Monthly Archives: July 2015

The Buck Stops…Somewhere

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The two big news stories of the week this week were the death of Cecil the lion and the release of the videos showing Planned Parenthood selling aborted baby body parts. It is a sad commentary on our society that Cecil got more coverage on the mainstream networks and more outrage than the selling of aborted baby body parts.

Cecil was majestic. He was obviously everything a lion should be. The man who killed him is in hiding, fearing for his life. The dentist who killed Cecil claim that his guides misled him and that he thought he was just killing an ordinary lion. I am the first person to admit that I don’t understand hunting (other than with a camera), but I am not ready to condemn those who hunt. When I devour my cheeseburger, I really don’t want to think about its prior life. But that does take away my moral high ground to condemn hunting and hunters. Americans are very upset that Cecil was killed. Meanwhile, the videos of Planned Parenthood show that the organization is marketing aborted baby body parts. Where is the outrage? I don’t know. I don’t support the idea of killing abortion doctors or bombing abortion clinics, but why aren’t the people who are dismembering babies and selling the parts in hiding? Where are the people who protest using animals to test cosmetics?

I am reminded of the death of Princess Diana. People saw her as the embodiment of the fairy tale princess. She was a beautiful and seemingly gracious lady. When she died, the world mourned. Her funeral was the epitome of pomp and circumstance. Shortly after the death of Princess Diana, Mother Theresa died. Her funeral was simple (and beautiful—as was her life). The mourning for Mother Theresa was much more subdued—not like the show of grief for the loss of a princess. I think our values have been upside down for a while.

To conclude. Cecil is dead and Planned Parenthood is selling aborted baby body parts. People are outraged about Cecil and not really interested in the Planned Parenthood videos. Congress can’t even scrape together the votes to stop federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Eventually the buck stops…somewhere.

Utopia Doesn’t Really Exist

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Yesterday The Weekly Standard posted an article about life in Sweden. It seems that many Americans on the political left view Sweden as the ultimate example of successful socialism.

The article reports:

Instead, Sanandaji shows, the root of Scandinavian success can largely be found in culture. These countries, and Sweden in particular, have historically had remarkably high levels of social trust, family values, a strong sense of work ethic, and social cohesion. The notion of the “Protestant work ethic” goes back far longer than the modern welfare state. Scholars like Max Weber, Sanandaji shows, long ago noted that the Protestant countries of northern Europe had an overall higher living standard and economic success than most. The often-celebrated equality of Scandinavian countries, too, began well before the welfare state was developed.

Again, these traditions and values by no means came with the welfare state. Sanandaji shows that these Scandinavian values follow people as they move abroad, even for generations: Americans of Scandinavian descent, whose ancestors left way before modern welfare states were established, tend to carry many of their norms with them. The median incomes of Americans with Scandinavian heritage is 20 percent higher than average income in the U.S. as a whole, and poverty rates in this group is roughly half of that of average Americans.

We could learn from this. The American welfare state has destroyed the family–not strengthened it. The “Protestant work ethic” has been thrown under the bus as second and third generation Americans find it easier to collect welfare checks.

The article concludes:

But that tradeoff still stands. If anything, the Scandinavian countries are good examples of how important it is to uphold social values and virtues that work. When Swedes voted a center-right coalition into government in 2006, they did so based on a platform that emphasized hard work and individual responsibility in a society where all too many healthy people of working age were living on welfare. This tradition of individual responsibility goes back all the way to the time when Sweden was largely a rural, farming-based country with individual tillers, Sanandaji points out.

The lesson isn’t only that the Scandinavian model is difficult to copy, but that it would even be outright unwise of a country like America to do so. What left-leaning people in America and other countries should ultimately learn from the Scandinavian model is that for redistribution of wealth to be possible, there must first and foremost be enough wealth to distribute. 

Poverty has much more to do with culture and behavior than it does with money.

The Problem With Having A Private Server

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Information came out this week that Mrs. Clinton had classified information on her private server. Aside from the fact that having that information on her private server was illegal, there are also other problems. It is understood that Mrs. Clinton’s private server would not have had the security to protect it from overseas hackers.

On Thursday, The Washington Times posted an article saying that the U.S. intelligence community is working to minimize the impact of the classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s computer being leaked.

The article reports:

“It’s a serious breach of national security if the United States government fails to secure classified material in the hands of people not authorized to possess it, no matter who they are. There are fundamental questions as to what the FBI is doing to securing these classified emails and why the State Department is not fully cooperating with the inspectors general at the State Department and the Intelligence Community to ensure that all of the appropriate emails are identified,” Mr. Grassley wrote.

Mr. Grassley also sent a letter to Secretary of State John F. Kerry inquiring about the delay in sending the 30,000 emails to intelligence community inspectors general.

Mrs. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, fended off the new questions about the email scandal and suspicious foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, distracting from her effort to wrangle support from union bosses at the AFL-CIO’s annual summer meeting.

The former secretary of state’s email woes deepened when a federal judge scolded the State Department for delays in releasing the documents, as the agency revealed that Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides and top officials during her tenure at the agency — Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan — also used private email accounts and all of their message have not been turned over to the State Department.

Mishandling classified information is a serious matter. The article reminds us that CIA Director David H. Petraeus was charged with a crime for not properly handling classified documents. It will be interesting to see if the same standard applies to Mrs. Clinton.

Are We Willing To Harvest Parts From Babies Born Alive During An Abortion?

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If you answered no to the question in the title of this article, you might want to think about whether or not you support federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

MRCTV posted an article today about the latest video produced by the Center for Medical Progress. This video talks about selling the body parts of aborted babies born alive.

The article reports:

Perhaps, the most atrocious statements reveal that Planned Parenthood knows what they are doing is illegal and efforts are needed to conceal their program. “Putting it under ‘research’ gives us a little bit of an overhang over the whole thing,” Ginde remarks. “If you have someone in a really anti state who’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught.”

Referencing Planned Parenthood lawyer Kevin Paul, Ginde says, “He’s got it figured out that he knows that even if, because we talked to him in the beginning, you know, we were like, ‘We don’t want to get called on,’ you know, ‘selling fetal parts across states.’” The buyers then ask, “And you feel confident that they’re building those layers?” to which Ginde responds, “I’m confident that our Legal will make sure we’re not put in that situation.”

You can watch the video at the site listed above.

One Possible Reason You May Not See News Of the Planned Parenthood Videos In The Mainstream Media

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Yesterday The Blaze posted an article that included a letter sent by Planned Parenthood to KVLY-TV in North Dakota.

The article includes the letter:

To: North Dakota Health and Political Reporters and Producers
From: Jen Aulwes, Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota
Date: July 27, 2015
Re: Center for Medical Progress Expected to Violate Patient Privacy

The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) is an extreme activist organization whose sole mission is to prevent women from accessing health care and to destroy Planned Parenthood. The board members of this group believe that abortion is “genocide,” and employ people who went to jail for attempting to bomb a women’s health clinic. They are also connected with the man who murdered abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

CMP has used footage obtained through deceit and unlawful behavior, including possible violations of state recording laws, federal tax laws and falsified state identification. Then, they concoct wildly false stories through selective editing. We expect this video will be no different in that regard; however, footage yet to come is expected to represent an extreme violation of patient privacy by including footage of post-abortion fetal tissue neither patients nor health care professionals authorized be filmed.

When your network decides whether to consider this story newsworthy, or whether to use any of this footage at all, we urge you to keep this in mind: The extremists who entered Planned Parenthood labs under false pretenses violated research protocol, and, worse, violated the privacy of patients involved. Those patients’ privacy should not be further violated by having this footage shared by the media.

The storage and examination processes that CMP used to get this footage are medically necessary. It is necessary medical professionals ensure an abortion is complete so that patients do not get an infection. When tissue is donated for medical research, these steps are also necessary for the donations to be completed. It is also medically necessary that researchers evaluate the laboratory procedures of a medical provider for safety standards and best practices.

Some of the conversations and protocols that occur in medical settings and among professional peers can sound jarring when taken out of context. While this can be difficult to hear or watch, it should not be used as an excuse to defund Planned Parenthood.

CMP gained access to Planned Parenthood facilities under false pretenses and filmed without securing approval from the Planned Parenthood staff being filmed or the patients whose privacy is compromised by this secret videotaping. The material should not be aired.

Please contact me at 651-755-XXXX or XXXXXXX@ppmns.org if you have any questions or need any more information.

This is called damage control. The more people who see these videos, the more people who will want Planned Parenthood defunded. I don’t know how you can watch this and want it to continue. Where are the people who complain when animals are used to test cosmetics?

I should probably make it clear that I do not support bombing abortion clinics or killing doctors who perform abortions. What I am willing to do is pray that the people performing abortions have a change of heart about what they are doing. Aborting a baby to protect a woman’s health is perfectly understandable and should be legal, but turning abortion into a million-dollar industry that sells aborted baby body parts is not something Americans should be proud of.

Spending Money We Don’t Have On Something We Don’t Need To Do

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On Monday The Wall Street Journal reported that President Obama plans to restore funds for prisoners to get Pell Grants for college.

The article reports:

The plan, set to be unveiled Friday by the secretary of education and the attorney general, would allow potentially thousands of inmates in the U.S. to gain access to Pell grants, the main form of federal aid for low-income college students. The grants cover up to $5,775 a year in tuition, fees, books and other education-related expenses.

Prisoners received $34 million in Pell grants in 1993, according to figures the Department of Education provided to Congress at the time. But a year later, Congress prohibited state and federal prison inmates from getting Pell grants as part of broad anticrime legislation, leading to a sharp drop in the number of in-prison college programs. Supporters of the ban contended federal aid should only go to law-abiding citizens.

Shouldn’t Congress be the group to make this decision? The goal is to educate prisoners so that they can get jobs when they leave prison. The theory is that an educated prisoner is less likely to return to prison. That is the theory, but it seems to me that this is another example of rewarding bad behavior. What about the middle-class families struggling to pay for their children’s education? Shouldn’t we make more money available to them rather than to prisoners?

The article reports:

Stephen Steurer, head of the Correctional Education Association, an advocacy group, said two Education Department officials told him at a conferenceearly this month the agency was moving to restore Pell grants for prisoners and allow many colleges and universities to participate. Money from the grants would directly reimburse institutions for the cost of delivering courses in prisons rather than go to prisoners, Mr. Steurer said.

“It will be substantial enough to create some data and to create enough information for some evaluation,” said Rep. Danny Davis (D., Ill.), who is co-sponsoring a bill with Rep. Donna Edwards (D., Md.) to permanently restore Pell grants for prisoners.

Let’s let Congress vote on this bill–it shouldn’t be done by the President.

Senator Ernst Has Taken Action

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Yesterday The Weekly Standard reported that Senator Joni Ernst has introduced a bill into the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood. The bill does not impact any other healthcare programs. The bill is two pages long and easy to understand.

This is the main part of the bill:

defundPlannedParenthoodBill

The article includes the following:

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the Senate will vote on the measure before the congressional August recess. A third undercover video was also released today further documenting Planned Parenthood’s practice of harvesting and selling the organs of aborted babies.

Abortion needs to be legal in the rare cases it is necessary to save the life of the mother. However, that is not what is driving the abortion industry. Abortions make money. Unfortunately, it has become a very profitable industry. The Guttmacher Institute reports that there were 1.05 million abortions in the US in 2012. It also reports that 4.8% of abortions in the US occurred from week 16 of pregnancy to week 32. We may not be able to stop the killing, but at least we can stop funding it.

The Public Does Have A Voice

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Yesterday, Wicked Local Newton (Massachusetts–you understand the name of the paper if you have ever lived in New England) posted an article about  the United States Olympic Committee pulling the Boston bid for the games. All well-informed Massachusetts taxpayers breathed a sigh of relief. The Olympics in Boston were going to make the Big Dig look like a fiscally responsible undertaking.

The fact that the bid was withdrawn was due to the work of a group of people including Newton resident Evan Falchuk, Chairman of Citizens for a Say, and Marty Lamb and Rep. Shaunna O’Connell, Co-Chairmen of Tank Taxes for Olympics.

The article reports:

“The many elected officials in Boston 2024’s corner looked the other way for months, even when it became clear that Boston 2024 had been less than truthful about what it wanted from taxpayers. What those officials couldn’t ignore was the real, credible threat of a binding vote, which is what ultimately led to the USOC pulling the bid,” said Falchuk. “If Boston 2024 could have produced a plan that did not rely on a taxpayer bailout, they would be still in the running for the 2024 games.”

“As a taxpayer I am relieved. Taxpayers would have been paying for the Olympics for decades to come,” said Lamb. “Last week’s revelation about Boston 2024’s first bid documents showed they did not want a ballot question. To suggest it would take $1 million to get on the ballot was blatantly false. I’m sure when the USOC found out we were serious about protecting taxpayers, that sent a strong message.”

“This is good day for Massachusetts taxpayers. The Boston Games would have resulted in a multi-billion taxpayer funded bailout. It would have hurt our state’s bond rating, taken tax dollars from necessities and forced huge tax increases,” said O’Connell. “We are a world class state without the Olympics. We don’t need to spend billions of tax dollars to prove that fact.”

Citizens for a Say along with Tank Taxes for Olympics have filed with the Attorney General a ballot question to prohibit tax dollars for the Olympics. The coalition was the only group pursuing a legally binding effort to protect taxpayers.

Concerned citizens can make a difference–even when they are up against serious money.

 

 

There Is A Good Alternative To Common Core

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Common Core has come under fire for many reasons. It is an untested academic standards program the involves data mining activities that make the NSA look like amateurs. The program claims it is not curricula, but a close examinations shows that it controls curricula by controlling a test program that has put undue stress on our schoolchildren. There are also a number of child development specialists who have stated that much of the material included in Common Core is inappropriate for the age groups receiving the instruction.

There is a better way to educate our children than Common Core. The North Carolina Education Plan has been developed in North Carolina as an alternative to Common Core. The developers of the North Carolina Education Plan (NCEP) recently met with Classroom Teachers Association of North Carolina President, Judy Kidd and Steve Oreskovic in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The goal of the meeting was to form an alliance to move the NCEP forward in North Carolina. One of the major items on the agenda in moving NCEP forward is to end the Kindergarten Entry Assessment (KEA). This aspect of Common Core forces schools to collect information on children, including photographs and biometric data. It is the first link in the K through work force chain that is envisioned for this and future generations.

These are some of the problems with the KEA: 1) Teachers must evaluate, profile students and being an electronic portfolio on each five year old entering the system. This profile contains clinical areas such as Emotional & Social Development. These areas are not only clinical in nature, but are very subjective. 2) Data collection cannot be secured. Using a “unique identifier” (UID) does not guarantee the child’s name cannot be hacked. If pictures and videos are used to determine performance level, identification of any child is easily obtainable. The data collection goes outside of the schoolhouse and follows the child for five years into the workforce. 3) Where is the data going to be stored? What data will be part of the Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) and Common Education Data Analysis & Reporting System (CEDARS)? Where does the data go? Raleigh, Washington? It is national in scope. 4) Do parents know this data is being collected for the child until adulthood?

There are other issues with Common Core, such as unfunded mandates in the form of Microsoft computer update and software licensing requirements [understandable when you consider that Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) is one of the major financial backers of Common Core]. Common Core is expensive compared to the NCEP.  Despite its claims, Common Core does not embrace the concept of Critical Thinking in its curricula. It is also untested.

The North Carolina Education Plan has been presented to the North Carolina Academic Standards Review Commission. They are in the process of studying the NCEP and other options as they prepare to make their recommendations to the state. Hopefully North Carolina will be the first state to adopt its own home-grown program for providing a quality education for the students in the state.

Being Misled By The Major Media

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CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) posted an article today about an article that appeared last Wednesday in The Washington Post. The headline of the Washington Post states, “How the Iran deal is good for Israel, according to Israelis who know what they’re talking about.” I will admit that I saw the article, but did not do a story about it because it made no sense to me. I have read enough about the nuclear deal with Iran to understand that there is no way it could be good for Israel.

The CAMERA article explains:

Tharoor first mentions Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and links to a Daily Beast piece entitled “Ex-Intel Chief: Iran Deal Good for Israel.”

Unfortunately for Tharoor (and for Daily Beast commentator Jonathan Alter), Ayalon, who begrudgingly supports the deal because it is “the best plan currently on the table” and because he believes there are no available alternatives, nonetheless has said in no uncertain terms, “I think the deal is bad. It’s not good.”

The article then cites the next expert who approves of the deal:

Tharoor then cites former intelligence chief Efraim Halevy, and strangely links to an Op-Ed Halevy wrote after a framework agreement was finalized in Lausanne last April but before the details of this final deal were agreed upon in Vienna this month. In a more recent (and thus  relevant) Op-Ed, Halevy described what he sees as several strong points in the agreement and concludes that it is “important to hold a profound debate in Israel on whether no agreement is preferable to an agreement which includes components that are crucial for Israel’s security.”

…What he does not say is that the deal signed in Vienna is, as a whole, “good.” In an interview with Israel’s Channel 2, he repeats his call for national debate, and paints a much more equivocal picture: “This is not an agreement that is entirely bad,” Halevy said. “There are positive elements in it.” Later, he added that “this agreement has a number of very good elements for Israel, and there are elements that are not as good.” 

Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israel’s Military Intelligence branch, is the next expert mentioned. He has stated, “This is not a good deal. This a problematic deal. You also could call it a bad deal.”

The next expert mentioned is Meir Dagan, another former Mossad chief, who has not gone on the record about the deal in either direction.

If you were a person who only gets their news from The Washington Post, you would believe that the Iranian nuclear agreement has strong support from some military and security experts in Israel. And you would be very wrong. This is the reason we need organizations like CAMERA and other alternative news sources. Our mainstream media has forgotten how to tell the truth.

Why We Need Conservative Republicans In Congress

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After all the fuss this week about Planned Parenthood selling aborted baby parts, you would think it would be a given that Washington at least would stop funding Planned Parenthood. It would be nice if they would shut them down, but defunding them would be a really good  beginning. Since the Republican party platform is pro-life and the Republicans control the House and the Senate, defunding them should be fairly easy. If Republicans who believed in the Republican platform controlled the House and the Senate, it would be easy to defund Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately, the Republican leaders in the House and Senate only believe in the Washington elite.

The Daily Signal posted the following yesterday:

What we saw in the Senate on Sunday is unprecedented in the annals of Senate history. It consisted of the majority leader and the minority leader denying members the ability to have votes on their amendments and indeed the ability even to have a roll-call vote. The denial of a second for a vote, which was aggressively whipped by the Republican majority, is an extraordinary measure designed to gag senators and enforce the will of the McConnell-Reid leadership team.

It saddens me as a Republican to see Republican leadership lead the effort to kill an amendment that would have prevented lifting sanctions on Iran unless and until Iran recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and unless and until Iran releases American hostages.

Make no mistake, granting a sufficient second for a roll call vote is done customarily in the Senate. Denying it is extraordinary, and it is done as a consequence of McConnell’s being afraid for his members to be on record on this issue.

I want my Senators on record on this issue. It is disgusting that under a Republican Senate and House the dismembering of babies and selling of baby parts will not only be allowed to continue–it will be subsidized.

An Explanation Of The Debate About The North Carolina Primary Date

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North Carolina’s Republican Presidential Primary: The Date Matters!

Written by Mark D. Jones

1st Vice Chairman

Craven County Republican Party

 

North Carolina could be a major player in the race to determine the 2016 Republican Presidential nominee.  With 72 delegates (6thhighest in the country), the key word is “could”.  A combination of obscure and unfair Republican National Committee (RNC) rules and North Carolina legislative actions could spoil this opportunity.

The RNC makes the rules related to how Republican delegates are apportioned, and the North Carolina Legislature has the authority to set the date of our Primary.  The RNC has developed a concept known as the “proportionality window” which imposes two potential penalties on 46 of the 50 states for holding primaries before March 14.  Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are exempt from these penalties, and you will hear a lot of talk about early Primaries in these states next year.  The first of the penalties mentioned above means that any other state that chooses a Primary date before March 1 will lose a significant percentage of its delegates.  North Carolina originally planned for a February Primary which would reduce our delegate count from 72 to 12 and make our state insignificant.

The North Carolina House of Representatives passed a Bill (H.B. 457) that would move the Primary date to March 8, 2016.  This restores our delegate count to 72 but comes with another pitfall.  Any state, other than the four exempt states already mentioned, that holds a Primary the first two weeks of the month will be forced to allocate those delegate on a proportional basis.  This means that if 5, or even 15, candidates are on the ballot, each candidate will receive a percentage of our delegates commensurate with the percentage of the vote they receive.This may sounds like a fair process on the surface, but as usual, there is more to the story.  The RNC’s penalty will mean that a number of very conservative states,with high delegate counts like Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina, that intend to hold early Primaries, will be forced to divide their delegates among multiple candidates.  In fact, 10 of 15 Southern states plan to hold their Primaries in this window. Conservative stalwarts like Colorado and Utah also plan to hold Primaries in this window.  It is highly unlikely any candidate will emerge from these conservative states with enough delegates to establish a significant lead or gain momentum in the race to be the Republican nominee before March 14.

Then along comes the period after March 14.  States are then allowed to grant their delegates on a winner-take-all basis.  This is when Primaries will be held in more liberal states like Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.  These states can, and likely will, grant all of their large delegate counts to one candidate who gets a simple majority.  As a result, these states will almost certainly determine who wins the 2016 nomination to be the Republican candidate.  It will almost certainly be a liberal,Establishment candidate rather than a Conservative.

So, what is the solution?  The RNC could change the rules, but it is unlikely this will happen.  The reason why is clear.  Conservatives are left with no good choice.  Do nothing, and the liberal northeast will pick the candidate.  Gamble on something the RNC does not expect, and maybe things can change.  The only thing we can control at this point in North Carolina is the date of our own Primary.  House Bill 457 made the crossover to the North Carolina Senate before the April 30, 2015 deadline.  Our Senate can now amend the Bill to hold the Primary after March14 and make North Carolina a winner-take-all state.  With the already mentioned 6th highest number of delegates in the Country, North Carolina will become ground zero for candidates hoping to be our nominee.  A winner-take-all Primary will energize Republican activists and workers and bring all the leading candidates to our state.  For those of us hoping for a conservative Republican nominee, we can only hope other conservative states see the pitfalls of the early Primaries and change their dates as well.

There is still time to contact your Senator about this important issue.  Educate them about the details and importance of this issue and ask that they support awinner-take-all Primary after March 14.  All Senators are important, but members of the Senate Rules and Operations Committee and the Senate Joint Legislative Elections Oversight Committee are critical.  Senator Bob Rucho (919-733-5655) from Mecklenburg County is Chairman of the ElectionsCommittee.  It is important for Republicans to contact these leaders and all Senators and make their voice heard about this critical issue.  With a change to a winner-take-all Primary, and hopefully a little help from other conservative states, North Carolina may well be a huge player in determining the nominee to represent the Republican Party in the 2016 Presidential race.  Information about North Carolina Senators can be found at the following link: http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Senate/Senate.html

(Information for this article was obtained from an article published September 3, 2014 on National Review.com and titled: New RNC Rules Stymie Conservatives in the Primaries by Henry Olsen.Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386913/new-rnc-rules-stymie-conservativesin-primaries-henry-olsen)

 

 

We Need To Follow This Example

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Bloomberg.com reported on Wednesday on a new phenomena in the Middle East and some North African countries. It seems that the countries that criticized Israel for building security fences are now building their own security fences.

This is the picture from the article:

Terrorism is a world-wide threat. Fences will not end terrorism, nor will it keep out all terrorists, but it will deter a few. We need to deter as many as possible, and fences are one weapon in the fight.

The article reports:

“The Middle East and North Africa is now the most walled region in the world,” said Said Saddiki, a professor of International Relations and International Law at Al-Ain University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi. They range from “fences inside cities to anti-migrant walls and separation barriers to counter-insurgency” barricades, he said.

The builders have often been spurred by fear of Islamic State, after its conquests in Iraq and Syria and the group’s ability to inspire Muslim extremists elsewhere, or concern over failed or failing nations next door. The jihadist group has built its own walls to fend off attackers and keep people from escaping, including around the Iraqi cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. Syria’s embattled government has placed concrete shields around areas of regime support in Homs.

Even terrorist-flagship Iran has built a fence to keep out unwanted visitors from Afghanistan and Pakistan. How ironic is that?

Over The Top

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On Wednesday, the Hartford Courant reported that the Connecticut Democrats will be changing the name of their annual fund raising dinner. The dinner has previously been called the Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey Dinner. John Bailey is a former Democrat party boss. It is possible that his name will remain in the new title given to the dinner. Jefferson and Jackson are being eliminated because of the fact that they were slave owners.

The article reports:

“Let’s work together to show the rest of the state exactly what it means to be a Connecticut Democrat,” party Chairman Nicholas Balletto said before introducing the resolution.

In part, the resolution said, “As members of the Democratic Party, we are proud of our history as the party of inclusion. Democrats have led the way on civil rights, LGBT equality and equal rights for women. … It is only fitting that the name of the party’s most visible annual event reflects our dedication to diversity and forward-looking vision.”

The article further reports:

Connecticut Democrats have had various ideas about the issue. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, one of the state’s top liberal Democrats, has defended Jefferson — but at the same time said that both Democratic presidents are “very complicated” historical figures.

“I’m proud of Thomas Jefferson,” DeLauro told The Courant recently. “I think Thomas Jefferson is a founding father.”

Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut NAACP, had also asked state Democrats to consider a new name for the annual fundraiser.

“Democrats have a deeply rooted history with slavery,” he said recently. “They need to do the right thing.”

Before you rush to condemn slave holders in Colonial times, you need to remember that slavery was legal worldwide. It was an accepted practice. Slavery was outlawed in England in the early 1800’s due to the work of William Wilberforce, a devout Christian, who saw it as his Christian duty to end the practice. Slavery is a horrible practice, but before you condemn those who practiced it, think of the way future generations will look at abortion in America and the selling of baby body parts. Every generation is a mixture of good and evil. We do not have the right to condemn past generations when we are doing things as bad or worse than what they did.

If the Democrats no longer want Jefferson and Jackson, I am sure the Republicans will be glad to acknowledge the part both men played in the founding and keeping of America. They were not perfect men, but they were men used by God to guide this country.

Looking For Your Keys Under The Streetlight

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There is an old story about a man walking around under a streetlight. A friend comes along and asks him what he is doing. The man explains that he has lost his car keys and is looking for them. The friend asks where the man lost his keys. The man points across the street. The friend then asks why he is looking for them on this side of the street. The man explains that the light is better over here. Unfortunately, there are times when our legal system is equally illogical.

Fox News is reporting today that California Attorney General Kamala Harris has replied to the letter written to her by four members of Congress (see previous article) requesting that she investigate the group that recorded the video of Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of baby body parts.

The article reports:

“We will carefully review the allegations raised in your letter to determine whether there were any violations of California law,” Harris said in the letter to four members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

She said her office will look into “allegations that individuals impersonated corporate officials from a fake biologics company, resulting in the release of secretly filmed videos of Planned Parenthood physicians without their consent.”

Harris, a Democrat, plans to run for the U.S. Senate in 2016.

The group that released the videos claims that no laws were broken:

David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, the group that released the videos, contends it follows all applicable laws when making videos that he called investigative journalism.

He said in a statement that Planned Parenthood is “trying to use the power of their political cronies to shut down free speech” and to “silence the freedom of the press.”

The videos have shined the spotlight on Planned Parenthood’s policies on aborted fetuses by three Republican-led congressional committees and three states.

Federal law prohibits the commercial sale of fetal tissue, but it allows the not-for-profit donation of tissue if the women who underwent abortions give their consent. Planned Parenthood says the payments discussed in the videos pertain to reimbursement for the costs of procuring the tissue — which is legal.

Planned Parenthood must be pouring a lot of the money it receives from the government into political campaigns. That is the only possible explanation for political figures not being disgusted by what the videos show.

Why We Still Need Guantanamo

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Yesterday CNN reported that Belgium police had arrested two former Guantanamo detainees on terrorism charges.

The article reports:

One of the former Guantanamo Bay detainees was Moussa Zemmouri, 37, a Moroccan national born in Antwerp, Belgian federal prosecutors announced Friday. The other was an Algerian identified as Soufiane A., who prosecutors believe spent time in Syria.

Both have been charged with participating in the activities of a terrorist group and all five have been charged with attempted armed robbery.

Zemmouri was released from Guantanamo in 2005 and authored a book “Innocent at Guantanamo” after returning to Belgium. His case was featured prominently by the UK Muslim prisoner advocacy group CAGE, which has long maintained that he has no links to terrorism.

In the past it has been acceptable practice to hold prisoners of war until the war was over. Unfortunately, the war on terror may last a very long time, but that is no excuse for sending terrorists back into the world. The recidivism rate of former Guantanamo prisoners is high. Even if it were low, do we want to release people who are trained to kill innocent civilians?

Defenseless In The Theatre

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Yesterday Breitbart.com posted an article about the shooting in the movie theater in Louisiana. Unfortunately, even though it is well-intentioned, declaring a place a gun-free zone does not protect people, it simply means that potential victims of an attack will be unable to defend themselves.

The article states:

One thing we know even now, just hours after the tragic shooting took place, is that the gunman did not adhere to the Conduct Policy. He ignored the gun ban, he ignored the bans on violence, intimidation, and physically threatening behavior, and he ignored the rules against “unlawful conduct.”

Just like so many attacks before–from Nidal Hasan’s 2009 Fort Hood attack to James Holmes’ 2012 Aurora theater to the 2013 attack on the DC Navy Yard–gun free zones put law-abiding citizens at a disadvantage because law-abiding citizens are the only ones who obey them. People with criminal intent are not phased by “No Guns Allowed” signs or a Conduct Policy that says no firearms can be brought into the theater.

Even if you are someone who chooses not to own a gun (which I am), at some point you have to realize that until you can find a way to take guns from criminals and people who do not respect life and leave guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, gun control is a really bad idea. One person who was practicing his right to concealed carry could have ended this tragedy almost as quickly as it began. Gun-free zones are an invitation to violence.

Sometimes Bias Is Subtle

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Rick Moran posted an article at the American Thinker today about a change made to a news article about Hillary Clinton which appeared in The New York Times today. It’s a very subtle change, but it totally changes the way the reader will process the information in the story.

 

The article at the American Thinker details the changes:

The paper initially reported that two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation “into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state.”

That clause, which cast Clinton as the target of the potential criminal probe, was later changed: the inspectors general now were asking for an inquiry “into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state.”

The Times also changed the headline of the story, from “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email” to “Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account,” reflecting a similar recasting of Clinton’s possible role. The article’s URL was also changed to reflect the new headline.

As of early Friday morning, the Times article contained no update, notification, clarification or correction regarding the changes made to the article.

The private email server set up by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was illegal. Keeping sensitive information and correspondence on that server was almost certainly detrimental to American foreign policy. One software expert commented that it was almost 100 percent certain that Mrs. Clinton’s private server had been hacked by foreign countries that do not have the best interests of America in mind. Were Mrs. Clinton an ordinary American citizen, she would currently be sitting in a jail cell. Unfortunately we have reached a place in America where all men are not equal under the law.

The article reminds us of the fact that The New York Times is not a good source of unbiased news:

It’s ridiculous that the New York Times is maintaining the fiction that it’s an independent media source and not an enthusiastic booster of Hillary Clinton in this campaign.. And it’s a fiction that the rest of the media is eagerly playing along with. The fact that the Times isn’t even bothering to hide its contempt for its readers and the rest of the country when it bends over backwards to satisfy the Clinton campaign on a negative story speaks volumes about the rank partisanship and ideological bias contained in most of the Times’ news coverage.

The New York Times is one of many reasons the alternative media is thriving.

The Internal Revenue Service Under President Obama Is Still Political

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Fox Business posted an article today about a Government Accountability Office investigation of the Internal Revenue Service. A House Oversight subcommittee will take testimony from IRS commissioner John Koskinen today.

The article reports:

The GAO now says that IRS political “targeting is indeed possible in the audit process” for nonprofits, largely due to poor agency oversight and controls.

“Unfortunately, the IRS has not taken sufficient steps to prevent targeting Americans based on their personal beliefs,” the GAO says.

Specifically, The GAO found that “control deficiencies” do “increase the risk” that the IRS nonprofit unit “could select organizations for examinations in an unfair manner—for example, based on an organization’s religious, educational, political or other views.”

…Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, says it has obtained Freedom of Information Act filings that show IRS workers were using donor lists from conservative nonprofit groups to target people for audit. It also says documents detail a October 2010 meeting between former IRS official Lois Lerner, Justice Department officials and the FBI to plan “for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity,” and that the IRS transferred confidential tax returns from 113,000 nonprofit social welfare groups to the FBI “as part of its prosecution effort.” The documents also show “the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress.”

The IRS is a very obvious example of a government agency out of control. We need to revise our tax system so that the IRS is no longer necessary. The IRS is a descendant of  the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue, established in The Revenue Act of 1862 as part of a temporary war-time tax plan. The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1913) allowed Congress to levy an income tax.

It is time to seriously consider a flat tax or a value-added tax.

 

Am I The Only One Who Thinks This Is Backwards?

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Yesterday Gateway Pundit posted a press release and letter from Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Representative Yvette Clarke (D-CA) to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and California Attorney General Kamala Harris regarding the recent disclosure of the sale of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood. The letter demands an investigation of the group that took the video exposing the sale of baby body parts.

What in the world have we become?

 

Common Sense From Joe Brown

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For whatever reason, the media seems to take delight in destroying people who espouse ideas they do not agree with. We no longer discuss ideas, we destroy the people who put forth ideas we do not like. Most of the obvious examples of this are conservative politicians, but occasionally other people fall into the net. One of the people recently attacked (justifiably so, but attacked) is Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby over the years has evidently done some horrible things. However, that doesn’t mean that what he has said about the problems that we face is not valid.

Yesterday Joe Brown at the Tampa Tribune posted a short commentary on Bill Cosby. Mr. Brown reminds us that there were a lot of people who took issued with Bill Cosby‘s speech given at an NAACP event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the historic Brown vs. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is on excerpt from the speech (taken from the American Rhetoric Website):

Now, look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza? And then run to the poor cousin’s house.

They sit there and the cousin says, “What are you doing here?”

“I just killed somebody, man.”

“What?”

“I just killed somebody; I’ve got to stay here.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Well, give me some money, I’ll go….”

 “Where are you going?”

“North Carolina.”

Everybody wanted to go to North Carolina. But the police know where you’re going because your cousin has a record.

Five or six different children — same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever. Pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to. You don’t who this is. It might be your grandmother. I’m telling you, they’re young enough. Hey, you have a baby when you’re twelve. Your baby turns thirteen and has a baby, how old are you? Huh? Grandmother. By the time you’re twelve, you could have sex with your grandmother, you keep those numbers coming. I’m just predicting.

I’m saying Brown versus the Board of Education. We’ve got to hit the streets, ladies and gentlemen. I’m winding up, now — no more applause. I’m saying, look at the Black Muslims. There are Black Muslims standing on the street corners and they say so forth and so on, and we’re laughing at them because they have bean pies and all that, but you don’t read, “Black Muslim gunned down while chastising drug dealer.” You don’t read that. They don’t shoot down Black Muslims. You understand me. Muslims tell you to get out of the neighborhood. When you want to clear your neighborhood out, first thing you do is go get the Black Muslims, bean pies and all. And your neighborhood is then clear. The police can’t do it.

Mr. Brown points out:

For years I’ve heard rumors about Cosby, but, I’m ashamed to say, I chose to ignore them, or hoped against hope that they weren’t true. I felt his messages of self-determination and nonvictimization were too important to be derailed by his personal conduct. I didn’t put him on a pedestal, but I ignored any flaws he might have had. As I had to admit to my friend, I was wrong.

(Speaking of people on pedestals, a fictional character I and millions of other Americans had put on one, Atticus Finch, the hero of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was knocked off of his with the release of the novel’s prequel, “Go Set a Watchman.” Who’s next?)

So, as Martin Luther King asked in the title of his last book, where do we go from here?

Before the rape allegations, Cosby caught hell from a lot of people because he scolded those who have failed to take advantage of the hard-fought victories of the 1950s and ’60s. Well, someone still needs to do that, although maybe not as curmudgeonly as he did.

As the comedian joked, Cosby drugged women and dropped his pants, but our youngsters still need to pull theirs up. The messenger was flawed, but his relevant message still needs to get through.

We are all flawed people, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have something of value to say. What Bill Cosby did was horrible, but we need to have a discussion on what he said–it might  help us deal with the poverty and violence we see in the black community.

 

It Won’t Pay To Be A Non-Muslim In Seattle

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On Monday, the Christian News reported that the Mayor of Seattle, Washington, has proposed Sharia law-compliant housing loans for Muslim residents. In case you are not aware of what a Sharia law-compliant loan is, it is a loan without interest. How many of us would like to take out a mortgage without interest?

The article reports:

“For our low—and moderate—income Muslim neighbors who follow Sharia law—which prohibits the payment of interest or fees for loans of money—there are limited options for financing a home,” the proposed plan reads. “Some Muslims are unable to use conventional mortgage products due to religious convictions.”

“The City will convene lenders, housing nonprofits and community leaders to explore the best options for increasing access to Sharia-compliant loan products to help these residents become homeowners in Seattle,” it says.

Arsalan Bukhari, chapter executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Puget Sound Business Journal that he believes that there are approximately two hundred Seattle residents who identify as Muslim that avoid taking out home loans because of their religion.

“[T]hey don’t want to pay interest,” he said.

Mayor Ed Murray mentioned the proposal at a recent press conference, which will go to city counsel for consideration.

“We will work to develop new tools for Muslims who are prevented from using conventional mortgage products due to their religious beliefs,” he said.

Non-Muslim Americans will still be paying interest on the loans they take out. Aside from the fact that one of the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood is to bring Sharia Law to America slowly, so that we won’t object to it, what about the Americans who will be paying more for their loans because of the Muslims who will not pay interest? This is stupid on many levels. Is beating your wife (legal under Sharia Law) now going to be legal in Seattle?