Monthly Archives: July 2015

Words Of Wisdom From A Democrat

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Yes, you read that right. As the Democrat party deals with the candidacies of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, and possibly Elizabeth Warren there is a quieter, more rational candidate. His name is Jim Webb.

Jim Webb was interviewed on Fox News Sunday today. The Daily Caller posted an article about the interview.

The article posted Jim Webb’s remarks about the direction his party has taken:

BRET BAIER: You mentioned the Democratic race. In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, you’re at about 2.3 percent, and well behind the front runner, Hillary Clinton. You have an uphill climb against this Clinton machine. Most political analysts will tell you that Democrats have moved resolutely to the left and that basically Hillary Clinton has renounced Clintonism, which really was the vital core of the center, used to be, in your party. In a party that seems to thrill to Bernie Sanders and maybe long for Elizabeth Warren, who are the Jim Webb Democrats?

JIM WEBB: I believe we can bring a different tone to the Democratic Party. You’re right. The party has moved way far to the left, and that’s not my Democratic Party, but in and of itself. We need to bring working people back into the formula. Next Saturday, in the far southwest of Virginia there’s going to be a medical clinic, a remote area medical clinic to take care of people who don’t have medical insurance. It’s out at the Wise County fairgrounds. I hope Fox will go down there and take a look at it. They’ll going to take care of at least 6,000… people with no medical care. They’re going to pull about 3,000 teeth. These are people who have been forgotten by both parties and, I think, they need a voice.

The Democrat party has claimed for years to represent the forgotten man. However, both the Republican and Democrat parties have been taken over by special interest groups that have forgotten the forgotten man. Very few Americans are currently represented by either party establishment. It is time for Americans to begin to take back whichever party they choose to support. The time for allowing the establishment of both parties to do what is in the interest of their party rather than what is in the interest of America is over. There used to be small-government, constitutional conservatives in both political parties. Now it is hard to find those people in either party. It is up to the American people to elect people who will support the U.S. Constitution as the law of the land and who will actually represent the voters and not the political class.

POSTSCRIPT: I just watched the entire interview. Frankly, that is the only thing Jim Webb said that I agree with.

I Guess I Just Don’t Understand

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Yesterday Breitbart.com posted an article about Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. On July 7, the Memphis (Tennessee) City Council voted to exhume his body and move it from the place it has been for the last hundred years. They are moving his wife’s body as well. They also plan to sell the statue of Forrest

The article reports:

The Forrest family has made clear that they are “solidly opposed to digging up the graves and moving them any place.” They are opposed to moving the statue as well.

Some believe the Memphis City Council vote is another example of the anti-Confederacy hysteria that swept parts of the country after a photo surfaced of alleged Charleston gunman Dylann Roof posing with a Confederate flag. But city council member Janis Fullilove asked if the move has something to do with a rumored “$500 million [University of Tennessee] expansion” that would use the land where Forrest is currently buried.

I might believe that the move was about the expansion of the University if the Council planned to keep the statue. The fact that they are thinking of “selling the statue to anyone who wants it.” does make me wonder.

General Forrest was a wealthy businessman who joined the Confederate Army after the war started and became a lieutenant general.

The General and his wife have been dead for more than one hundred years–they are no threat to anyone or anything. The man was defending his home state. I guess I really don’t understand why he and his wife have to be relocated and his statue sold.

At Least It Was British Money–Not American Money

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On Wednesday, CBN News posted an article entitled, “Study Finds Poor Health Leads to Early Death.” Somehow I don’t think this is rocket science.

The article reports:

The finding comes from a British study that looked at more than million people over a 50-year period. Researchers warn the problems get worse the earlier those unhealthy lifestyles begin.

A 40-year-old man who has dealt with diabetes, heart attack, and/or stroke could lose 23 years from his life. Someone in their 60s who has dealt with two of those problems could lose 12 years.

The worst problems, such as diabetes and heart disease, are preventable largely by eating right and staying active.

I would call this an example of spending money to study the obvious. I can’t believe they spent 50 years and a lot of money to figure this out. In most cases, this is something your mother told you when you were little.

I Guess They Were Too Busy Celebrating To Negotiate

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Just to be clear–I am pretty much opposed to any nuclear deal with Iran. I can’t imagine the current administration making a deal that is worth anything, and even if they did, I can’t imagine Iran not cheating on whatever deal is made. I guess I have an attitude problem. However, the nuclear negotiations did not stop Iran from celebrating Al-Quds Day.

Yesterday the Washington Examiner posted a story about Iran’s celebration of Al-Quds Day. The day is celebrated by burning American and Israeli flags and shouting “Death to Israel” and “Down with America.” These are the people we are negotiating with.

According to the Times of Israel, millions of Iranians participated in the demonstrations. There is one possible saving grace here. In Iran it is often the case that demonstrations are sponsored by the government. People are not necessarily paid to demonstrate, but they are told to do so. That fact makes it very difficult to gauge what is actually happening in the country. There is also another thing to consider when looking at events in Iran. Because of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980’s, Iran has a very unique population. In 2014, the median age of Iran’s population was 28, as opposed to a median age of about 39 in America. The younger people in Iran tend to be pro-western, but do not have the freedom to express themselves–the mullahs control the government and enforce Sharia Law.

The only successful way to deal with Iran’s nuclear program is to change the government of Iran, and unfortunately, in 2009 the Obama Administration showed the young people in Iran who wanted a revolution that it would not support them.

Meanwhile, the negotiations are continuing with a country that I seriously doubt is negotiating in good faith.

Is It True?

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Donald Trump has experienced all sorts of blowback because of his remarks about illegal immigration. He doesn’t seem overly concerned. Regardless of how you feel about him as a presidential candidate, he has definitely made the debate interesting. So what is actually true about America’s problem with illegal immigration?

A website called Family Security Matters posted an article today detailing some of the numbers.

The article reports:

Non-Americans commit over five times more serious crimes per capita than Americans.

It is estimated that there are some 133,741 foreign criminals in prisons and jails in the USA (1).  They are not there for spitting on the sidewalk or jaywalking, and very few are there for immigration violations, as those illegal alien criminals are typically deported in fairly short order or simply let go as we have seen time and time again. They are there in large part for molesting, raping, killing, maiming and murdering people in America, as you will see below. 

Add in the 168,680 convicted criminal immigrants who have final orders of removal but who remain at large in the U.S., and another 179,018 convicted criminal aliens with deportation cases pending but who are also at large (2), and we have a total non-American felon population of 481,439…a number the size of our 35th largest city, Sacramento, California, and larger than the entire populations each of Atlanta, Kansas City, Omaha, Miami, Minneapolis – and more.   

And remember, for most of these felons, there was a victim. 

This is not encouraging. The article goes on to point out that although illegal aliens comprise less than 5 percent of the population, they make up 27 percent of the prison population.

So what has happened to American immigration? Has it changed over the years? Are we allowing legal immigration of people who are going to have a harder time assimilating than in the past? Yes to all three questions.

Senator Ted Kennedy was responsible for  getting the 1965 Immigration Act (the Hart-Celler Act) passed. That Act represented a drastic change in American immigration policies. Previous immigration policies had favored immigrants from England, Ireland, and Germany–people from countries that had originally populated America. This Act added policies calling for “family reunification.” Numerical restrictions on visas were set at 170,000 per year, with a per-country-of-origin quota, not including immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or “special immigrants” (including those born in “independent” nations in the Western Hemisphere, former citizens, ministers, and employees of the U.S. government abroad). The new laws changed to demographic of America, resulting in pockets of various nationalities that did not assimilate. America was no longer a ‘melting pot,’ it had become a country of groups that were not necessarily interested in assimilating.

This is not a recipe for a successful country. America was built by people who came here for a better life and to become Americans. Many immigrants still fit that description, but many do not. Legal and illegal immigrants have learned how to take advantage of America’s welfare benefits and its tax system. In March of this year, I wrote an article about the use of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Credit by illegal aliens. This is directly taking money away from working Americans and giving it to people who are here illegally. That needs to stop.

At any rate, Donald Trump is pointing out things Americans need to be aware of. Again, regardless of how you plan to vote in the 2016 election, it is probably a good idea to listen to what he is saying. The one advantage Donald Trump has over most of the other candidates is that he is beholden to no one for money. Unfortunately many of our politicians cannot make that claim.

Coming To Your Neighborhood

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Frankly, I don’t care who moves into my neighborhood as long as they take care of their house, pay their bills, don’t have vicious dogs that run free, and don’t have wild parties without inviting the neighbors. Evidently, the government cares who lives in my neighborhood more than I do.

On Wednesday, Newsbusters posted an article about the new regulations from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The only major news source that covered the story in their nightly newscast was Fox News.

Here is the discussion on Fox (taken from the Newsbusters article):

FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier
July 8, 2015
6:33 p.m. Eastern

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE CAPTION: Community Organizing?]

BRET BAIER: Well, critics tonight are saying the Obama administration is taking another big step toward telling you and your neighbors who can and cannot live on your street and in your neighborhood. Supporters call it fair housing. Opponents call it social engineering. Correspondent Kevin Corke has the story. 

HUD SECRETARY JULIAN CASTRO: We’re eager to support local leaders in giving every person an equal chance to access quality good housing near schools, transportation and jobs, no matter who they are, what they look like, how they worship. 

KEVIN CORKE: That’s the thought behind the White House effort to use the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help root out systematic discrimination and segregation all across America. The plan unveiled today is called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and will require cities and towns to scrutinize housing patterns for racial bias with the goal of “reducing disparities in housing choice and access…thereby expanding economic opportunities and enhancing the quality of life.” Communities are required to report their findings and/or improvement plans every three-to-five years or face losing the federal funding HUD hands out here each year. 

(….)

CORKE: Critics say the President’s plan is a social engineering redux of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which was meant to fight housing discrimination, but actually created worse segregation in some cities thanks to so-called white flight when many families chose to move to the suburbs. 

THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION’S HANS VON SPAKOVSKY: This is the Obama administration’s way of putting in their utopian, progressive vision of how they think Americans should live. 

CORKE: This time around, HUD will use data collected from zoning laws, home financing, infrastructure planning, and transportation to determine if all families have access to fair housing and services, but some lawmakers on Capitol Hill say this is just a heavy-handed way for the government to try to shape local zoning laws, and in doing so, support yet another overreach by the President. 

(….)

CORKE: The final rule is 377 pages long, much longer, frankly, than the version we saw back in 2013. By the way, parts of the AFFH are set to take effect 30 days from tomorrow with other policies being phased in over time.

Everyone should have the right to live wherever they choose (assuming that they can afford the house they choose). However, any time the government gets involved in anything, it gets complicated and eventually very expensive to the taxpayer. I don’t think there is anything in the Constitution that allows the government to tell people where they can live or who can live in what neighborhood. Again, the only way we are going to stop this sort of ridiculousness is to elect people who respect and will uphold (as their oath of office says) the Constitution.

 

 

Losing Your Rights In Your Own Home

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Fox News posted an article in late June (I missed it. Sorry) about New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s plan to end smoking in apartments. That’s right, if you are renting an apartment in New York City, you would not be allowed to smoke in your apartment.

The article reports:

The mayor’s administration is planning to pay four health-advocacy groups $9,000 apiece to press landlords and developers to prohibit lighting up in their apartment complexes so neighboring tenants don’t breathe in secondhand smoke, according to the New York Post. The city has already banned smoking in bars and restaurants, workplaces, sports venues and parks, but has not moved against smokers who practice their habit in the privacy of their own homes.

City health officials emphasized the initiative is voluntary — at least for now.

“Everyone benefits from smoke-free housing. Residents enjoy breathing cleaner, healthier air in their homes . . . while owners see reductions in property damage and turnover costs,” a Health Department spokesman said.

Dozens of buildings containing hundreds of apartments have already kicked the habit, according to the Health Department. The de Blasio administration is actually accelerating an initiative started at the tail end of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tenure.

I need to make a few things clear here. I am a non-smoker–I never smoked. I grew up in a blue haze in a house with two heavy smokers (both of whom died as a result of smoking-related illnesses). I really hate the smell of cigarettes and love the fact that I no longer have to smell cigarette smoke in restaurants. However, smokers have rights, too. If someone wants to smoke in the privacy of their own apartment, it bothers me that a law could be passed that would make that a crime. I thought Republicans were the people always being accused of wanting to make laws about what people did behind closed doors.

I agree with the idea that if a landlord wants to make his apartments smoke-free, he should be allowed to do so. Hotels have smoke-free rooms. The rooms stay cleaner, and it cuts down on the fire hazard of someone falling asleep while smoking. However, this should be the choice of the individual landlord–not the city government.

Meanwhile, many states are moving to legalize marijuana as they limit the rights of tobacco smokers. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Punishing Achievement While Rewarding Mediocrity

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Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an editorial about an area of discrimination we rarely hear about. It seems that our elite universities have been discriminating against Asian-American students.

The editorial reports:

The percentage of Asian-American students at Harvard and other elite universities has held suspiciously steady for two decades at about 18%, while the number of college-age Asian-Americans has increased rapidly. In May the coalition (a coaltion of sixty-four organizations) asked the civil-rights arms of the Education and Justice Departments to investigate why Asian-Americans, who make up about 5% of the population but earn an estimated 30% of National Merit semifinalist honors, aren’t accepted to Harvard in numbers that reflect these qualifications.

Sixty-four organizations filed a complaint with the Education Department. The Education Department dismissed the complaint, stating that there is pending litigation on the matter. (One suit was filed by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina).

The editorial further points out:

A similarly narrow ruling next year could give Harvard and other top schools license to maintain de facto quotas. Asian-Americans need to score 140 points higher on the SAT than white students to be considered equal applicants on paper, and 450 points higher than African-Americans, according to independent research cited in the complaint.

Why are we preventing our best and brightest from entering our best schools simply because of their race? I thought there were laws against discrimination based on race. This kind of activity does not help anyone. Students with the lower scores may not be equipped to handle the academic workload at these elite schools.This really must be discouraging to the students who have achieved the high scores.

The editorial concludes:

Meantime, the Asian-American coalition says it will continue to push back, potentially broadening the complaint. Quota-like admissions also seem to exist at Yale, Princeton and elsewhere, and the feds won’t have litigation as an excuse to look the other way. But if the Obama Administration finds another excuse, as it probably will, Asian-Americans will need the Supreme Court to end their exclusion.

Racial discrimination should never be acceptable regardless of who it is aimed at. I hope the Asian-American students sue the pants off the schools that are doing this and then use the money to provide scholarships to Asian-American students in their communities.

First Amendment Rights For All Americans?

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First Amendment RightsPlease keep this picture in mind when reading the following article.

This is what the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(The italics and underline are mine.)

Today CBN News posted an interview of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Ms. Wasserman-Schultz stated:

“If you’re a religiously affiliated organization then you have wider latitude in terms of the Constitution and the protections that the First Amendment provides,” Wasserman-Schultz said.

“I think Americans make a distinction between protecting the First Amendment rights of a religious organizations or religiously affiliated organizations and being able to discriminate, broadly, simply because of one individual who owns a business and their own values and their being able to impose those values on either their employers or their customers.”

So let me get this straight–according to Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, the First Amendment only applies to religious organizations–it does not apply to individuals. So churches are allowed to act according to their religious beliefs, but people don’t have that right. Wow.

Individuals who hold traditional religious beliefs are losing their rights. Recently a gag order was put on an Oregon couple who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding (article here). A left-leaning website claimed there was no gag order. Here is the gag order:

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian added a gag order to the fine, ordering the Kleins “to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published, circulated, issued or displayed, any communication, notice, advertisement or sign of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services or privileges of a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of sexual orientation.”

The head of the Democrat National Committee does not think individual business owners have First Amendment rights. Please keep this in mind as you consider your vote in the next election.

A Danger To Our Constitution

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Today’s Daily Caller posted an article today about President Obama’s plan to deal with climate change. President Obama is planning on unilaterally committing America to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions in the coming years.

Aside from the questionable ‘science’ of global warming, there is the issue of how President Obama is going about this.

The article reports:

In a congressional hearing Thursday, George Mason University law professor Jeremy Rabkin told lawmakers that Obama’s argument that he unilaterally commit the U.S. to a United Nations agreement without Senate ratification was “a real change in our Constitution.”

…“We have certain background assumptions about how our government is supposed to work, that’s why we have a Constitution,” Rabkin responded.

“And what this is fundamentally about is saying, ‘ah, that’s old-fashioned, forget that, that didn’t work for [President Bill] Clinton– we’re moving forward with something different which the president gets to commit us,’” Rabkin added. “That’s a real change in our Constitution.”

This is a problem. Unless Congress has the intestinal fortitude to stand up against this power grab, we will be in danger of losing our Constitution. Because the U.S. Constitution functions as ‘the law of the land,’ at that point we will no longer be a nation of laws. The only way to stop this runaway train is to watch your Representatives and Senators to see what they do, and then vote accordingly in November.

Sometimes Lying Just Gets Old

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Yesterday CNN posted the transcript of an interview of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by Brianna Keilar, CNN’s Senior White House Correspondent.

The is part of the transcript:

KEILAR:  One of the issues that has eroded some trust that we’ve seen is the issue of your email practices while you were secretary of state.  I think there’s a lot of people who don’t understand what your thought process was on that.

Can you tell me the story of how you decided to delete 33,000 emails and how that deletion was executed?

CLINTON:  Well, let’s start from the beginning.  Everything I did was permitted.  There was no law.  There was no regulation.  There was nothing that did not give me the full authority to decide how I was going to communicate.  Previous secretaries of state have said they did the same thing.  And people across the government knew that I used one device – maybe it was because I am not the most technically capable person and wanted to make it as easy as possible.

KEILAR:  But you said they – that they did the same thing, that they used a personal server and –

KEILAR:  – subpoena deleted emails from them?

CLINTON:  You know, you’re starting with so many assumptions that are – I’ve never had a subpoena.  There is – again, let’s take a deep breath here.  Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation.  I had one device.  When I mailed anybody in the government, it would go into the government system.

Now I didn’t have to turn over anything.  I chose to turn over 55,000 pages because I wanted to go above and beyond what was expected of me because I knew the vast majority of everything that was official already was in the State Department system.

And now I think it’s kind of fun.  People get a real-time behind-the-scenes look at what I was emailing about and what I was communicating about.

KEILAR:  Wearing warm socks, you said to John Podesta.

CLINTON:  Exactly and – or, you know –

KEILAR:  Working a fax machine –

CLINTON:  – yes, a secure fax machine, which is harder to work than the regular.

So yes, this is being blown up with no basis in law or in fact.  That’s fine.  I get it.  This is being, in effect, used by the Republicans in the Congress, OK.  But I want people to understand what the truth is.  And the truth is everything I did was permitted and I went above and beyond what anybody could have expected in making sure that if the State Department didn’t capture something, I made a real effort to get it to them.

And I had no obligation to do any of that.  So let’s set the record straight.  And those 55,000 pages, they will be released over the course of this year.  People  can, again, make their own judgments.

I know you say you were permitted.  I just am trying to understand some of the thought process behind it.  One former state attorney general, a Democrat, told CNN that they know of no lawyer who would advise someone, a client, facing the kind of scrutiny that you’ve been facing to wipe their server.

I mean, what do you say to that?

CLINTON:  Well, what I say to that is turned over everything I was obligated to turn over.  And then I moved on.  People delete their personal emails, their work-related emails, whatever emails they have on a regular basis.  I turned over everything that I could imagine.

I added the underlines and italics.

So what are the facts? The National Journal posted a picture of the subpoena that Hillary Clinton says she never got. The subpoena was sent to her in March:

SubpoenaOfHillaryClintonThe National Journal reports:

That (Hillary Clinton’s statement that she had never had a subpoena) drew a rebuke from Trey Gowdy, the GOP chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, who said the need to “correct the inaccuracy” led him to break with his practice of not releasing subpoenas the panel has issued.

“The committee immediately subpoenaed Clinton personally after learning the full extent of her unusual email arrangement with herself, and would have done so earlier if the State Department or Clinton had been forthcoming that State did not maintain custody of her records and only Secretary Clinton herself had her records when Congress first requested them,” Gowdy said in a statement.

The subpoena sought Clinton’s messages from 2011 and 2012 related to Libya and the 2012 attack on a diplomatic compound and CIA facility in Benghazi that killed four Americans.

Very few people have honorable reasons for wiping a computer hard disk clean–particularly after they have been subpoenaed.

On March 3, 2015, The Atlantic reported:

On January 13, 2009, Hillary Clinton attended her first confirmation hearing as a Secretary of State nominee. The same day, with Bush officials still under fire for using private email accounts to circumvent public records laws, someone registered Clintonemail.com, a domain that now appears to be at the center of a scandal. “Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department,” The New York Times reported in a story published late Monday. “Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.”

This was willful, flagrant disregard for public records rules.

Why does this matter? Other than the disregard for the Federal Records Act, it means that we will never have an accurate record of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. The record we do have will have omissions and changes, and we will have no way of knowing what is missing or what is edited. Evidently Mrs. Clinton did not feel that the law applied to her.

 

What A Good Nuclear Agreement With Iran Would Look Like

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Frank Gaffney, Jr., posted an article at the Center for Security Policy today describing what a good nuclear agreement with Iran would look like. Please follow the link to the article to read the details, but here are the basic points:

1. No uranium enrichment.

2. No plutonium-producing reactors.

3. Robust verification.

4. Questions must be answered about Possible Military Dimensions (PMDs).

5. Lift sanctions in stages in response to Iranian compliance.

6. Iran must curtail and agree to limitations on its ballistic missile program.

7. Iran must agree to end its meddling in regional conflicts and sponsorship of terror.

8. Iran must cease its hostility toward Israel.

9. Iran must release all US prisoners.

If these points were included, the agreement would work. An agreement that does not include these points is not worth the paper it is written on.

Thank God We Didn’t Feel That Way About The Nazis

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The Daily Caller posted an article today about President Obama’s latest speech about ISIS.The President stated, “Ultimately, in order for us to defeat terrorist groups like ISIL and al-Qaida is gonna also require us to discredit their ideology, the twisted thinking that draws vulnerable people into their ranks. As I’ve said before, and I know our military leaders agree, this broader challenge of countering violent extremism. Ideologies are not defeated with guns; they are defeated by better ideas. A more attractive and more compelling vision.”

“So the United States will continue to do our part by working with partners to counter ISIL’s hateful propaganda, especially online. We’ll constantly reaffirm with words and deeds that we will never be at war with Islam, we’re fighting terrorists who distort Islam and whose victims are mostly Muslims.”

First of all, when someone is chopping your head off, that may not be the time to debate their theology with them. Second of all, until you take the weapons away from ISIS, they will continue to kill people and chop their heads off. Third, it is in the basic tenets of Islam to kill infidels or those who do not believe in Islam.

The problem here is that Islam is not being distorted. What we are seeing is in accordance with the Koran. The following is a quote from the book Catastrophic Failure by Stephen Coughlin:

Again, the people killing us claim they do so to wage jihad in the cause of Allah, to impose Islamic law and reestablish the Caliphate.

…The intention of sharia authorities today is to limit the knowledge of non-Muslims to what they are allowed to know about Islam. If we read the books which the enemy declares are the basis of his intentions, we will better understand the nature of the threat. Because the enemy knows he lacks the kinetic ability to defeat us in battle, it is of utmost importance that he prevent us from properly defining him. The primary objective of the enemy in the War on Terror is to keep us from understanding his threat doctrine by keeping us from looking at the fact of Islamic law–“the one organizing principle”–that he, in fact, states is the driver of his threat doctrine. Once we understand his threat doctrine, the game is up. This is true even if he is wrong in his interpretation of Islam and shariah.

This is a battle for western civilization. We need to fight it. I don’t want to send troops to the Middle East, but I am willing to seriously bomb all areas ISIS controls. I am sorry for civilian casualties, but ISIS is killing the non-Muslim civilians. This is a time to use excessive force, not to discuss theology. If Muslims who do not want to establish the Caliphate want to stand with us, that is fine. Otherwise, they need to understand that we will not let them establish the Caliphate or continue to kill innocent people.

It Just Gets Uglier

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It would be nice to be done with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal by now, but new things keep showing up. The latest should be a cause for concern to all Americans, regardless of which political party they belong to.

Judicial Watch released a report today about its latest findings as a result of its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed regarding the IRS. The findings are very unsettling to those of us who believe in free speech.

Here are a few highlights:

The newly obtained records also reveal that 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. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit social 501(c)(4) welfare groups  – or nearly every 501(c)(4) in the United States – as part of its prosecution effort. According to a letter from then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, “This revelation likely means that the IRS – including possibly Lois Lerner – violated federal tax law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department.”

The documents were produced subsequent to court orders in two Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits: Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:14-cv-1956) and Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:14-cv-1239).

The new IRS documents include a October 11, 2010 “DOJ Recap” memo sent by IRS Exempt Organizations Tax Law Specialist Siri Buller to Lerner and other top IRS officials explaining an October 8 meeting with representatives from the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and “one representative from the FBI” to discuss the possible criminal prosecution of nonprofit organizations for alleged political activity:

Why was the IRS coordinating with the Justice Department on Congressional testimony?

The article continues:

“These new documents show that the Obama IRS scandal is also an Obama DOJ and FBI scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection. And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”

On April 16, 2014, Judicial Watch forced the IRS to release documents revealing for the first time that Lerner communicated with the DOJ in May 2013 about whether it was possible to launch criminal prosecutions against targeted tax-exempt entities. The documents were obtained due to court order in an October 2013 Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit filed against the IRS.

This sounds like Soviet Russia–not like America. Please follow the link above to Judicial Watch to read the entire article. There is quite a bit there that confirms the much of the Obama Administration was conducting a war on any group that did not agree with them.

The Double Standard At Work

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On Friday I posted an article about Aaron and Melissa Klein, who ran a bakery called Sweet Cakes by Melissa. They were fined $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding. They were also ordered “to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published, circulated, issued or displayed, any communication, notice, advertisement or sign of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services or privileges of a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of sexual orientation.” This occurred in the State of Oregon. I guess Michigan doesn’t do things that way.

This was posted on YouTube on April 2nd of this year:

Now that same-sex marriage is legal, will Muslim bakeries still be able to refuse to bake cakes for those weddings without any consequences?

When Former The Newspaper Of Record Chooses To Leave Common Sense Behind

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On July 3rd, The New York Times (formerly known as the newspaper of record) reported that health insurance companies around the nation are asking for rate increases of 20 percent to 40 percent or more. What is that about? It’s about human nature and economics. Healthy people have not signed up for ObamaCare, sick people have.

The New York Times reports:

Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans — market leaders in many states — are seeking rate increases that average 23 percent in Illinois, 25 percent in North Carolina, 31 percent in Oklahoma, 36 percent in Tennessee and 54 percent in Minnesota, according to documents posted online by the federal government and state insurance commissioners and interviews with insurance executives.

The Oregon insurance commissioner, Laura N. Cali, has just approved 2016 rate increases for companies that cover more than 220,000 people. Moda Health Plan, which has the largest enrollment in the state, received a 25 percent increase, and the second-largest plan, LifeWise, received a 33 percent increase.

This has to do with something called an actuary table. Actuary tables are generally used to determine life insurance premiums. They determine expected life spans based on information including health habits, family health history, and other variables. They then establish an insurance rate that will provide life insurance and still make a profit for the company. It is important to remember that companies are in business to make a  profit. Similar charts are used in health insurance to make sure that both healthy and sick people will have the insurance they want. The problem with ObamaCare is that young, healhty people are paying higher rates to cover the cost of older, less healthy people.

The article further explains:

In their submissions to federal and state regulators, insurers cite several reasons for big rate increases. These include the needs of consumers, some of whom were previously uninsured; the high cost of specialty drugs; and a policy adopted by the Obama administration in late 2013 that allowed some people to keep insurance that did not meet new federal standards.

“Healthier people chose to keep their plans,” said Amy L. Bowen, a spokeswoman for the Geisinger Health Plan in Pennsylvania, and people buying insurance on the exchange were therefore sicker than expected. Geisinger, often praised as a national model of coordinated care, has requested an increase of 40 percent in rates for its health maintenance organization.

Insurers with decades of experience and brand-new plans underestimated claims costs.

What ObamaCare has done is to disrupt health insurance for 80 percent of Americans who were happy with their health insurance in order to insure the other 20 percent. What has actually happened is that the 80 percent have been disrupted and the 20 percent have not signed up. It really would be a good idea to simply scrap ObamaCare and replace it with something that was free market based. I am sure something could be worked out to help low-income Americans afford the insurance they need.

When Politics Gets Totally Out Of Hand

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I am a conservative. I totally disagree with liberal policies. I do what I can to see that conservatives who believe in the U.S. Constitution get elected. However, I am willing to believe that there is some common ground between conservatives and liberals and I believe they are as entitled to work for their causes as I am for mine. I am not sure how many liberals share that belief.

National Review posted an article today about an attack on conservatives in Wisconsin that has been going on for a while. I mean a physical attack based on something called a John Doe law.

The article tells the story of one incident:

It was still dark outside when “Jonah” (not his real name) heard the pounding on his front door. As luck would have it, he was awake — or mostly awake. He’d gotten up at 4:00 a.m. on October 3, 2013, to see his parents off to the airport. They were leaving on a quick trip to raise money for the children’s charity his father runs. Jonah was 16 at the time, old enough to stay home alone for a short time, but not old enough to deal with what awaited him on the other side of the door.

The pounding continued, and Jonah peered out the window to discover its source. To his horror, he saw uniformed officers, their guns drawn. “Police,” they yelled. “We have a warrant.” An officer shined a flashlight on a document Jonah couldn’t read. Unsure what to do, but unwilling to defy the authorities, he let them in.

Jonah was ordered not to tell anyone what had happened–even officials at his school. When he asked first to call his parents and then to call a lawyer, he was told no both times.

The article further reports:

The pretense for the October raids was suspected “coordination” between various conservative organizations and Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s campaign — activity that a trial court has held constituted nothing more than entirely legal “issue advocacy,” if it even occurred. Because they’d had the temerity to engage in this issue advocacy — constitutionally protected free speech — multiple conservative citizens were subjected to so-called John Doe proceedings by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat.

…At present, John Doe II is halted. In response to a challenge from Wisconsin conservative activist Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a trial judge blocked multiple prosecution subpoenas, holding that they “do not show probable cause that the moving parties committed any violations of the campaign-finance laws.” This ruling has been appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and a decision that could potentially end Chisholm’s witch hunts once and for all is expected any day. At least one victim isn’t waiting for such a decision before she takes action. Cindy Archer has filed a civil-rights lawsuit against Chisholm, and more suits may be coming.

I have posted other stories about the activities of the Milwaukee Country District Attorney here and here. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you choose to occupy, this story should concern you. If public servants are allowed to use their offices to intimidate political opponents, we are in serious trouble. I hope all of the people whose houses were stormed into by misguided police sue everyone responsible. That may actually be the best remedy, as the courts, as of yet, do not seem overly concerned.

This Is Getting Totally Ridiculous

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If I don’t like a historic figure, can I simply write a letter to get whatever road, building, bridge or whatever is named after him renamed? It seems to be going that way.

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about the mad dash to rename buildings that were named after Civil War Confederate Generals and other dignitaries of the Confederacy. This prompted another request.

The article reports:

A history teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Portland, Ore. is lobbying for the school to change its name, reports local CBS affiliate KOIN-TV.

The teacher, Hyung Nam, has been calling for a new name for Wilson High for several months.

“We’d have to be ignorant about history to continue to affiliate ourselves with this man,” the history teacher wrote in an April 22 email to all staffers.

…When Wilson was the president of Princeton University, he steadfastly claimed that no black person had ever or would ever apply to the Ivy League school (which now boasts a college named for him).

“The whole temper and tradition of the place are such that no Negro has ever applied for admission, and it seems unlikely that the question will ever assume practical form,” the man who would become president in 1913 said.

While we are at it, what are we going to do with all those things in West Virginia that are named for Senator Robert C. Byrd? If you are interested, you can find a list of places in West Virginia named for Senator Byrd here.

In 2010 The Daily Caller said the following about Robert Byrd:

Byrd joined the Klan (Ku Klux Klan) at the ripe young age of 24 — hardly a young’un by today’s standards, much less those of 1944, when Byrd refused to join the military because he might have to serve alongside “race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds,” according to a letter Byrd wrote to Sen. Theodore Bilbo at the height of World War II.

My point is this: There are some people and chapters in American history that are not pretty. Some of our leaders were racists. However, that was then and this is now. Let’s learn from our past mistakes and move forward. We can’t change the leaders that we elected in the past, but we can pay attention to the views of the leaders we elect in the future. Scrubbing names off of schools, roads, and monuments will not change history. It might even prevent us from being aware of our past mistakes.

Our History Is Not Perfect–But It Is Our History

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When you look at history, you need to remember that you are a traveler in a strange land. The values and things we take for granted today may be very different from the values and things taken for granted at the time you are looking at. We also need to be very wary of people who try to rewrite history or remove parts of our history. Our history is our history–we can’t change it. We can learn from it, but we can’t change it.

Stone Mountain Park is Georgia is considered the “Confederate Rushmore.” The park includes an educational documentary “The Battle for Georgia – a History of the Civil War in Georgia.” The park is an education center dedicated to a very unhappy chapter in American history. Part of that history is the Confederate Battle Flag.

Yesterday Yahoo News posted an article about a request for a boycott of Stone Mountain Park in Georgia:

Democratic state Representative LaDawn Blackett Jones this week urged people to stay away from the park 10 miles (16 km) east of Atlanta because it flies three flags of the pro-slavery Confederacy alongside the U.S. and Georgia state flags.

Bobbie Smith of Fitzgerald, Georgia, who was camping at Stone Mountain with her family, called the boycott call “just stupid.”

Now let’s look at that statement for a minute and put it into context. Britain abolished slavery in the 1830’s. Slavery remained legal in many countries of the world until the end of the 20th Century. It is now technically illegal in all countries, although it is still practiced in some countries in some form with a different name. Before we talk about the ‘pro-slavery Confederacy,’ we need to consider that although slavery is a horrible thing, it was acceptable behavior in many circles at the time. Would the Representative have described 19th Century England as pro-slavery England? To deny that part of America’s history or to try to gloss over it is to deny where we have been.

The article further reports:

The park is on state land and run by the Stone Mountain Memorial Association. Spokesman John Bankhead said, “People on both sides of the issue say it (the flag) belongs in a museum. Here in Georgia, the Stone Mountain Park serves as that.”

The park is known as the “Confederate Mount Rushmore” for its 90-foot-tall (27-meter-tall) relief sculpture of three Confederate figures – President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. The park describes it as the largest high relief sculpture in the world.

The thing we need to remember here is that the Confederacy was not evil. It practiced slavery, which was wrong, but accepted at the time. The Confederate States fought a war with the United States to preserve their way of life–not to take territory. The Confederacy is part of America’s heritage. Hopefully we have learned from the mistake made in accepting slavery and have done a better job of treating all Americans equally. Meanwhile, the hysteria about the Confederate battle flag is a bit overblown. One wonders what is behind the effort to erase this part of America’s history.

Human Rights?

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On Friday, Yahoo News posted a story about  resolution by the United Nation‘s Human Rights Council calling for those responsible for war crimes during last summer’s Gaza conflict to be brought to trial.

Yesterday The Times of India posted an article about the vote. That article reports:

While 41 countries (including most of the European Union) voted in favour of adopting the report, five, including India, abstained. The US was the only country to vote against it. Four other countries who abstained were Kenya, Ethiopia, Paraguay and Macedonia.

Normally I would be in favor of putting anyone on trial who had committed war crimes, but in this case, I think you have to look at the matter carefully.

This is a chart (from Wikipedia) showing the rocket attacks on Israel in 2014 that originated in the Gaza Strip:

rocketattacksonIsrael2014These rockets were not aimed at military targets, they were aimed at civilians. It is also known that Hamas houses rockets in hospitals and other buildings known to house civilians. Hamas is also know to use human shields. I can almost guarantee that the United Nations report will overlook much of this part of the story.

The thing to remember here is that the conflict between Israel and Hamas has more than one dimension. One dimension that should always be considered when listening to stories from the Middle East is the propaganda aspect. In May 2013, I posted a story about the staged death of Muhammad al-Dura, an 11-year old who was used for propaganda purposed after a film was released claiming he had been killed by the Israelis. More details can be found here. Often the propaganda war is more important than actual events on the ground.

Unfortunately, it is very likely that the U.N. investigation will be a sham. The track record on the United Nations in regard to Israel is not good. As of 2015, Israel has been condemned in 62 resolutions by the Council since its creation in 2006—the Council has resolved more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined.

We need to stand by Israel. I don’t know why Europe voted for this, but I am glad to see India abstain.

 

Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave…

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The real advantage to telling the truth is that you don’t have to remember what you said. As you get older, that matters. Today The Wall Street Journal posted an story by Kimberley Strassel showing how lies about her emails are becoming a problem for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ms. Strassel notes that nothing Mrs. Clinton has previously stated about her emails has turned out to be true.

The article cites a few problem areas:

The Democratic presidential aspirant on March 10 held a press conference pitched as her first and last word on the revelation that she’d used a private email server while secretary of state. She told reporters that she’d turned over to the State Department “all my emails that could possibly be work-related.” And she insisted that she “did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.”

Both of those statements have been proven to be false. Ms. Strassel points out that as a result the Benghazi probe, Sidney Blumenthal was forced to turn over his emails, which revealed work-related emails that had not been disclosed. Mr. Blumenthal’s emails also revealed that the emails Mrs. Clinton turned over had been altered–work related sentences and paragraphs had been removed.

Since Mrs. Clinton began turning over her emails, some of them have been designated ‘classified.’

The article points out:

We also know that the State Department has now upgraded at least 25 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails to “classified” status. State is suggesting this is no big deal, noting that it is “routine” to upgrade material during the public-disclosure process. But that’s beside the point. This isn’t about after-the-fact disclosure. It’s about security at the time—whether Mrs. Clinton was sending and storing sensitive government information on a hackable private email system. Turns out, she was. For the record, it is a federal crime to “knowingly” house classified information at an “unauthorized location.”

From what we know so far, Mrs. Clinton is guilty of a crime. However, because she is not Richard Nixon and there is no contemporary Woodward or Bernstein who are going to inform the general public as to what is going on, she is not at risk of being held accountable. This is another example of the American media choosing not to do its job. Our nation needs a media that holds our leaders accountable. Right now we don’t have one.

Illogical Foreign Policy

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The Kurds have been standing up to ISIS since ISIS decided to do horrible things in the Middle East. All of American aid to Iraq goes directly to the Iraqi troops who have, unfortunately, dropped their weapons and run away, giving ISIS access to some really good weapons technology. For whatever reason, the Obama Administration has consistently insisted that all weapons going to Iraq go through Baghdad to Iraqi troops and not directly to the Kurds (who obviously do not cut and run). Well, it’s even worse than that.

Yesterday the U.K. Telegraph reported that the Obama Administration is blocking the attempts of our Middle Eastern allies to send weapons directly to the Kurds.

The article reports:

Some of America’s closest allies say President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, including David Cameron, are failing to show strategic leadership over the world’s gravest security crisis for decades.

They now say they are willing to “go it alone” in supplying heavy weapons to the Kurds, even if means defying the Iraqi authorities and their American backers, who demand all weapons be channelled through Baghdad.

High level officials from Gulf and other states have told this newspaper that all attempts to persuade Mr Obama of the need to arm the Kurds directly as part of more vigorous plans to take on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) have failed. The Senate voted down one attempt by supporters of the Kurdish cause last month.

The officials say they are looking at new ways to take the fight to Isil without seeking US approval.

I have very mixed emotions about this. First of all, the Gulf states should not need American approval to fight ISIS. They should automatically just do it. However, there is another side of this story. Fighting ISIS strengthens Iran. The only difference between the goals of ISIS and the goals of Iran is who will be in charge of the Islamic Caliphate they want to set up. ISIS and Iran both have plans for a worldwide caliphate which they plan to start in the Middle East. The dispute is over who will rule it and whether it will be Sunni or Shia. Both Iran and ISIS have plans to eliminate Israel, so supporting either one puts the Jewish state at risk. Note also that ISIL stands for “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” The Levant includes the land of Israel as part of the Islamic state.

The article further reports:

The Peshmerga have been successfully fighting Isil, driving them back from the gates of Erbil and, with the support of Kurds from neighbouring Syria, re-establishing control over parts of Iraq’s north-west.

But they are doing so with a makeshift armoury. Millions of pounds-worth of weapons have been bought by a number of European countries to arm the Kurds, but American commanders, who are overseeing all military operations against Isil, are blocking the arms transfers.

One of the core complaints of the Kurds is that the Iraqi army has abandoned so many weapons in the face of Isil attack, the Peshmerga are fighting modern American weaponry with out-of-date Soviet equipment.

At least one Arab state is understood to be considering arming the Peshmerga directly, despite US opposition.

I think we need to get out of the way and let the Arab states arm the Peshmerga. In terms of the Middle East, lately we seem to have a gift for coming down on the wrong side of history.

Losing Our Rights

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The Weekly Standard posted an article today about Aaron and Melissa Klein, who previously ran a bakery called Sweet Cakes by Melissa. The bakery is now closed and shuttered after the State of Oregon fined them  $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding. To add insult to injury, Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian added a gag order to the fine, ordering the Kleins “to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published, circulated, issued or displayed, any communication, notice, advertisement or sign of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services or privileges of a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of sexual orientation.”

I am hoping that the gag order will be repealed. The fine should also be repealed, but I don’t see much chance of that happening in Oregon. This is another example of what is happening to our First Amendment–the concept of the ‘free exercise of religion‘ has been replaced with the idea of ‘freedom of religion.’ The concept of ‘free exercise’ allows people to practice their religion in the public square. The concept of ‘freedom of religion’ confines religion to the interior of the church. It is hard to be ‘salt and light’ in a society (as mentioned by Jesus) when you are not allowed to express your views in that society.