that resulted in the murder of that country's leader, the killing of the U.S. ambassador and the evacuation of the U.S. embassy. His agents fomented a revolution in Ukraine that resulted in a Russian invasion, an active insurgency, sham elections and the killing of hundreds of innocent passengers flying on a commercial airliner.

 

Item: He has dispatched CIA agents to fight undeclared and secret wars in Yemen and in Pakistan, and he has dispatched unmanned drones to kill innocents there. He has boasted that some secret reading of public positive law permits him to kill whomever he wishes, even Americans and their children.

 

Item: His State Department has treated Hamas — a gang of ruthless murderers whose stated purpose is the destruction of Israel — as if it were a legitimate state deserving of diplomatic niceties, and this has encouraged Hamas to persist in attacking our only serious ally in the Middle East.

 

Item: His Department of Veterans Affairs has so neglected patients in government hospitals that many of them died, and it even destroyed records to hide its misdeeds. His Internal Revenue Service has enforced the law more heavily against his political opponents than against his friends, and it has destroyed government computer records in order to hide its misdeeds.

 

Item: He has relieved his friends of the burdens of timely compliance with Obamacare, and he has burdened his enemies with tortured interpretations of that law — even interpretations that were rejected by the very Congress that enacted the law and interpretations that were invalidated by the Supreme Court.

 

He has done all these things with a cool indifference, and he has threatened to continue to do so until the pressure builds on his political opponents to see things his way.

The Framers could not have intended a president so devoid of fidelity to the rule of law that it is nearly impossible to distinguish between incompetence and lawlessness — and I am not sure which is worse. Archbishop Fulton Sheen often said he'd prefer to deal with a smart devil than a stupid one.

 

But the Framers did give us a remedy, and the remedy is not a frivolous lawsuit that the federal courts will no doubt reject as a political stunt. The remedy is removal from office. This is not to be undertaken lightly, as was the case when this remedy was last used. But it is the remaining constitutional means to save the freedoms the Constitution was intended to guarantee.

 

The choice is between two more years of government by decree or two years of prosecution. It is a choice the president has imposed upon us all.

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Lord, give us the wisdom to know our necessary path and to recognize when the liberties you gave us are being stolen.  Amen.

 

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Our Basic Freedom

Through the years, there have been extensive discussions regarding political, economic, and social situations and needs and laws.  I have always maintained that the very core of our being is the fact that, in the U.S.A., we have the basic freedom of making our own choices.

Each year we are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at the low income neighborhoods and schools, at the minimally employed in big cities and small.  It also seems that every year we, as a nation, wonder why more funding is needed and situations don't improve. 

“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”Joanne Kathleen Rowling


The following is a great perspective on "choices".
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"We are responsible for our choices, not G-d. He gave us the freedom of will to make choices; in fact, making those choices is what life is all about. When the Bible speaks of creating Man in G-d's image, Jewish commentators write that this image is the freedom to choose.

Just as He can choose without restriction, we have a partial ability to choose. We are influenced by nature and nurture — but not determined by them. We become greater or lesser — closer to G-d or more distant from him — through a constant process of making choices, small and large, every day of our lives. Blaming Him for our poor choices is an assault on Him, a turning of His gift to us into an excuse to mess up.

A concomitant of this gift is the existence of much evil that is of human manufacture. We would not have much freedom to choose if every time we were prepared to make a bad or evil choice, G-d would strike us down with a bolt of lightning.

To give us freedom, G-d often has to restrict Himself to being a Judge after the fact, rather than a Divine Intercessor. We can choose evil, and He does not interfere.

Somehow, restricting our free will would do even greater harm to our autonomy as human beings, i.e. our entire purpose in living our lives. Our choices, post facto, should never be confused with G-d's plan.

Hopefully, George Zimmerman's words to Sean Hannity represented nothing more than a slip at the moment. If he really believed that he could take refuge in G-d's plan, he committed a crime against humanity.

His own."
 

(Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein is the Director of Interfaith Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.)

 
Lord, we thank you for our freedoms and for the ability to reason. We love you for always staying at our side even when we don't use our ability to reason in a productive manner.  Amen.

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I'm sharing the following article because it needs to go out to all conservatives so I'm doing my small part.
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Suffering indignities from the party I embraced 25 years ago
By Star Parker
JewishWorldReview.com | Some 25 years ago, I changed my life.

A visit inside a church opened my eyes to the destructive life I was living, financed by welfare checks generously provided by American taxpayers.

I got off welfare, went to work, got politically active and became a Republican. I didn't become a Republican because of what the party looked like. I became a Republican because of what the party stood for: individual freedom, traditional values, with a view that government's role is to protect our freedom at home and abroad.

For the next 25 years, I had to suffer indignities from liberals who could not fathom that a black could be a Republican because she actually embraced these values.

But now, we have a strange turn of events.

Liberals no longer feel on the run like they did in the 1980s and 1990s. They are running the show and they know it. So I hear less from them.

Now the indignities come from inside the party that I embraced 25 years ago.

It was always the Democrats that were about interest group politics.

Now Republicans have somehow concluded that their party's woes are because it once stood for something. So the game plan is to morph into the Democrats' stepsister.

Whereas once Republican buzzwords were family and freedom, now it is inclusion. The marching orders, according to the post-election "autopsy" report from the Republican National Committee, is outreach to blacks, Hispanics, gays, women and Asians. It's now about what the party looks like, not what it stands for.
Christian conservatives, once the answer, are now the problem.

Which gets to Bishop E. W. Jackson.

Bishop Jackson is an outspoken black Christian conservative with a law degree from Harvard. He also was just selected as the nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia.

Although Republicans are talking about black outreach, it is not, unfortunately, blacks like Jackson that they have in mind.

He is outspoken about limited government and personal freedom, about the importance of family and traditional marriage, and about doing something about the scourge of abortion.

In other words, E.W. Jackson stands for everything that the Republican Party once stood for.

He's making the Republicans of inclusion squirm.

The current Republican lieutenant governor of Virginia, Bill Bolling, immediately criticized his party for nominating Jackson, saying it will feed the "image of extremism" in the party.

Ronald Reagan used to say that the 11th commandment was to not speak ill of a fellow Republican. That commandment has now been modified to permit it, if that fellow Republican is a Christian conservative.

Certainly, Jackson does not pull punches. But his statements about the government "plantation" are 100 percent true. It's no accident that trillions of dollars in government programs have had zero impact on black poverty. Black single-parent homes and out-of-wedlock births have tripled since the War on Poverty began in 1965.

A new Gallup poll shows a dramatic shift in American attitudes on traditional morality. Fifty-nine percent now say homosexual relations are acceptable, up 19 points from 2001; 60 percent say out-of-wedlock birth is OK, up 15 points from 2001; 68 percent say divorce is OK, up 9 points from 2001; and 14 percent are OK with polygamy, twice that of 2001.

The economy is sputtering at 2 percent growth, four points below the expected recovery growth rate from a deep recession, and our national debt is now greater than our gross domestic product.

The country needs a bold alternative voice to wake it up. The conservative Ken Cuccinelli-E W Jackson ticket in Virginia is such a voice.

Will their party get behind them or pull the rug out, as it has done to other conservatives in recent races? Will the Republican Party get back to what it once was about, or will it become just another symptom of a nation in decline?

European Slaves

I found the following article when I was doing a search for information regarding the Barbery Pirates.
It's rather long, however, the information within this article is something that needs to be shared.  I don't think the so-called "investigative reporters" do much beyond what is politically correct.  If the reporters would look into this era of enslavement, as well as, today's slave trade it would help to open the eyes of millions.
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WHEN EUROPEANS WERE SLAVES: RESEARCH SUGGESTS WHITE SLAVERY WAS MUCH MORE COMMON THAN PREVIOUSLY BELIEVED

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).

“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature – that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”

During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time – both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners – did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.

So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.




“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down – figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransomings, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.

Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America.

“As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it better,” he said.

While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally – in quarries, in heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves.

Davis said his findings suggest that this invisible slavery of European Christians deserves more attention from scholars.

“We have lost the sense of how large enslavement could loom for those who lived around the Mediterranean and the threat they were under,” he said. “Slaves were still slaves, whether they are black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa.”

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Where Is The Outcry?

I'm sharing this article because it is so amazing that this story is not on the national news.  A few soldiers of the Jihadist Muslims kill innocent civilians and nothing is said by any news agencies in Europe or the U.S.  If a few soldiers of the US military were to kill even 1 innocent civilian it would be plastered across the TV screen around the world.  Where is Obama's outrage?  Where is his staunch support of religious freedom not matter what?

So, please read this article and know that these butchers have no intention of letting us Christians live side-by-side with their families.
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At least 16 Nigerian Christians at prayer butchered after Islamists make good on threats

By Ibrahim Garba

JewishWorldReview.com |

ANO, Nigeria— (TCSM) An early morning attack on a Christian church service in northern Nigeria left at least 16 people dead. The attack follows a string of violent incidents against Christians in the predominantly Muslim north.

Gunmen on motorcycles stormed Bayero University in the city of Kano Sunday morning during a Catholic mass held in the school's theater hall. The unidentified assailants threw improvised explosive devices as they traveled from the gates to the theater, and opened fire as people fled.

University spokesperson Alhaji Mustapha Zahradeen said seven people were killed. Eyewitness, however, said rescue operators have removed at least 18 dead bodies.

Security officials suspect Boko Haram, an Islamist insurgent outfit, carried out the attack. The group, whose name means "Western education is a sin," issued a statement last month warning that they will attack schools. Boko Haram has been blamed for killing more than 1,000 people since 2009 in its bid to overthrow Nigeria's secular government and establish Islamic sharia law nationwide.

Nigeria's political system tries to strike a balance between the Muslim north and Christian south. The use of religiously-targeted violence by Boko Haram, a group based in the north, is posing a challenge to the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, a southern Christian. In response, Mr. Jonathan has dispatched security forces, but sent mixed signals on whether his government would talk with the insurgents.

"Those who are saying we should dialogue are correct; those who are saying we should not dialogue are also correct," Jonathan told reporters Saturday after touring the bombed office of ThisDay Newspapers in Abuja.

Suleiman Ramat, a human rights activist in Kano, says to end the violence the government needs to act more vigorously, including on efforts to reconcile with the insurgents.

"The attack on Christians is barbaric and it must stop because innocent people are always at [the] losing end," he says.

Nigerian security forces have taken some counterinsurgency steps. Security forces arrested the group's leader Muhammad Yusuf, who was then killed in custody in 2009. In Kano last week, a joint military task force raided a suspected Boko Haram bomb factory. Earlier this month, security forces praised local residents in a Muslim neighborhood of Kano who apprehended two Boko Haram fighters before they could cause mayhem.

But a steady string of attacks by Boko Haram against churches, government installations, and newspapers continue, leading to calls for the government to get more serious about responding to the group.

The spokesman of the Joint Military Task Force, Lt. Ikedichi Iweha, said today's attack was highly sophisticated and cruel. By the time his men arrived on the scene, the gunmen had fled the area.

Meanwhile, the country's National Emergency Management Agency said that it received reports of the attacks but had no local office nearby with which to respond. Instead, they helped mobilize first responders and volunteers, who were then refused access to the scene by security forces.

Among the victims of the attack are chemistry professor Jerome Ayodele and Andrew Leo of the Library Science department.

The attack at Bayero University comes just two days after gunshots and blasts at Gombe State University in northeastern Nigeria. There were no casualties in that attack, which destroyed an administrative building.
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FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE CATHOLICS

First, They Came for the Catholics

By Michelle Malkin
www.JewishWorldReview.com


President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next?

This weekend, Catholic bishops informed parishioners of the recent White House edict forcing religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and social service providers to provide "free" abortifacient pills, sterilizations and contraception on demand in their insurance plans — even if it violates their moral consciences and the teachings of their churches.

NARAL, NOW, Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation all cheered the administration's abuse of the Obamacare law to ram abortion down pro-life medical professionals' throats. Femme dinosaur Eleanor Smeal gloated over the news that the administration had rejected church officials' pleas for compromises: "At last," she exulted, the left's goal of "no-cost birth control" for all had been achieved.

As always, tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. "Choice" is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.

Like the rising number of states who have revolted against the individual health care mandate at the ballot box and in the courts, targeted Catholics have risen up against the Obamacare regime. Arlington (Va.) Bishop Paul Loverde didn't mince words, calling the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services order "a direct attack against religious liberty. This ill-considered policy comprises a truly radical break with the liberties that have underpinned our nation since its founding." Several bishops vowed publicly to fight the mandate.  Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette, Mich., asserted plainly: "We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law."

It's not just rabid right-wing politicos defying the Obama machine. Pro-life Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania denounced the "wrong decision." Left-leaning Bishop Robert Lynch threatened "civil disobedience" in St. Petersburg, Fla., over the power grab. Lefty Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that Obama "botched" the controversy and "threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus" by refusing to "balance the competing liberty interests here."

White House press secretary Jay Carney blithely denied on Tuesday that "there are any constitutional rights issues" involved in the brewing battle. Yet, the Shut Up and Hand Out Abortion Pills order undermines a unanimous Supreme Court ruling issued just last week upholding a religious employer's right to determine whom to hire and fire. And two private colleges have filed federal suits against the government to overturn the unconstitutional abortion coverage decree.

Hannah Smith, senior counsel at the nonprofit law firm The Becket Fund, which is representing the schools, boiled it down for Bloomberg News: "This is not really about access to contraception. The mandate is about forcing these religious groups to pay for it against their beliefs."

How did we get here? The first salvo came in December 2010, when the American Civil Liberties Union pushed HHS and its Planned Parenthood-championing secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions in violation of their core moral commitment to protecting the lives of the unborn.  The ACLU called for a litigious fishing expedition against Catholic hospitals nationwide that refuse to provide "emergency" contraception and abortions to women. In their sights: Devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church's ethical and religious directives for health care.

The ACLU and the feminists have joined with Obama to threaten and sabotage the First Amendment rights of religious-based health care entities. The agenda is not increased "access" to health care services. The ultimate goal is to shut down health care providers — Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers — whose religious views cannot be tolerated by secular zealots and radical social engineers.
Is it any surprise their counterparts in the "Occupy" movement have moved from protesting "Wall Street" to harassing pro-life marchers in Washington, D.C., and hurling condoms at Catholic school girls in Rhode Island? Birds of a lawless, bigoted feather bully together.

Our Nations 'Manifest Destiny'

In today's world, there are many who are painting our nation as an imperialistic demagogue of evil; we even have a president that is travelling the world apologizing for our success, our spiritual beliefs and our steadfastness.  How sad. 

After reading O'Sullivan's Manifest Destiny, I too believe that our nation had a purpose and that purpose is worth fighting to save.  In the past 60-70 years there have been many obstacles thrown in the path of that destiny and today we are facing the biggest threat to our nation since the Revolutionary War.

John L. O'Sullivan on Manifest Destiny, 1839

The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them, and still less with all antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only; and so far as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity.

It is so destined, because the principle upon which a nation is organized fixes its destiny, and that of equality is perfect, is universal. It presides in all the operations of the physical world, and it is also the conscious law of the soul -- the self-evident dictates of morality, which accurately defines the duty of man to man, and consequently man's rights as man. Besides, the truthful annals of any nation furnish abundant evidence, that its happiness, its greatness, its duration, were always proportionate to the democratic equality in its system of government. . . .

What friend of human liberty, civilization, and refinement, can cast his view over the past history of the monarchies and aristocracies of antiquity, and not deplore that they ever existed? What philanthropist can contemplate the oppressions, the cruelties, and injustice inflicted by them on the masses of mankind, and not turn with moral horror from the retrospect?

America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminiscences of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement. Our annals describe no scenes of horrid carnage, where men were led on by hundreds of thousands to slay one another, dupes and victims to emperors, kings, nobles, demons in the human form called heroes. We have had patriots to defend our homes, our liberties, but no aspirants to crowns or thrones; nor have the American people ever suffered themselves to be led on by wicked ambition to depopulate the land, to spread desolation far and wide, that a human being might be placed on a seat of supremacy.

We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands, that "the gates of hell" -- the powers of aristocracy and monarchy -- "shall not prevail against it."

The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High -- the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere -- its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens, and its congregation an Union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling, owning no man master, but governed by God's natural and moral law of equality, the law of brotherhood -- of "peace and good will amongst men.". . .

Yes, we are the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement. Equality of rights is the cynosure of our union of States, the grand exemplar of the correlative equality of individuals; and while truth sheds its effulgence, we cannot retrograde, without dissolving the one and subverting the other. We must onward to the fulfilment of our mission -- to the entire development of the principle of our organization -- freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom and equality. This is our high destiny, and in nature's eternal, inevitable decree of cause and effect we must accomplish it. All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man -- the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?
http://www.civics-online.org/

The Haircut

This had to be shared, it begged to be shared!

The Haircut 


One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied, 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community service this week.'
The florist was pleased and left the shop. When the barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.

Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you , I'm doing community service this week.'
The cop was happy and left the shop. The next morning when the barber went to open up, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.

Then a Congressman came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.'
The Congressman was very happy and left the shop. The next morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen Congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.


And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the politicians who run it.

REMEMBER POLITICIANS AND DIAPERS SHOULD BE CHANGED OFTEN AND FOR THE SAME REASON

The Norway Connection

Please use the link below to read an opinion that may have a different interpretation to the recent shootings in Norway and the political atmosphere in today's Europe.  The American leftwing mainstream news agencies will paint a totally different picture than the one Mr. Gaffney offers us to examine.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been working insidiously for several decades and is currently being offered a welcoming hand from our own government.  Although anger, hate, and violence are not the solution, we must also be aware that we have to stand firm and be counted as one of millions demanding our freedoms be preserved.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

Obama's Economy By the Numbers

The current administration basks in positive slants from the mainstream media, and although Barack Obama is directly or indirectly responsible for the results of his programs and policies, the voting public seems oblivious of the current status.
There is a large segment of our population that are struggling with marked increases in not just gasoline prices, but large jumps in the cost of food and various personal necessities of hygiene products and over-the-counter health necessities.

Does the news media really not get it?  Are they so distantly out of touch with the checkout line at the local Target or WalMart that they can't see the elephant in the room?

The article below gives facts on a large national scale and is difficult for the average person to relate to, i.e., billions and trillions.  What needs to be addressed are the effects on the dollars and cents of day-to-day living.
___________________________________________________________

Obama's Economy By the Numbers
   from the Kansas State Republican Party Newsletter(6/10/11)

Number of jobs lost under Barack Obama: 2.5 Million
Current national debt. $14.3 Trillion
The amount added to the national debt since Obama took office. $3.7 Trillion
Expected national debt in 2021 under Obama's Budget: $26.4 Trillion
Current federal deficit (largest in history & 3rd consecutive trillion dollar deficit): $1.65 Trillion
How much Washington borrows every day to fund Obama's spending spree: $5 Billion
Amount borrowed on every dollar the federal government spends. 43 cents
True cost of ObamaCare (when Democrat budget gimmicks are removed): $2.5 Trillion

"What Obama did to Israel"

As most of you already know, I am a supporter of the free and autonomous Jewish state of Israel.  After all, this was agreed on by the majority of countries in the late 1940's and has, until recently, been able to count of the U.S.A. as a staunch supporter and ally.  I offer to you Dr. Krauthammer's latest take on the situation.
________________________________________________________________
Jewish World Review May 27, 2011 / 23 Iyar, 5771


What Obama did to Israel
By Charles Krauthammer





Every Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The long-standing American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take risks for peace while America balances things by giving assurances of U.S. support for Israel's security and diplomatic needs.

It's on the basis of such solemn assurances that Israel undertook, for example, the Gaza withdrawal. In order to mitigate this risk, President George W.Bush gave a written commitment that America supported Israel absorbing major settlement blocs in any peace agreement, opposed any return to the 1967 lines and stood firm against the so-called Palestinian right of return to Israel.

For 2 1 / 2 years, the Obama administration has refused to recognize and reaffirm these assurances. Then last week in his State Department speech, President Obama definitively trashed them. He declared that the Arab-Israeli conflict should indeed be resolved along "the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps."

Nothing new here, said Obama three days later. "By definition, it means that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — will negotiate a border that is different" from 1967.

It means nothing of the sort. "Mutually" means both parties have to agree. And if one side doesn't? Then, by definition, you're back to the 1967 lines.
Nor is this merely a theoretical proposition. Three times the Palestinians have been offered exactly that formula, 1967 plus swaps — at Camp David 2000, Taba 2001, and the 2008 Olmert-Abbas negotiations. Every time, the Palestinians said no and walked away.

And that remains their position today: The 1967 lines. Period. Indeed, in September the Palestinians are going to the United Nations to get the world to ratify precisely that — a Palestinian state on the '67 lines. No swaps.

Note how Obama has undermined Israel's negotiating position. He is demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the territory won in the '67 war — its only bargaining chip. Remember: That '67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter are Palestinian — alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.

The very idea that Judaism's holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically or demographically Arab is an absurdity. And the idea that, in order to retain them, Israel has to give up parts of itself is a travesty.

Obama didn't just move the goal posts on borders. He also did so on the so-called right of return. Flooding Israel with millions of Arabs would destroy the world's only Jewish state while creating a 23rd Arab state and a second Palestinian state — not exactly what we mean when we speak of a "two-state solution." That's why it has been the policy of the United States to adamantly oppose this "right."

Yet in his State Department speech, Obama refused to simply restate this position — and refused again in a supposedly corrective speech three days later. Instead, he told Israel it must negotiate the right of return with the Palestinians after having given every inch of territory. Bargaining with what, pray tell?

No matter. "The status quo is unsustainable," declared Obama, "and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace."  Israel too ? Exactly what bold steps for peace have the Palestinians taken? Israel made three radically conciliatory offers to establish a Palestinian state, withdrew from Gaza and has been trying to renew negotiations for more than two years. Meanwhile, the Gaza Palestinians have been firing rockets at Israeli towns and villages. And on the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas turns down then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer, walks out of negotiations with Binyamin Netanyahu and now defies the United States by seeking not peace talks but instant statehood — without peace, without recognizing Israel — at the United Nations. And to make unmistakable this spurning of any peace process, Abbas agrees to join the openly genocidal Hamas in a unity government, which even Obama acknowledges makes negotiations impossible.

Obama's response to this relentless Palestinian intransigence? To reward it — by abandoning the Bush assurances, legitimizing the '67 borders and refusing to reaffirm America's rejection of the right of return.

The only remaining question is whether this perverse and ultimately self-defeating policy is born of genuine antipathy toward Israel or of the arrogance of a blundering amateur who refuses to see that he is undermining not just peace but the very possibility of negotiations.

Armed Forces Day

ARMED FORCES DAY

"The challenge is the task of defending freedom, and the call they've answered is summarized in three words: duty, honor, country." - President Ronald Reagan, Radio Address to the Nation on Armed Forces Day, May 18, 1985

Today, May 21st, is the day we are to honor those in uniform serving our nation around the world.  As a veteran I'm very proud of all men and women, both past and present, who answered that call to "...duty, honor, country."

*In the United States, Armed Forces Day is celebrated on the third Saturday in May. It falls near the end of Armed Forces Week, which begins on the second Saturday of May and ends on the third Sunday of May.[15]


The day was created in 1949 to honor Americans serving in the five U.S. military branches – the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard – following the consolidation of the military services in the Department of Defense. It was intended to replace the separate Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard Days, but the separate days are still observed, especially within the respective services.[16]

The first Armed Forces Day was celebrated by parades, open houses, receptions and air shows. In 1962, President Kennedy established Armed Forces Day as an official holiday. The United States' longest running city-sponsored Armed Forces Day Parade is held in Bremerton, Washington. In 2009, Bremerton celebrated the 61st Armed Forces Day Parade([17]).

The yellow ribbon denotes support for our military.

"...Word to the Nation: Guard zealously your right to serve in the Armed Forces, for without them, there will be no other rights to guard." John F. Kennedy, 1962



*per wikipedia

AMERICAN EUGENICS

I believe it is important to understand that the following is just background information on a topic that is very disturbing and, while many may think it is a thing of the past, it is a latent ongoing worldwide movement.  You can discover much on your own by simply using Google to explore or use your local library. Sharon

Published on Tuesday, February 15, 2000 in the Chicago Tribune

Yale Study:
U.S. Eugenics Paralleled Nazi Germany
by David Morgan

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - U.S. doctors who once believed that sterilization could help rid society of mental illness and crime launched a 20th century eugenics movement that in some ways paralleled the policies of Nazi Germany, researchers said on Monday.

A Yale study tracing a once-popular movement aimed at improving society through selective breeding, indicates that state-authorized sterilizations were carried out longer and on a larger scale in the United States than previously believed, beginning with the first state eugenics law in Indiana in 1907.

Despite modern assumptions that American interest in eugenics waned during the 1920s, researchers said sterilization laws had authorized the neutering of more than 40,000 people classed as insane or ``feebleminded'' in 30 states by 1944.

Another 22,000 underwent sterilization from the mid-1940s to 1963, despite weakening public support and revelations of Nazi atrocities, according to the study, funded by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Merck Co. Foundation.
Forced sterilization was legal in 18 U.S. states, and most states with eugenics laws allowed people to be sterilized without their consent by leaving the decision to a third party.

``The comparative histories of the eugenical sterilization campaigns in the United States and Nazi Germany reveal important similarities of motivation, intent and strategy,'' the study's authors wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a journal published by the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine.
Eugenics sprang from the philosophy of social Darwinism, which envisioned human society in terms of natural selection and suggested that science could engineer progress by attacking supposedly hereditary problems including moral decadence, crime, venereal disease, tuberculosis and alcoholism.

``The eugenics laws in the United States were virulent, just as they were in Sweden, France and Australia,'' said Art Caplan, head of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.

The U.S. practice ended in the 1960s after being overwhelmed by court challenges and the civil rights movement.
German and American eugenics advocates both believed science could solve social problems, tended to measure the worth of the individual in economic terms and felt mental illness a threat to society grave enough to warrant compulsive sterilization.
And while Nazi claims of Aryan superiority are well known, researchers said U.S. advocates of sterilization worried that the survival of old-stock America was being threatened by the influx of ``lower races'' from southern and eastern Europe.
There was also mutual admiration, with early U.S. policies drawing glowing reviews from authorities in pre-Nazi Germany.

``Germany is perhaps the most progressive nation in restricting fecundity among the unfit,'' editors of the New England Journal of Medicine wrote in 1934, a year after Hitler became chancellor.

U.S. Eugenics Movement Waned
But the study, based partly on old editorials from the New England journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association, also demonstrated how the U.S. eugenics movement gradually waned while its Nazi counterpart carried out 360,000 to 375,000 sterilizations during the 1930s and grew to encompass so-called ``mercy'' killings.

``In the United States, a combination of public unease, Roman Catholic opposition, federal democracy, judicial review and critical scrutiny by the medical profession reversed the momentum,'' the article said.

The U.S. practice of neutering ``mentally defective'' individuals was backed by most leading geneticists and often justified on grounds that it would relieve the public of the cost of caring for future generations of the mentally ill.
Sterilizations also took place mainly in public mental institutions, where the poor and ethnic or racial minorities were housed in disproportionately high numbers.

``It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind,'' Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in the majority opinion of a landmark eugenics case in 1926.

--------------------------------
Prominent Founders of The American Eugenics Society

American Eugenics Society : Leon Whitney was the executive secretary
The prominent list of original founders of sponsors of The American Eugenics Society each had some direct relationship with either Wickliffe Draper of The Pioneer Fund or Andrew Preston founder of The Boston Fruit Company, later United Fruit in New Orleans, LA:

In 1930 many of the wealthiest people in the world were members of the American Eugenics Society.
It earliest members and sponsors included:

J. P. Morgan, Jr., chairman, U. S. Steel, who handled British contracts in the United States for food and munitions during World War I. Wickliffe Draper used his J. P. Morgan Trust Account to fund The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission and its activities.

Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle, tobacco fortune heiress whose family founded Duke University.

Cleveland H. and Cleveland E. Dodge and their wives, who used some of the huge fortune that Phelps Dodge & Company made on copper mines and other metals to support eugenics.

Robert Garrett, whose family had amassed a fortune through banking in Maryland and the B&O railroad, who helped finance two international eugenics congresses attended by Harry Laughlin and Wickliffe Draper.

Miss E. B. Scripps, whose wealth came the Scrips-Howard newspaper chain and from United Press (later UPI).

Dorothy H. Brush, Planned Parenthood activist, whose wealth came from Charles Francis Brush (1849-1929), who invented the arc lamp for street lights and founded the Brush Electric Company. Draper's version of Planned Parenthood was to pass the Involuntary Sterilization laws in 15 different U.S. States.

Margaret Sanger, also from Planned Parenthood, who used the wealth of one of one of her husbands, Noah Slee, to promote her work. Slee made his fortune from the familiar household product, 3-in-One Oil.

The other Finance Committee members included:
Leon F. Whitney the son of Eli Whitney inventor of the Cotton Gin who was the Chairman. The Draper Looms in Hopedale, MA were used to spin the raw cotton harvested by the Eli Whitney cotton gins into fabrics, cloth and yarn.

Frank L. Babbott the well-known philanthropist and educator.

Madison Grant later of The Pioneer Fund, founded by Wickliffe Draper following the 1936 Olympics when his namesake, Foy Draper, was edged out for Olympic glory by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf.

Mrs. Helen Hartley Jenkins and John H. Kellogg who started the Kellogg's Cereal Company.

John Kellogg and The Race Betterment Foundation
Kellogg was outspoken on his beliefs on race and segregation, in spite of the fact that he himself adopted a number of black children. In 1906, together with Irving Fisher and Charles Davenport, Kellogg founded the Race Betterment Foundation, which became a major center of the new eugenics movement in America. Kellogg was in favor of racial segregation and believed that immigrants and non-whites would damage the gene pool. He acted as a sort of mentor and advisor to Wickliffe Draper through his publications. Draper adopted Kellogg's recommendations and beliefs on subjects like racial segregation, anti-miscegnation laws, staunch anti-immigration attitudes and also the lifestyle choice of total sexual abstinence as a lifelong habit. Draper later died from prostate cancer. It is not known whether or not Draper was converted by Kellogg into one of the favorite Kellogg routines of taking regular yogurt enemas.

Robert Garrett was one of the primary financial sponsors of the American Eugenics Society the personal project of Wickliffe P. Draper who sponsored most of the research behind "The Bell Curve" published in 1994. Garrett also served on the Finance Committee of the International Congress of The American Eugenics Society along with Madison Grant author of "The Passing of the Great Race."

[edit] List of presidents
•Irving Fisher 1922-26 (Political Economy, Yale University)
•Roswell H. Johnson 1926-27 (Cold Spring Harbor, Univ. of Pittsburgh)
•Harry H. Laughlin 1927-29 (Eugenics Record Office)
•C. C. Little 1929 (Pres., Michigan University)
•Henry Pratt Fairchild 1929-31 (Sociology, New York University)
•Henry Perkins 1931-34 (Zoology, University of Vermont)
•Ellsworth Huntington 1934-38 (Geography, Yale University)
•Samuel Jackson Holmes 1938-40 (Zoology, University of California)
•Maurice Bigelow 1940-45 (sex education, Columbia University)
•Frederick Osborn 1946-52 (Osborn-Dodge-Harriman RR connection)
•Harry L. Shapiro 1956-63 (American Museum of Natural History)
•Clyde V. Kiser 1964-68 (differential fertility, Milbank Memorial Fund)
•Dudley Kirk 1969-72 (Demographer, Stanford University)
•Bruce K. Eckland 1972-75 (Sociology, University of North Carolina)
•L. Erlenmeyer-Kimling 1976-78 (Genetic Psychiatry)
•Lindzey Gardner 1979-81 (Center for Advanced Study, Behavioral Sciences)
•John L. Fuller 1982-83 (Behavioral genetics)
•Michael Teitelbaum 1985-1990 (US Congress staff; US population policy)
•Robert Retherford 1991-1994 (East-West Institute, Hawaii; funded by AID)
•Joseph Lee Rodgers 1994, 1995 (family influences)
•Current: S. Jay Olshansky

[edit] See also
•British Eugenics Society
•Human Betterment Foundation

Dr. Krauthammer on Obama (1)

Dr. Krauthammer is a remarkable man and one that I believe is far wiser than the average man.  I listen to his views and always enjoy his honesty and lack of game-playing.  This is the first of several articles that I am going to reprint here to emphasize Dr. Krauthammer's analysis of our current president.


Obama, the Mortal (9/2009)

By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/

What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Ch�vista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?

But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama's behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can't get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.

In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one's own image.

Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.

Obama's reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob -- misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest -- from drug companies to auto unions to doctors -- in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged.

"Get out of the way" and "don't do a lot of talking," the great bipartisan scolded opponents whom he blamed for creating the "mess" from which he is merely trying to save us. If only they could see. So with boundless confidence in his own persuasiveness, Obama undertook a summer campaign to enlighten the masses by addressing substantive objections to his reforms.

Things got worse still. With answers so slippery and implausible and, well, fishy, he began jeopardizing the most fundamental asset of any new president -- trust. You can't say that the system is totally broken and in need of radical reconstruction, but nothing will change for you; that Medicare is bankrupting the country, but $500 billion in cuts will have no effect on care; that you will expand coverage while reducing deficits -- and not inspire incredulity and mistrust. When ordinary citizens understand they are being played for fools, they bristle.

After a disastrous summer -- mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing -- Obama is in trouble.

Let's be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He's not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.

But what has occurred -- irreversibly -- is this: He's become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He's regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.

For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform -- and his own standing -- with yet another prime-time speech.

But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises -- mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama's supreme self-regard may never adapt.

Rep King to Examine Muslin Extremists

King of the Hill

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

On Thursday, Chairman Peter King of New York will convene in his House Homeland Security Committee one of the most anticipated - and controversial - hearings in memory. The subject? "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response." It is hard to imagine a more timely, and more urgently needed, inquiry.

For one thing, events in the Middle East have thrust to the forefront concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or, in Arabic, Ikhwan). That organization was established in Egypt in 1928 and it is likely to become the dominant political force there in the wake of the overthrow of the MB's long-time nemesis, former President Hosni Mubarak.

For another, confusion about the true nature and intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood is much in evidence at the moment. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, contributed to it, first by testifying last month that the Brotherhood is "a largely secular organization." He subsequently recanted that preposterous characteri­zation, but nonetheless downplayed concerns about the group by insisting that it is "heterogeneous," has "eschewed violence" and is engaged in good works, like hospitals and day care.

Such contentions are, presumably, contributing to the Obama administration's intention - as reported on the front page of the Washington Post last Friday - to establish relations with Muslim Brotherhood-dominated or other Islamist governments emerging from the revolutions sweeping the Middle East. The implications of that decision would be incalculably problematic for our homeland security, as well as our foreign policy interests.

For these among other reasons, Congressman King's hearings provide an invaluable opportunity to examine not just the threat of "extremism" posed by al Qaeda, but also that arising from the Muslim Brotherhood's operations at home and abroad. Absent the latter, it will be impossible to understand either the source of much of what has been dubbed "extremism" in the Muslim-American community, or the reason that community has been so deficient in systematically, comprehensively and consistently helpfully responding to extremists in its midst.

In point of fact, as a book published last November by the Center for Security Policy - Shariah: The Threat to America - makes clear, the Muslim Brotherhood is not just somebody else's problem; its ours. It operates in some seventy countries worldwide, including the United States. In each, it adapts its methods to suit the local conditions. Where practicable, the MB uses violence to achieve its goals; where not, its uses stealth.

But the Ikhwan's goals are the same in every case. Indeed, they are the same as those embraced by Islamists everywhere, including al Qaeda: By definition, they are dedicated to the global triumph of shariah, a politico-military-legal program that is unalterably totalitarian and supremacist in character and wholly incompatible with this country's Constitution.

If Congressman King and his colleagues want to get to the bottom of what is happening in the Muslim-American community at the moment, they must explore the extent to which virtually every prominent group that purports to speak for that community is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood or sympathetic to its agenda. This is not a matter of speculation; it has been established by the Department of Justice in federal court in connection with the Holy Land Foundation trial, largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history.

Particularly dispositive is the Brotherhood's strategic plan which the prosecution introduced into evidence uncontested in that trial. After declaring the mission of the Ikhwan in America to be "destroying the Western civilization from within...by their [that is, our] hands and the hands of the believers," this document describes such groups as the Muslim Students Association, the Islamic Society of North America and the progenitor of the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Association of Palestine, as "our organizations and organizations of our friends."

It should, therefore, be no surprise that such groups have been aggressively vilifying the chairman as a "racist" and "bigot," assailing his choice of witnesses (including an authentic Muslim reformer, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser) and denouncing the whole hearing enterprise as an example of "Islamophobia" and McCarthyism.

Shakespeare's cynical turn of phrase - "They doth protest too much" - comes to mind. This caviling is transparently aimed at preemptively discrediting and, if possible, aborting the King hearings. Clearly, the Brotherhood's effort to wage stealth jihad inside the United States and, in particular, its successful penetration of the U.S. government, could be seriously imperiled if Rep. King and his colleagues do their jobs.

The rest of us, however, hope and expect that the Homeland Security Committee will not shrink from a close examination of the role being played in the American Muslim community by both al Qaeda and its ilk, and by the Muslim Brotherhood.

For example, of whom was Gen. Clapper speaking when he told ABC's Diane Sawyer last December that he considered the "Muslim community to be a source of advice, counsel and wisdom" with respect to the extremists among them. Was he referring to the self-appointed "leadership" of that community - namely, the Muslim Brotherhood's front groups?

If Thursday's hearing takes the nation to school on the source of such extremism - shariah - and the role played in promoting it by the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as al Qaeda, every patriotic American, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, will owe Chairman King an enormous debt of gratitude.

Planned Parenthood's Battle per Jack Cashill

Below is an article by Mr. Jack Cashill which helps to identify why I am anti-abortion.  And...while I am not some great fan or follower of Phil Kline, it is easy to see that the complaints against him are based on his case against the abortion industry and the politics intertwined within the base survival of that industry.

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Suppressed Report Saved Planned Parenthood
by Jack Cashill      http://www.cashill.com/

Published in WorldNetDaily.com - February 17, 2010




As I reported last week, the abortion industry has waged a multi-pronged, multi-million dollar campaign to rid itself of the one prosecutor in America who dared to file criminal charges against Planned Parenthood.

That would be Phill Kline, formerly the attorney general of Kansas and the district attorney of the state’s most populous county. Now a Virginia law professor, Kline returns to Kansas next week to defend himself against a variety of spurious ethics charges.

In the spring of 2008, the campaign against Kline almost came undone. At the time, Kline was running for re-election as district attorney of Johnson County. In 2006, the abortion industry had spent some $2 million to defeat him in his re-election bid as attorney general.

To make this possible, Democratic governor Kathleen Sebelius had persuaded popular Johnson County district attorney Paul Morrison to switch parties and run against Kline as a Democrat. Morrison won.
In a nice little twist, Republican precinct captains voted for Kline to fill Morrison’s half-expired term. In 2008, Kline was running to be re-elected DA on his own terms.

If successful, he would have prosecuted the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic on the 23 felony counts related to late-term abortions that he had brought against the organization. Hanging over Kline’s re-election bid as DA was an ethics cloud that had wafted upwards from the offices of Planned Parenthood’s attorneys. True to form, the local media gleefully predicted stormy days ahead for Kline. Unknown to Kline, the two attorneys that had been assigned to investigate his ethics case eighteen months earlier had reported back to the disciplinary administrator appointed by the Kansas Supreme Court to oversee such matters, Stanton Hazlett by name.

The report was filed on May 22, 2008, ten weeks before the August Republican primary. Authoring the report was the chair of the Topeka Bar Association ethics committee, a fellow with the only-in-Kansas name, Lucky DeFreis.  DeFries and his colleague could not have been more definitive in their findings. “After reviewing the substantial documentation in this case,” they wrote, “it is the opinion of these investigators that there is not probable cause to prove that Phill Kline violated any of the rules of ethics.

The report addressed each of the charges that had been brought against Kline in his role as attorney general. It cited Judge Richard Anderson to the effect that "at all times, the Attorney General's officers have acknowledged that the privacy interests of patients should be protected."  The Judge also acknowledged that Kline stood "on firm legal ground in advancing his theory that the clinics have failed to comply” with appropriate Kansas laws.

The report found that Kline did not violate the Court's nondisclosure order because his accusers already had gone public when they filed their public briefs.  What is more, the information Kline provided offered "no specific references to patient identities or any medical facts concerning any identified patient."
“This Complaint arises from strenuous legal battles between opposing counsel and was complicated by a very hotly-contested political race,” summarized the reporting attorneys accurately.  Kline did not learn of this exoneration for nearly two more years, and only then by accident. Equally unaware—one hopes—the Kansas City Star continued to pound away on Kline in 2008 as an overzealous “theocrat” keen on revealing women’s medical records.

In 2006, the Star had won the “Maggie”—named for Planned Parentood’s eugenicist founder, Margaret Sanger—for its unhinged efforts to unseat “anti-choice extremist,” Kline. This was the organization’s top national honor. In 2008, Star editors showed again why they deserved it.

Undeterred by the facts, the media chipped away at Kline’s reputation and assured his defeat in the August primary to Steve Howe, a tepidly pro-life career prosecutor who would be elected District Attorney in November.  To find out why the Kansas Courts did not inform Kline of his exoneration in 2008 when it mattered, I called the office of the disciplinary administrator. On the positive side, a real person answered the phone on the first ring. Ah, Kansas!

On the not-so-positive side, this woman referred me to the spokesman for the disciplinary administrator. When I asked Ron Keefover why the Court had not made Kline aware of the DeFreis report, he began his answer with the thoroughly unenlightening, “My guess would be.”   In fact, Keefover had not heard of the DeFreis report. Nor could he give me a satisfactory answer as to why the disciplinary administrator chose to file new charges. His best guess would be “new allegations.”  It should be noted that the disciplinary administrator reports to the Kansas Supreme Court, most of whose justices were appointed by Kathleen Sebelius without any legislative confirmation.  What everyone understands is that will be hard for an already reluctant Howe to continue the case against Planned Parenthood if its original architect, Phill Kline, is judged guilty during his upcoming ethics hearings.  But then again, that seems to be the plan.
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