This Is Totally Unjust

Yahoo News is reporting today that Darren Wilson will be leaving the Ferguson police force with no severance package. I have no idea why the media has worked so hard to make this man a villain when he was simply defending himself. I would like to remind everyone that Michael Brown attacked Darren Wilson inside his police car.

The article reports:

Wilson, 28, won’t receive any further pay or benefits, and he and the city have severed their ties, Mayor James Knowles told reporters a day after Wilson tendered his resignation, which was effective immediately.

Wilson, who is white, had been on administrative leave since he killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, during an Aug. 9 confrontation. A grand jury decided Monday not to indict him, sparking days of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson and other cities.

Wilson wrote in his resignation letter that his “continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance I cannot allow.”

His lawyer, Neil Bruntrager, told The Associated Press that Wilson decided to step aside after police Chief Tom Jackson told him about the alleged threats on Saturday.

Michael Brown was a thug who robbed a store and attacked a policeman. In his death, he  has managed to ruin the life of the man who stood for the law and order he despised. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has come down on the wrong side of this. To Americans who are screaming racism and condemning Darren Wilson, if your loved one was the police officer in danger, what would you have wanted him to do? Because the press and some of the race-baiters claiming to support civil rights have gotten involved in this situation, Darren Wilson’s life has been (at least temporarily) ruined as well as a young thug killed. Would these people have rather that the thug killed the policeman?

Who Is Going To Pay For This?

Townhall.com posted an article today about California’s plan to extend health coverage to all Californians, regardless of their immigration status. Wow.

California  is a state that will be greatly impacted by President Obama’s Executive order granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. The article reports:

According to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C., the president’s action lifts the threat of deportation to as many as 1.2 million immigrants living illegally in California. There are an estimated 2.6 million people living illegally in the state.

The issue of benefits for immigrants who are illegally in the United States is a sensitive one.

Joe Guzzardi a spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, a Santa Barbara, California-based group that advocates for lower population, said the state is already more generous toward immigrants than most states and adding health coverage may attract more people to cross into California illegally.

“There are millions of Californians who don’t have health care insurance or have to pay for their health care insurance out of their own pockets. So it seems unfair to have legislation that provides for people who came to the United States unlawfully to be rewarded with a health care plan,” Guzzardi said.

At some point there is going to be a backlash from the American people against the President’s granting of amnesty. Not only is this unfair to those who have been waiting in line to come to America legally, but the sudden influence of workers willing to work for minimum wage will have a devastating impact on unskilled Americans looking for work. While the people who are allowed to stay  here may appreciate what is being done, there will be many Americans who will resent the impact that this Executive Order will have on their lives.

What President Obama has done in unconstitutional, but there is another aspect to it. A wise man I know, who spends a lot of time in Washington as a lobbyist, once said to me, “Nothing happens in Washington that the American people do not want to happen.” As much as I did not like hearing that statement, he explained that big business (and thus much of the establishment Republican party) supports amnesty because it will bring down wages and increase corporate profits. Many Washington politicians in both parties choose to ignore the negative impact it will have on middle class Americans. They also choose to ignore the fact that this Executive Order is unconstitutional. The decision to grant amnesty via Executive Order is not inconsequential–there will come a point where the U.S. Constitution has been so shredded that it is no longer relevant. That will not be a good day for America.

Some Clarity On The Ferguson Grand Jury

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an article in the National Review Online about the Grand Jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson.

Mr. McCarthy sums up the story as follows:

All very reasonable, but let’s not pretend reason has anything to do with what happened in Ferguson this week. In Liberal Fascism’s focus on myth, Jonah recalls Mussolini’s assertion, “It is faith that moves mountains, not reason. Reason is a tool, but it can never be the motive force of the crowd.” The crowd in Ferguson was moved to riot on the article of a false faith that condemns America and its police forces as incorrigibly racist. It is from this condemnation that all purported “reasoning” proceeds.

Such reasoning dictates that our constitutional right not to be indicted in the absence of just cause should be subordinated to the mob’s demand for a public trial. Succeeding in that legerdemain, it next dictates that our constitutional right not to be convicted in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt be subordinated to the mob’s demand for a guilty verdict.

Such a verdict that would have had only the most tangential connection to the tragedy of an 18-year-old’s death or a police officer’s well-founded fear for his life. But it would have fed the myth.

The article reminds us that the American Left has fostered the myth that white policemen kill black teenagers. There is no reference to the amount of crime committed by black teenagers, we are simply supposed to buy the myth at face value–it is useful for manipulating crowds.

The article points out that the discussion of Grand Jury rules and procedures was irrelevant:

As it turns out, there was no need to thumb the legal treatises of Blackstone or Joseph Story. If you were going to hit the books, Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism would have served you better. Brilliantly illustrating modern liberalism’s roots in 20th-century progressivism — a movement as comfortable marching lockstep with Stalin as it was borrowing copiously from Mussolini — Jonah homes in on the centrality of myth. It is irrelevant whether an idea around which the Left’s avant-garde rouse the rabble is true; the point is the idea’s power to mold consciousness and rally the troops.

It is unfortunate that a young man is dead. It is also unfortunate that the young man chose to rob a store and attack a policeman. (The forensic evidence confirms the fact that Michael Brown did attack Darren Wilson.) However, it is also unfortunate that a good policeman has resigned the force and had his life negatively impacted by simply defending his own life.

The mob mentality here is right in line with Saul Alinsky‘s Rules for Radicals. The article explains:

Darren Wilson was a white cop and Michael Brown was a black teenager killed in a violent confrontation with Wilson. Therefore, Brown was the victim of a cold-blooded, racially motivated murder, Q.E.D. That is the myth, and it will be served — don’t bother us with the facts.

Once you’ve got that, none of the rest matters. In fact, at the hands of the left-leaning punditocracy, the rest was pure Alinsky: a coopting of language — in this instance, the argot of grand-jury procedure — to reason back to the ordained conclusion that “justice” demanded Wilson’s indictment for murder. And, of course, his ultimate conviction.

What the ‘protestors’ (thugs and criminals) gained from destroying their own city I don’t know. I wonder if the Nike sneakers were worth the fact that there will no longer be a place to buy sneakers in the town. Very few of the violent protestors were actually from the town, which tells us that this whole scenario was a planned show to manipulate the low-information voter by using the low-information media. The really sad part of this story was that innocent people had their businesses destroyed and their lives ruined by the actions of people driven by rage caused by misinformation they were given. They were played.

Funding Illegal Immigrants Through The Tax System

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article about Congressional efforts to agree on a tax deal. We are currently dealing with a lame-duck Congress that does not seem to be able to agree on anything. Hopefully, the new Congress will do better.

The article reports:

President Barack Obama quietly killed a draft tax-cut because the GOP leadership wouldn’t agree to his demand that valuable tax breaks be given to millions of illegal immigrants, according to a Politico article about the secret negotiations.

Just before Thanksgiving, “the deal fell apart just as it seemed to be coming together… [because] Republicans worried undocumented immigrants targeted by [Obama’s Nov. 21 amnesty] would begin claiming the credits,”

The tax bill (now dead) was supposed to extend the temporary tax breaks that Congress traditionally extends at the end of every year. Because of the possibility of extending tax breaks to illegal immigrants, the tax breaks were not extended, and all Americans will face increased taxes next year.

So what is this actually about? The Earned Income Tax Credit Program has been plagued by fraud for years. In May 2014, the Washington Examiner reported:

The Treasury Department has released its latest report on the fight against widespread fraud in the Earned Income Tax Credit program. The problem is, fraud is still winning. And there’s not even much of a fight.

“The Internal Revenue Service continues to make little progress in reducing improper payments of Earned Income Tax Credits,” a press release from Treasury’s inspector general for Tax Administration says. “The IRS estimates that 22 to 26 percent of EITC payments were issued improperly in Fiscal Year 2013. The dollar value of these improper payments was estimated to be between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion.”

Now Congress is battling over whether or not to extend the Earned Income Tax Credit to illegal immigrants. What are they thinking?

The article at the Daily Caller reminds us that businesses support President Obama’s Immigration policy because it will drive down wages and increase their profits. This is the result of the policy of a President who complains about wage inequality.

The Daily Caller also reports:

Obama is offering work-permits, $2 trillion in taxpayer benefits and a quick route to citizenship to at least 4 million of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. He is also trying to win business support for his plan by boosting the inflow of guest-workers sought by blue-chip companies.

This is not the way to build the American economy.

More Prisoner Releases From Guantanamo

Fox News posted an article today about the Obama Administration’s plans to transfer more prisoners out of Guantanamo in the coming weeks.

I believe that the story at Fox News buried the headline, which I believe is included in this paragraph:

The transfers come shortly after the announcement of the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who was criticized by administration officials who spoke to The Wall Street Journal for moving too slowly to certify detainees for release.

Senior officials at the White House are impatient as the president’s term in office draws nearer to its end with the promise of the closure of Guantanamo unfulfilled, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In February 2012, The Hill posted an article about a report issued by the House Armed Service Committee’s Oversight and Investigations subcommittee that stated 27 percent of detainees released from Guantanamo Bay could be reengaging in terrorist activities.

The article reports:

The report found that “the Bush and Obama administrations, in reaction to domestic political pressures, a desire to earn goodwill abroad, and in an attempt to advance strategic national security goals, sought to ‘release’ or ‘transfer’ GITMO detainees elsewhere.”

“The key is making sure we don’t allow detainees to areas where they rejoin the battle,” Wittman said. “The analysis of the policy cuts across both administrations, making sure the process is such that these detainees are not returning to the battlefield and seeking to harm Americans, seeking to kill Americans.”

Democrats said the GOP’s report ignored the national security value of closing Guantanamo down.

The prison “is a black eye for our on nation abroad, serving as a powerful recruiting tool for terrorists,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services panel.

Does anyone really believe that Guantanamo is responsible for the increasing amount of terrorists? ISIS is recruiting in the United States on the basis of their victories in Iraq–not Guantanamo. Unfortunately, the one thing that the terrorist mind understands is power–if you show weakness, you lose. Closing Guantanamo would be the ultimate victory for terrorists and would encourage them to believe they have defeated the Western world. If President Obama closes Guantanamo, he will put Americans at a higher risk of future terror attacks–both from the prisoners released from Guantanamo and from radicalized American Muslims who see the closing as a sign that they are winning. Hopefully Congress can prevent the release of any more terrorists.

The ‘Unknown Motive’ In Ferguson

In an attempt to explain recent events in Ferguson, some of the major media sources (CNN and some of the networks) have referred to an ‘unknown motive’ on the part of Michael Brown. Yesterday World Net Daily posted an article that might provide the answer to what the ‘unknown motive’ was.

The article reports:

Reporting from the scene, Lemon (CNN’s Don Lemon) said, “Maybe a minute, two minutes ago we heard a gunshot and watched people scattering. And we’re watching people on the roofs of cars, on the tops of cars and … Obviously there’s a smell of marijuana here as well.”

“Lemon’s comments sparked fierce backlash on social media,” reported Toyin Owoseje of the International Business Times. She said “many members of the online community” accused him of “adding fire to the flames and promoting his own agenda.”

I am not saying that marijuana is to blame for the rioting–I am saying that marijuana impairs judgment and that people under the influence of the drug might do things that they might not do otherwise.

The article also points out something that I have not heard elsewhere:

Rathbone points out that Kevin Torres, a reporter for KUSA in Colorado, where marijuana is legalized, has done a balanced story on the issue, noting that researchers from Harvard and Northwestern University recently found “younger marijuana users are more likely to have learning and mental health problems.” He cited an article from the New England Journal of Medicine showing high THC use being linked to paranoia and psychosis.

Michael Brown was not only high on THC but was apparently preparing to smoke more dope when Officer Wilson caught him walking down the center of a street and asked him to move to the sidewalk. The swisher sweet cigars Brown had stolen from the convenience store are notorious for being used to make marijuana “blunts.”  (emphasis mine)

The media has attempted to paint Michael Brown as an angelic gentle giant. Clearly, that is not the case. Michael Brown was obviously as flawed an individual as the rest of us. His death was unfortunate, but was also the result of choices that he made. If you take the marijuana out of the equation, you have no theft and probably no reason to attack a policeman. Marijuana may be harmless at times, but obviously this time it was fatal.

Even When The Obama Administration Helps, It Doesn’t Help Much

On Wednesday, Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article about the battle for Ramadi, Iraq. For whatever reason, American has chosen to provide only minimal air support to help defend the city.

The article reports:

U.S. air strikes had been instrumental in helping to keep ISIS at bay. Without such support, the defenders of Ramadi have said they cannot hold out.

Unfortunately, during the recent rounds of fighting, U.S. air support reportedly was minimal. Local officials say they were told that U.S. aircraft are occupied on other fronts. It’s difficult to imagine what front is more critical right now than Ramadi, the site of some of the most intense fighting by U.S. troops during our war against al Qaeda in Iraq.

U.S. Central Command confirms the paucity of U.S. bombing. A spokeman said that the U.S. made two attacks on ISIS in the Ramadi area during the period from Friday through Monday. On Tuesday, it carried out one additional strike.

We have noted before that the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS fails remotely to approach the intensity of our efforts during the early days of the Afghanistan war or during the Kosovo campaign. Even so, our failure to average even one raid per day while ISIS came close to overrunning the defenders of Ramadi is shocking.

I fear that the Obama Administration, when looked at in historical perspective, will be seen as generally being on the wrong side of history. Somehow America under President Obama has forsaken the defending of freedom and either directly supported the forces of tyranny or simply stood back as they advanced. This is not who we are.

Figuring Out Part Of The Problem

CNS News posted a story yesterday about some recent comments by New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

The article reports:

Schumer said the health care law, popularly known as Obamacare, is “very important” but the timing was wrong, and was not at the “top of the agenda” of the American people.

“We were in the middle of recession. … People were hurting and said ‘What about me? I’m losing my job,’” said Schumer, who spoke as the Democratic Policy Chairman on why his Party was defeated in the 2014 mid-term elections by Republicans.

“Like I said, about 85 percent of all Americans were fine with their health care in 2009, mainly because it was paid for by either the government or their employer – private sector,” said Schumer. “And so the average middle-class voter, they weren’t opposed to doing health care when it started out but it wasn’t at the top of the agenda.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Schumer also said. “I think it’s a good bill [Obamacare] and I’m proud to have voted for it.”

“But, it should have come later,” said the senator.

That is a very interesting statement. If 85 percent of all Americans were fine with their health care in 2009, why would it have been different if ObamaCare had come later? If 85 percent of Americans were happy with their health care in 2010, should that bill have been passed then? If 85 percent of Americans were happy with their health care, why was a bill necessary? Couldn’t you have found many things that 85 percent of Americans thought needed to be changed?

Senator Schumer goes on to say that the $787-billion federal stimulus was not large enough. Good grief! I think it is obvious that the grass roots message of smaller government and less spending has not gotten through to the Democrats (and unfortunately, a large proportion of the Republicans). If we are going to turn this country around, Washington needs to begin to listen to the average middle class Americans who makes this country work. The policies of the Obama Administration have harmed both the middle class and the lower class, and it is time to admit that those policies do not work. Smaller government benefits everyone–when the government spends less, the people have more to spend. We need to remember that in 2016.

All Accounts Have Not Been Settled

Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line about one aspect of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal that has not gotten as much publicity as some other aspects of the scandal.

The article reports:

The Obama Administration’s IRS scandal is multi-faceted. In addition to the persecution of conservative non-profits by Lois Lerner et al., the question has been percolating for some years whether Obama’s IRS has transferred confidential taxpayer information to Obama’s White House in violation of federal criminal laws. The issue first arose when Austin Goolsbee of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers told reporters that he had information about Koch Industries that could only have come, illegally, from confidential IRS files. When questions were asked, the administration immediately clammed up.

Years later, the judicial system may be poised to expose another layer of Obama corruption. A group called Cause of Action began a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury, and for several years, your taxpayer dollars have funded the administration’s cover-up.

The cover-up is beginning to unravel. A federal court in Washington, D.C. has ordered the Treasury Department to respond to Cause of Action’s request for documents.

The article further reports:

The Treasury Department’s lawyers wrote Cause of Action’s counsel an email that reads in part:

My client wants to know if you would consent to a motion pushing back (in part) TIGTA’s response date by two weeks to December 15, 2014. The agency has located 2,500 potentially responsive documents and anticipates being able to finish processing 2,000 of these pages by the December 1 date. It needs the additional two weeks to deal with the last 500 pages to determine if they are responsive and make any necessary withholdings. We would therefore like to ask the court to permit the agency to issue a response (including production) on December 1 as to any documents it has completed processing by that date, and do the same as to the remaining documents by December 15.

I suspect a good part o the time the government has requested will be spent attempting to scrub the documents of anything incriminating, but even at that, it is a pretty safe bet that some very damaging information will be revealed.

The story concludes:

This particular story is farce, not tragedy. It will wend its absurd way through the court system for years to come, probably arriving at no conclusion until the scofflaw Obama administration is safely out of office. In the meantime, federal criminal laws governing the privacy of IRS data, like the criminal laws generally, are a source of hilarity among Democrats. Democrat cronies sip Scotch and light cigars–I hope not with $100 bills–laughing at the rest of us who work to pay the taxes that support them in the luxury to which they have happily become accustomed. I have always thought that the term “ruling class” was ridiculous as applied to the United States, but the Obama administration is causing me to re-think that view.

How many members of the Nixon administration ultimately went to jail? I think no more than five or ten. The Obama administration has violated criminal statutes with an abandon that Nixon and his minions never dreamed of. An accounting remains; I think there are a considerable number of Obama minions and cronies who should be behind bars.

If the Department of Justice ever returns to being a Department of Justice, I believe much what has happened to the IRS and the Justice Department under President Obama will be undone. If the damage is not undone, we will be in danger of losing our representative republic.

The Proof Is In The Pudding

On November 24, The New York Post posted a story about some comments made by former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani.

The article reports:

Giuliani was over on “Meet the Press” — opening up on Michael Dyson, a Georgetown University professor and frequent critic of policing practices in Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere in America:

“Ninety-three percent of blacks are killed by other blacks,” Rudy barked. “I would like to see the [same] attention paid to that, that you are paying to [Ferguson].”

“What about the poor black child who was killed by another black child?” Giuliani asked. “Why aren’t you protesting that? White police officers wouldn’t be there if you weren’t killing each other.”

Even if you don’t like what he said, Mayor Giuliana has a history of successful crime prevention.

The article reports:

The city’s murder rate began its dramatic decline during Giuliani’s early months in office, accelerated during the remainder of his mayoralty — and continued to fall during the ensuing 12 years as Mike Bloomberg more or less unapologetically continued Giuliani-era policing strategies.

…In Ferguson, the police force is overwhelmingly white. In New York, the department has been majority-minority for some time now, yet that fact generally is lost in the debate — which almost always revolves around race as it relates to enforcement, and only rarely as it involves victims and victimizers.
The fact is that crime attracts cops — that’s the point of a police force, after all.

Hard-charging cops can be abrasive, and that’s something officers everywhere need to work on — but in the end the issue must not be cops, but rather crime.

Rudy Giuliani’s point, not to put words in his mouth, seems to be this: If a fraction of the energy that now goes to demonizing cops was devoted to condemning crime and criminals, some real progress might be made.

How ironic that Barack Obama seems to agree.

Mayor Giuliani was successful in reducing crime in New York City. He created an atmosphere where criminals were prosecuted and punished for their crimes. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration has seen criminal activity in racial terms–an early example of this was the refusal to prosecute the Black Panthers for voter intimidation despite the video evidence that was posted on YouTube. Injustice triggers anger, regardless of which race is being treated unjustly. I think the President needs to remember that.

It May Seem Like A Good Idea, But Does It Work?

One of the new mantras of the political left is income inequality. It is simply a crime that people who spent years becoming educated and learning things make considerably more money than those who didn’t. A college graduate has always made more money than a high-school graduate (but that was back when people majored in subjects that included marketable skills–but that’s a whole different issue).

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal posted an editorial explaining how President Obama’s efforts at wealth redistribution have impacted the poor and middle class. In one sentence, higher taxes and redistribution policies have helped neither the poor nor the middle class.

The article reports:

On taxes, Mr. Obama often claims that the rich don’t pay their “fair share,” yet the most affluent one-fifth of taxpayers on average supplied 68.7% of federal revenue for 2011. That’s according to the Congressional Budget Office, which last week updated its statistics on the U.S. distribution of income and taxes for 2011 and preliminary calculations for last year.

As for the top 1%, they funded 24% of everything the government does in 2011. The CBO also estimates that the end-of-2012 fiscal cliff deal that lifted the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6%, plus ObamaCare’s taxes on high-income individuals, increased their average federal taxes by 4.3 percentage points to 33.3% of income. The Warren Buffett minimum-tax rule asserted that no millionaire should pay an effective tax below 30%. Mission accomplished.

So what has been the impact of the increase in taxes on the wealthy? The editorial reports that in 2011, two years after the recession was declared over, middle class income fell by 1.9% compared with 2007.

The article concludes:

The main lesson in these statistics is not about dependence on government. Rather, it is a verdict on Obamanomics. Presidents who put reducing inequality above increasing prosperity end up with less growth and opportunity that benefits everyone, and thus with more inequality.

There’s also a lesson about the exhaustion of the liberal tax agenda. As a matter of arithmetic in a tax system as tilted toward the high end as America’s, the rich aren’t nearly rich enough to finance progressive ambitions. If Hillary Clinton wants more redistribution, she’ll inevitably have to tee up everybody between the 21st to 80th income percentiles for a European-style value-added tax, carbon tax or some other revenue maker.

Have you ever noticed that the people who want to redistribute wealth have enough money to pay accountants to shield their money? It is always the middle class that ends up paying the bill.

Have We Forgotten That Actions Have Consquences?

It is a shame that Michael Brown is dead. It is also a shame that a policeman was injured when Michael Brown attacked him and that because of racism on the part of some Americans, that policeman will never be seen as justified in defending himself against Michael Brown.

Michael Brown did three things that were consequential. First, he committed a minor robbery from a store. Second, he chose to walk down the middle of the street, drawing attention to himself. Third, he attacked a policeman. (The press conference last night stated that the Grand Jury had evidence that Michael Brown attacked Darren Wilson.) All three of these actions had consequences.

The Daily Caller reported late last night that Eric Holder has stated that the Justice Department‘s investigation of the incident is not over yet. Why? What are they looking for? Does Attorney General Holder believe that it is acceptable to attack a police officer? Or rob a store? Does Attorney General Holder believe that policemen have the right to defend themselves? Would Attorney General Holder be as concerned if Michael Brown had shot Darren Wilson with Darren Wilson’s gun?

The article quotes Attorney General Holder:

“Though there will be disagreement with the grand jury’s decision not to indict, this feeling should not lead to violence,” Holder said. “It does not honor [Michael Brown’s] memory to engage in violence or looting.”

Michael Brown’s memory? One of the last acts of Michael Brown was to rob a store. He only robbed something small, but he robbed a store. I am sure Michael Brown had many positive traits, but he made some very foolish mistakes and paid a very high price for them. He should be held up as an example of what not to do–not as a helpless victim.

 

When Political Correctness Interferes With Justice, Everyone Suffers

Front Page Magazine posted an article today about the exploitation of girls in Birmingham, England, dating back to the 1990’s.

The article reports:

Britain’s Birmingham Mail reported last week that Birmingham’s City Council buried a report about Muslim cab drivers exploiting non-Muslim girls back in 1990.

A researcher, Dr. Jill Jesson, drafted a report on this issue. But, she explained, “the report was shelved, buried, it was never made public. I was shocked to be told that copies of the report were to be destroyed and that nothing further was to be said. Clearly, there was something in this report that someone in the department was worried about.”

The article reminds us that the report was buried because the British authorities believed that prosecuting these cases would have appeared to be racist. Meanwhile, young girls were being sexually abused by these cab drivers. Political correctness prevented these girls from getting the legal protection they were entitled to.

The article reports:

“The sad part of this story,” Jesson concluded, “is not the suppression of evidence but that the relevant organisations have failed to address this problem.”

Indeed so – and that is because of its racial and religious aspects. British authorities persist in seeing this as a racial issue, when in fact these cabbies only preyed upon these girls because they were non-Muslims, and thus eligible to become “captives of the right hand” (cf. Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50) and used as sex slaves.

At what point are the authorities required to intervene when a religion sanctions the sexual abuse of young girls? Does freedom of religion extend to the abuse of other people? At some point I think we need to examine whether Islam is simply a religion or a political system.

Alienating Friends, Ignoring The Threat Of Enemies

The American Thinker posted an article today about President Obama’s remarks in Australia regarding climate change. Unfortunately, the President’s tactless remarks could have a negative economic impact on all Americans.

The Melbourne Herald Sun posted an article today with the headline, “Attention America: your windbag president is pushing Australia China’s way.” So much for improving America’s relationships with its allies.

The article reports:

TRADE and Investment Minister Andrew Robb … has sent Barack Obama a sharp return-fire message: that Australia expects to be treated with respect — not insulted — and that the President’s remarks in Brisbane were wrong, misinformed and unnecessary…

The Robb remarks are both an honest expression of sentiment in much of the Abbott cabinet and a useful message to the Obama White House about the President’s gratuitous intervention in Australian politics against the Abbott government…

Robb told Sky News’s Australian Agenda program yesterday he was “surprised” by Obama’s speech, he believed the President was “not informed” about Australia’s climate change policy, that his “content was wrong”, that Australia’s 2020 targets were “roughly comparable” to those of the US and other nations, that his speech gave “no sense” to government efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef and that his remarks were “misinformed” and “unnecessary”.

…Mr Robb also intensified pressure within the government to alter its position and join the China regional infrastructure bank, playing down the security factors that led cabinet’s National Security Committee to reject membership at this time.

 

It is becoming very obvious that President Obama’s extreme agenda does not play well with those countries in the world that we have traditionally called our friends. I hope the American voters will make a better choice in 2016.

 

Some Thoughts On That New Car Smell

Yesterday Byron York posted an article at the Washington Examiner about President Obama’s recent comments that a 2016 Democrat Presidential candidate would need that new car smell.

The article states:

President Obama set off ripples in the political world Sunday morning when he said voters in the 2016 presidential race will want “that new car smell.” Speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Obama said in picking a new leader, Americans will “want to drive something off the lot that doesn’t have as much mileage as me.”

President Obama also praised Hillary Clinton’s performance as Secretary of State as he made those comments.

I would like to point out something about that ‘new car smell.’ Just for the record, it is toxic! In February 2012, CBS News reported:

(CBS) Who doesn’t love that factory fresh “new car smell”? It’s so well-liked that air fresheners and sprays have been produced in attempts to reclaim the odor.

…But according to a new study from the nonprofit Ecology Center and HealthyStuff.org, what you might actually be sniffing are toxic fumes from chemicals used to create the car interior.

Meanwhile, back to President Obama’s statement. Despite praising Hillary Clinton’s performance as Secretary of State (which isn’t a surprise, since theoretically the President controls the actions of the Secretary of State), it seems to be common knowledge in Washington that there is no great love between the Clintons and the Obamas. I believe that President Obama (either behind the scenes or obviously) will support Elizabeth Warren as the Democrat candidate for President in 2016. Senator Warren would be able to challenge Hillary Clinton from the left, despite the fact that politically they are not really very far apart. Note that the leaders of the Senate have already put Senator Warren in a leadership position.

Anyway, I am hoping that the new car smell that is toxic in automobiles will also be toxic in Democrat presidential politics.

Reading Between The Lines On Benghazi

On Friday, the official report on Benghazi was released by the House Intelligence Committee. On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article about the report. There is no obvious smoking gun in the report, but there are some interesting statements.

The article reports:

The media interpretation of the findings is also flatly contradictory in places. Take for example this declaration of a lack of any culpability. (Emphasis added.)

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

The next paragraph in the report states:

So, nothing to see here. Move along. Except for one problem. The coverage also seeks to make it clear that Susan Rice couldn’t possibly be to blame for her blatantly false portrayals of the attack on the Sunday morning shows. Watch what happens to the analysis on this score.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.

The writer of the article asks the obvious question:

Keep in mind, these are not two paragraphs separated by miles of text. They’re back to back. And somehow, in the space of four sentences, we went from there was no intelligence failure to reading it was intelligence analysts… who made the wrong call. If you’re making the wrong call – particularly one which turned out to be so incredibly far off base – then that sounds like an intelligence failure to me.

Also rather stunning is the way that a complete vindication of the White House is somehow constructed out of these conclusions. Susan Rice was either lying or she was wrong. Neither possibility paints the administration in a very competent light. And if there was a failure of intelligence, how does that clear the White House? The last time I checked the CIA reports to the Director of Intelligence who, in turn, reports directly to the President… or has that changed? A better translation of this hopeful sounding article would be to say that the report cleared the political arm of Obama’s team of any wrongdoing, while allowing him to throw his intelligence team under the bus.

Unfortunately, we will probably never know who messed up in the Benghazi tragedy. So much for government transparency.

 

Protecting The Rights Of American Businesses

The problem with having a President and a cabinet that lack hands on business experience is that they lack hands on business experience. The quote “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.” is attributed to Thomas Jefferson although it is not found in any of his papers. Regardless of who said it, the quote is accurate.

In its Saturday/Sunday edition, the Wall Street Journal posted an editorial about the nomination of Loretta Lynch as U.S. Attorney General. Ms. Lynch is currently in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. She has been busy there.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Evidently Ms. Lynch didn’t read that part of the Constitution, and unfortunately, she is not the only government official who did not read that part. As of late, prosecutors have been using civil forfeiture laws to confiscate private property and use the money gained to shore up state and municipal budgets. One example of this in Ms. Lynch’s district is the case of Jeffrey, Richard and Mitch Hirsch. In 2012 the federal government drained their bank account of $446,651.11. The bank account was used for deposits from Bi-County Distributors, a company the brothers have run for 27 years. The company stocks convenience stores in the region with candy and snack food.

The editorial explains:

According to the federal government, the brothers came under suspicion because of the frequent small deposits they made in the bank. Under federal law, banks are required to report cash deposits of more than $10,000 at a time to the Internal Revenue Service. Frequent deposits beneath the $10,000 threshold can also trigger federal scrutiny on suspicion the depositors are seeking to evade federal oversight for crimes like money laundering or drug trafficking.

The Hirsch brothers run a small business that deals in small amounts of cash, a fact that the government surely noticed, since they were never charged with a crime. But more than two years after the government grabbed the hundreds of thousands of dollars, none of it has been returned. According to the Institute for Justice, which is representing the family in a lawsuit, the government has also denied the Hirsches a prompt hearing on the forfeiture, putting it in violation of the 2000 Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act.

Ms. Lynch’s office brought in more than $113 million in civil actions between 2011 and 2013. Unfortunately, these cases have spread across the country. Between 2003 and 2011, annual payments from forfeiture went from $218 million to $450 million.

Many small businesses deposit small amounts of cash at various times of the day. Some do it out of fear of theft, others because that is the way their computer bookkeeping systems work, and others because that is how the timing of their office staff works. A small company I worked for at one point made one deposit a day, but since their computer program could only handle twelve checks on one deposit slip, it appeared to be multiple small deposits.

The editorial in the Wall Street Journal suggests that when Ms. Lunch gets her nomination hearing, someone should ask her about the Hirsches.

 

If You Believe This…

Yesterday Daniel Horowitz posted an article at the Conservative Review listing the 10 lies in President Obama’s speech on Thursday night. It seems that President Obama is not telling Americans the truth about his executive action or what its impact will be. I am posting the list, but please follow the link above to see the explanation for each item.

Here is the list:

Lie #1: Every President has Taken Executive Action on Immigration

Lie #2: Illegal Immigrant Crossings are Down

Lie #3: It does not grant citizenship or the right to stay here permanently

Lie #4: Only 5 Million

Lie #5: Deport Felons

Lie #6: Don’t deport families

Lie #7: They have to pay taxes to stay

Lie #8: Background Checks

Lie #9: Cracking Down on Illegal Immigration at the Border

Lie #10: Scripture tells us, we shall not oppress a stranger

In detailing the lies, the author mentions that since the people receiving amnesty are generally low-income workers, saying they will pay their taxes simply means they will collect money from the government under the ‘earned income credit.’ I also appreciated the author’s clarity on Lie #10.

Aside from what President Obama just did to the U.S. Constitution, he just created more unemployment and more government spending. I hope Congress has the backbone to defund or stop this program in some way.

 

 

 

 

Federal Funds For Abortion

One of the promises made when ObamaCare was passed was that there would be no use of federal funds to pay for abortions on demand. I am not talking about abortions that are medically necessary–I am talking about abortion on demand as a form of birth control. A website called obamacareabortion.com has attempted to cut through the lack of transparency in ObamaCare and sort out which states are covering abortion with ObamaCare.

The website includes the following statement:

The information available on this site is severely limited by the Obama administration’s failure to make abortion coverage information easily available. We have provided our findings and encourage you to contact us at info@obamacareabortion.com if you find additional or conflicting information about Obamacare insurance plans provided in your state.

Here is the map:

obamacareabortioncovereage In case you can’t read the legend under the map, it says, “States that have opted out of elective abortion coverage.” I think it is safe to say that generally speaking, ObamaCare covers abortion.

Watch The Shiny Thing Over Here

Last night President Obama gave a speech outlining his executive action on immigration. Analyses of the speech are all over the internet. I chose My Way News as my reference point for this article. USA Today has the text of the speech.

There are three things to keep in mind about the President’s immigration order:

1. It is unconstitutional, but he knew that. The video of the President making the case against executive amnesty is poster here. However, making this speech shortly after a thumping in the mid-term election elevates the President to some degree of relevancy.

2. The President said, “This deal does not apply to anyone who has come to this country recently. It does not apply to anyone who might come to America illegally in the future. It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive – only Congress can do that.” (What happens to the people who came here four years and eleven months ago since five years is the cutoff date?) Some time in the next year or so, Congress will say, “These people are paying taxes and are not allowed to vote. That is taxation without representation. We can’t have that. We have to let them vote.” This will create millions of new Democrat voters.

3. Hugh Hewitt on Salem Radio last night made a very astute observation. The Iranian nuclear talks are about to conclude. It is very possible that President Obama will make a deal with Iran that allows Iran to make nuclear weapons. What you heard last night was to distract the American people from what is going on in Iran.

The speech last night was all about politics. Its purpose (among other things) was to goad the Republicans into doing something really stupid (that trick has worked occasionally in the past). Note that the pundits are saying in panic, “Don’t shut down the government by defunding anything.” That convinces me that defunding may be the way to go.

At any rate, get out the popcorn, the show has only begun.

The Questionable Roots of Common Core

On November 14th, the Cato Institution posted an article about the waivers given in the “No Child Left Behind” program. The waivers were issued very selectively and were used as a means to get states to approve Common Core educational standards.

The article reports:

If the outcry over unilateral executive moves we’ve seen over the last few years remains consistent, Obamacare and immigration are likely to keep sucking up most of Republicans’ attention and the media’s coverage. But just as sweeping have been executive waivers issued from the hated No Child Left Behind Act – really the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – that have been instrumental in connecting numerous states to, among other things, the Common Core national curriculum standards. And yesterday, the Education Department issued guidance offering states the chance to obtain waivers – if they do the administration’s bidding, of course – lasting well into the term of the next president: the 2018-19 school year.

These waivers are almost certainly illegal – even a Congressional Research Service report often cited to suggest the opposite says they are unprecedented in scope and, hence, an untested case – and even if they are not deemed technically illegal, the reality is they still amount to the executive department unilaterally making law. NCLB does grant the Secretary of Education the authority to issue waivers from many parts of the Act, but it grants no authority to condition those waivers on states adopting administration-preferred policies. Indeed, as University of South Carolina law professor Derek W. Black writes in a recent analysis of waivers, not only does NCLB not authorize conditional waivers, even if a court were to read any waiver authorization as implicitly authorizing conditions, the actual conditions attached – “college- and career-ready standards,” new teacher evaluations, etc. – fundamentally change the law. In fact the changes, Black notes, are essentially what the administration proposed in its 2010 “blueprint” to reauthorize NCLB. And quite simply, the executive fundamentally changing a law is not constitutional.

The federal government is now taking direct power over what our children learn. That is not only unconstitutional–it is dangerous.

Does The U.S. Constitution Matter?

Yesterday an article at The Blaze reported that the major television networks will not be carrying President Obama’s immigration speech tonight. CNN media reporter Brian Stelter is reporting that the speech will be carried on Univision (the Spanish network) and other cable channels. Univision will delay the start of the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards, one of the network’s biggest shows of the year, with a 2014 viewership of nearly 10 million. It is not a coincidence that the speech is being carried on Univision or that it is beginning at the time when Univision viewers will be tuning in to see the 2015 Latin Grammy Awards. Essentially, President Obama is doing an end run around the wishes of the American people.

This is the video posted on YouTube of President Obama explaining why it is not legal for him to do what he is going to do tonight:

Peter Wehner posted an article yesterday at Commentary Magazine explaining exactly what President Obama is going to do tonight. The article is entitled, “Obama Is About to Commit an Act of Constitutional Infamy.” Unfortunately, that is a really good description of what is unfolding before us.

The article at Commentary Magazine states:

As the liberal law professor Jonathan Turley put it last night, this is a “particularly dangerous moment” for the president to defy the will of Congress yet again, just 15 days after an election in which the American people registered their emphatic (anti-Obama) judgment. “What the president is suggesting is tearing at the very fabric of the Constitution,” according to Professor Turley. “We have a separation of powers that gives us balance. And that doesn’t protect the branches — it’s not there to protect the executive branch or legislative branch — it’s to protect liberty. It’s to prevent any branch from assuming so much control that they become a threat to liberty.”

What is about to happen may be the low point in a presidency filled with them. Mr. Obama is acting in a way that he himself knows–that he himself has said–is unconstitutional and indefensible. No matter. In an act of unmatched narcissism and selfishness, the president will create–he is thirsting to create–a constitutional crisis that is utterly unnecessary and will further polarize our political culture.

Mr. Obama is about to commit an act of constitutional infamy. This is a stain that will stay with him.

Congress needs to protect our Constitution. Our future, and theirs, depend on it.

Federal Regulations Are Creating Economic Hardship For People As Wages And Net Worth Are Declining

On October 29, a website called Renewable Energy World posted an article asking the question, “Are Environmental Regulations Causing US Utility Bills to Surge?”

The article points out:

U.S. electricity markets face years of higher prices as clean-air regulations shut more coal-fired power plants than earlier forecast, cutting supply and forcing producers to rely more on natural gas.

…Midcontinent Independent System Operator Inc., or MISO, which manages the electricity network that runs from Manitoba to Louisiana, expects its power reserves to fall short of targets by about 2,000 megawatts by 2016, with deficits mounting after that. Even with the shale boom that’s cut gas prices, power generated with the fuel costs $30 to $35 a megawatt-hour, compared with about $25 for coal, according to Brattle.(the Brattle Group, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consulting company).

Please note that this is the result of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations–not the result of any law passed by elected officials. The EPA is accountable to no one (except possibly the President) and does not have to worry about elections. The EPA does not have to deal with the consequences (intended or unintended) of its actions.

It is time for Americans to take their country back. We need to be a country where laws and regulations are made by people who are accountable to the voters. The only way to stop the runaway train of over regulation is to elect Congressmen (and a President) who respect the U.S. Constitution and are willing to abide by it. If we don’t take our representative republic back soon, we will never be able to take it back. We will have to explain to our children and our grandchildren how and why we gave up their freedom.