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| Bolton: Obama Gets an 'F' on Foreign Policy |
| Thu, 31 Jul 2014 15:58:05 EST Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says the failure of President Obama to lead on the world stage leaves us more vulnerable and some of the most volatile areas on earth even more unstable. Commenting on crises ranging from the Israel-Hamas conflict to the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) to Russia's defiance in Ukraine, Bolton says if he were grading the Obama administration on these major global tests, the report card would be rather depressing. "It would be fail, no question about it. We are becoming more endangered. Our friends are becoming more endangered by the weak and ineffective policies we're pursuing," said Bolton. When asked which of the hot spots should be of greatest concern, Bolton instead chose the nation he believes to be pulling the strings in multiple crises. "If you look at the Middle East, that's the most critical because it's the most dangerous. The center of all of this trouble is Iran [because of its] support for international terrorism, like Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran is the most dangerous country in the region, the most threatening to friends of ours, Israel and Arab countries alike, and ultimately the biggest threat of the region to the United States if it were to give nuclear weapons to terrorists," said Bolton, who says Iran is emboldened because U.S. leadership is lacking. "The Obama administration has not dealt seriously with the ayatollahs in Tehran. It doesn't appreciate their threat. It's trying to negotiate with them in a way that will give Iran the advantage to our disadvantage. We need somebody to stand up in the Democratic Party and say, 'Mr. President, your policies on Iran are endangering America, Israel and our Arab allies and they need to be reversed,'" said Bolton. He says the clearest example of Iran's influence is in the actions of Hamas, as it continues to lob rockets and Iranian-made missiles into Israel while Hezbollah has the same weaponry in Lebanon. "Between Hamas and Hezbollah, they can cover the entire civilian population of Israel. In a way, the battle that Israel is now fighting and is about to fight with Hamas is a surrogate battle with Iran and really Iran's nuclear weapons program," said Bolton. Bolton says that reason alone should be enough for the Obama administration to be far less condemning of Israel's actions and start backing away from incessant cease-fire demands. "I think Israel's legitimate exercise of its right of self-defense here is something the United States should be supporting, not trying to get a cease-fire that prevents Israel from doing what it really needs to do to protect itself. (They're saying) all the time they've got Israel's back. That's not the actual policy they're pursuing," said Bolton. The Israel-Hamas fighting is also revealing some curious loyalties in the region. Just a year after shedding Muslim Brotherhood rule, Egypt is cracking down on Hamas as well, from securing its border with Gaza to demolishing tunnel networks created by Hamas. Meanwhile, longtime U.S. allies Qatar and Turkey are openly hostile to Israel. According to Bolton, many Arab states want Israel to crush Hamas because it represents a blow to the power Iran holds in the Middle East and uses as leverage against its neighbors. Nonetheless, he believes weak leadership from the U.S. is also playing a role in some of the brazen opposition to Israel. "It shows who's isolated here is the Obama White House and how much more support we'd have if we demonstrated a little bit of leadership. Friends like Turkey that go the other way do so because they think they can oppose the United States with impunity. They see a weak, inattentive leader in the White House and they're performing accordingly," said Bolton. Iran is also a key player in the major developments to the north in Syria and Iraq, where radical Sunni militants claim to have erased a border and created the Islamic State. That movement has led to mass executions of Iraqi and Syrian forces and the persecution of Christians to either convert, flee or die in parts of Iraq. Bolton says it does little good to dwell upon the squandered opportunity in Iraq, although he does say it serves as a lesson into why the U.S. cannot withdraw from the world and leave outcomes to outside forces. Once again, he sees failed policies from the Obama administration. "We have plenty of Sunnis in Iraq and Syria who oppose ISIS, but they don't want to be put under Iran's influence. Yet, by negotiating with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, we're giving the ayatollahs legitimacy. It just shows, from top to bottom, the Obama administration doesn't understand what's at stake in the Middle East or what we need to do about it," said Bolton. Another foreign policy headache continues to unfold with Russia and Ukraine. Two weeks ago, Russian-backed rebels shot down a commercial airliner, killing nearly 300 people. This week, President Obama sternly announced new economic sanctions against Russia . However, Bolton says sanctions like these do more damage to our position than doing nothing at all. "When you put in sanctions that are ineffective, it says to the Russians, 'That's all there is.' So their calculus is they're getting away with their aggressive, belligerent policies," said Bolton. Bolton says it's not only the case with U.S. sanctions but European Union actions as well, as evidenced by new EU sanctions cracking down on Russian banks but none of their subsidiaries in the European Union. "There are comparable loopholes in the sanctions the president announced this week that say to the Russians, 'They're simply not serious. We can take minor hits and yet continue aiding the separatists in Ukraine and pursuing aggression on the continent of Europe," he said. |
| Legislating Judges Advance Gay Marriage |
| Tue, 29 Jul 2014 16:29:49 EST Traditional marriage advocates are slamming a three-judge panel from the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for striking down Virginia's constitutional amendment affirming traditional marriage, saying the decision violates the separation of powers and potentially opens the doors to any arrangement of adults being considered marriage. On Monday, Circuit Judges Henry F. Floyd and Roger L. Gregory voted to strike down the constitutional amendment defining marriage in the commonwealth as the union of one man and one woman. The amendment was approved by 57 percent of Virginia voters in 2006. 1cOver the decades, the Supreme Court has demonstrated that the right to marry is an expansive liberty interest that may stretch to accommodate changing societal norms, 1d wrote Floyd in his opinion. For traditional marriage supporters, that rationale showcases judges who have no problem thinking of themselves as lawmakers. "With this decision, I think you see another example of the courts exercising legislative powers. They actually believe they have the right to make new law and now they're not even afraid of proclaiming that in their decision," said Liberty Counsel Special Counsel Rena Lindevaldsen, who is also a dean and professor at the Liberty University School of Law. However, it is the summary argument from Judges Floyd and Gregory that is raising many eyebrows about how widely same-sex marriage activists may want to broaden the definition. "Civil marriage is one of the cornerstones of our way of life. It allows individuals to celebrate and publicly declare their intentions to form lifelong partnerships, which provide unparalleled intimacy, companionship, emotional support, and security. The choice of whether and whom to marry is an intensely personal decision that alters the course of an individual 19s life. Denying same-sex couples this choice prohibits them from participating fully in our society, which is precisely the type of segregation that the Fourteenth Amendment cannot countenance," they wrote. Lindevaldsen contends that approach leaves a stunning amount of room to define marriage in an infinite number of ways. "I do see that as a risk. First you have the court proclaiming that the right is ever-expanding and then you have this language that adults should be free to choose to love who they want to love. We already have challenges to the polygamy bans. We have a movement out there suggesting that two, three, four, five people should be able to come together in the marital union. So this opens that door entirely. Once you've opened the door past one man and one woman, which has historical and foundational roots, what's to say the line can't be drawn to allow two, three, four and five people to marry," said Lindevaldsen. While the judges may have opened that door, same-sex marriage activists insist they are no interested in growing the number of people in a marriage but instead to allow two people of the same gender to wed. Lindevaldsen says once you start meddling with the definition of marriage it will be hard to justify forbidding marriage to people in other unconventional relationships. "I like to think we could limit it, but from a legal perspective and realistically speaking, once you open the door the door is open. There simply is no reason to now say that three consenting adults, who love each other and want to raise children together, shouldn't be allowed to marry once we retreat from the definition of marriage as one man and one woman," said Lindevaldsen. The two judges also became the first to invoke "segregation" into a marriage ruling. It's especially significant in Virginia, which was the state at the center of the interracial marriage debate in the late 1960s. In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of interracial couples to wed. Lindevaldsen says there are no genuine similarities between the two issues. "The movement for same-sex marriage is entirely distinct from the case that took place to allow people of different races to marry. Marriage is about the coming together of one man and one woman. A ban that prohibits people because of their skin color from marrying has nothing to do with advancing that purpose. In fact, it's racial discrimination. The idea that that's the same as two people of the same sex, who don't promote the state's interests in raising children and coming together to build that firm foundation is entirely distinct from that," said LIndevaldsen, noting that black pastors are among the most vocal in denouncing comparisons of the same-sex marriage movement to the civil rights era. In addition to alleging the two judges legislated from the bench, Lindevaldsen also claims they unintentionally undermined one of the key arguments behind the same-sex marriage movement. "You have the majority opinion stating that it's wrong for us to have argued that same-sex couples only have sexual relations with same-sex [partners]. So they're actually saying that same-sex couples can come together in opposite-sex relationships as well, which plays into this pro-creation argument. But it also undermines their argument that 'we're born gay, can't change and we need the right to marry.' Now the majority is proclaiming that they have this free right to engage in sexual relations with people of the same sex of opposite sex. So where's that going to take us?" said Lindevaldsen. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring made headlines earlier this year by announcing the state would no longer defend the constitutional amendment. In the wake of Monday's decision, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said he would also stop defending the law in his state. "I've actually been working on a project right now with regard to the duties of state attorneys general to defend the law. They simply do not have the authority to refuse to defend the law. They are charged with enforcing the civil laws. The mechanism to repeal laws is through the legislature or have it declared unconstitutional through the courts. But the people deserve a defense of the laws that were duly enacted," she said. The marriage debate is often seen in political terms, but all three judges on the panel were either nominated or promoted by Republican presidents. Floyd was nominated to the district court and promoted to the appeals level by President Obama. Gregory was nominated for the district level by President Clinton and chosen for the appeals court by Bush. The lone dissenting judge, Paul V. Niemeyer, was a George H.W. Bush appointee. Lindevaldsen is not surprised. "Obviously, the vetting process wasn't what it should have been. More importantly, we're talking about a legal education and judicial system that has been raised on the idea that as judges they set public policy and make law. That transcends political parties, Republican or Democrat. That's a problem that needs to be addressed. Justice Scalia talks about it often of how lawyers have been trained. So it's not surprising you see Republican appointees getting it wrong on what their role is," she said. The relative silence of Republicans and even conservatives on the marriage issue in this year's midterm elections is also troubling to Lindevaldsen. "I think it's wrong for conservatives to shy away from this issue by avoiding these issues that are at the forefront of the cultural debate right now. Societal division is taking place. We don't distinguish ourselves, if you're a conservative, from the other parties. I think we're trying too hard to meld into a mushy middle," said Lindevaldsen. "By doing that, you don't distinguish yourself and set yourself apart for what you truly stand for. We really can't shy away from this. This is the issue of the day that we have to stand for and fight for. If we're going to be afraid of it, the consequences for our society...I don't even want to think about where we're going to go," she said. |
| A Win for Vets |
| Mon, 28 Jul 2014 16:17:32 EST A leading veterans group is hailing two key provisions of the proposed Veterans Affairs reform bill as critical to improving care for our nation's heroes but warns that spending needs to be controlled and oversight must be even more intense to make sure positive changes are really happening. Over the weekend, Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders (I-Vermont) and House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Florida) announced they agreed on a framework for reforms to accelerate care for veterans and address the bureaucratic mess that led to veterans waiting months or even years to see a doctor. The plan would cost a minimum of $17 billion. The majority of that money would be set aside for veterans to seek medical care outside of the VA system if they cannot get an appointment within the promised window of 14 days. In addition, the bill contains the major GOP priority of granting the secretary of Veterans' Affairs the power to fire bureaucrats who are simply not doing their jobs. "The two principles, particularly the expanded firing authority and the expanded access to private care are the two most important reforms in this bill. We feel they will lay the groundwork for future VA reform in fundamentally transforming how the VA delivers care and benefits to our veterans," said Dan Caldwell, issues and legislative campaign manager at Concerned Veterans for America. While he believes both of those components are essential to any meaningful reform, Caldwell says the greater choice in health care options for veterans is the most important reform. "We think that allowing veterans more health care choices will improve their overall well-being, will get veterans out of this failing single-payer health care system at the VA and ultimately reduce wait time," said Caldwell, who believes transferring more and more of veterans' medical needs to the private sector is a worthy goal. "We think that a lot of these health care services, particularly on the primary care front, could probably be better served within the private sector at a family doctor or primary care physician. We don't think this is really a mission change from what VA's original intent was. We think this was a mission intent change from where the VA's mission has expanded in recent decades," said Caldwell. Concerned Veterans for America is also cheering the plan to give more latitude to the secretary of Veterans' Affairs to remove personnel at the upper levels for incompetence or non-performance. It's a power he hopes the incoming secretary will use widely. "You'll probably have fire thousands of managers throughout the VA. The rot at that institution is just so widespread. It is just so ingrained, culturally, within that institution that you're going to need to remove a lot of people from the VA and then fundamentally transform the culture," said Caldwell. Sen. Sanders insisted on including a 21-day window for any dismissed employees to challenge their firing. Caldwell says this will make it harder to clean house and we're already seeing that problem take shape. "What you're seeing often with these employees is that it takes two years to fire someone. We're not talking about low-level employees. We're talking about senior managers. It should be very easy to remove those people from their positions," he said, noting the problem removing one of the most infamous people associated with this scandal. "Out in Phoenix, Arizona, where the scandal broke, Sharon Helman is the hospital director that was responsible directly or indirectly for the deaths of up to 40 veterans as the result of manipulated wait lists. The process to fire her began the day (former Veterans' Affairs Secretary Gen. Eric) Shinseki resigned. she's still on the payroll," said Caldwell. "Two other people that started to be fired are still on the payroll. They've been receiving pay now for close to two months as employees of the VA. They're going to drag it out as long as they can because they have the incentive to. I think that this new accountability reform will remove that attempt to drag it out, said Caldwell, noting that government unions will likely challenge the new policy but ultimately lose in court. Caldwell says Concerned Veterans for America is very worried about the spending associated with the legislation, not only the amounts designated for the key reforms but also for what he considers unnecessary add-ons. Ultimately, he says there will need to be very close oversight from Congress, the media and many others because the VA still hasn't learned its lessons. "They're still not being forthcoming with Congress. They're not being forthcoming with the media. They're not providing requested information. The VA conference committee needed detailed accounting information from the VA to give to the Congressional Budget Office. The VA gave them complete information. It's going to require a lot of continued focus...to make sure this organization is transformed," said Caldwell. |
| Homebuying has more hidden costs than young people expect |
| Mon, 28 Jul 2014 10:14:50 EST By Jack Howard Realtor Rick Harris worked in a casino when he bought his first house. The house turned out to be the real gamble. His wife found an ad for a home in the newspaper that said it could be bought with nothing down. 1cSo I came home from work one day, 1d he said. 1cWe were living in Reno, Nevada. And my wife said, 18We 19re moving. 19 And I said, 18Oh. 19 That 19s surprising. And she 18We bought a house today. 19 1d He soon discovered what they bought. Harris called the house this 1cfunny little kind of thirties cottage house that was stuck out in the middle of this funny lot just north of Reno. 1d He said it looked so 1cstuck out 1d because the seller 19s house didn 19t belong on the vacant lot. 1cSo essentially we bought our house but had a 30-year lease on our land, 1d said Harris. Harris has now made almost one-thousand transactions. He 19s the owner-broker of a real estate firm in Oregon and the regional vice president of the National Association of Realtors for the western region. He says he would have done things differently. 1cWell if I had known then what I know now. Even though it was a surprise to me. And even though if I 19d had a realtor involved there, I would have done things very, very differently, 1d said Harris. It starts with the offer, says realtor Rebecca Spitzer. She says depositing one percent of your bid improves your offer 19s chance of being accepted. That 19s called an earnest money deposit. In addition, prospective homebuyers will be asked whether you want a bunch of inspections. Hint: You do. 1cIt 19s this extensive, 20-something pages to fill-out. Your realtor will be asking you several questions in terms of 26 do want a home inspector, do you want an appraiser, do you want a lead inspection, 1d she said. Woah is this all really necessary? Spitzer says yes. She says a home inspector looks at the house to see if anything 19s wrong. 1cAn appraiser can do a CMA, which is a Comparative Market Analysis, basically telling you what the value of that house is according to the current market, 1d said Spitzer. After the home inspection, there 19s a buyer inspection. A loan officer figures out if you 19re eligible for a no-money-down loan through the VA. Or the Federal Housing Administration may give you a reduced down payment. Spitzer says it 19s good to have a twenty percent or greater down payment. Without a twenty percent down payment, banks require mortgage insurance because the loan is riskier without that down payment. That will mean a higher monthly payment. Realtor Rick Harris says homebuyers then have to remember the other aspects of a loan 13 the principal, interest, insurance and property taxes. 1cPrincipal and interest are the cost of the loan plus a small amount of the principal balance that gets paid every month. The taxes and insurance are things people aren 19t used to paying. And so that 19s going to be a thing that lead to a higher cost up front, 1d he said. Harris says some costs of home-buying are offset by government refunds. 1cOne of the great values of owning a home is that your property taxes and mortgage interest that you pay are deductible on your federal return and, in many states, on your state return as well, 1d said Harris. And you 19re making those payments for 15 or 30 years. Harris says that sense of permanence is well worth all of the costs of home-buying. |
| 'We're at the Tipping Point Right Now' |
| Fri, 25 Jul 2014 15:51:48 EST Rep. Tom McClintock (R-California) is slamming the Obama administration for refusing to enforce federal immigration laws, saying our nation is already at the tipping point of disaster from failing to secure our borders and warning that any special refugee status for illegal entrants will result in a fierce response from Congress. On Thursday, McClintock took to the House floor and delivered a blistering attack on the Obama administration for what he said was its deliberate neglect of its duty to protect our nation's borders. "If we are not willing to enforce our current laws, there is no reason to believe that any future laws will be enforced. And until we enforce them, we really can't accurately assess what changes may be needed," said McClintock in his floor speech. In a follow-up interview, McClintock says Obama is abdicating what should be his top priority. "Border security is the single most important responsibility of the federal government. If it cannot discharge that responsibility, all of its others become meaningless," he said. "They have completely abandoned the responsibility the federal government has to defend our borders. As the chief executive, the president is responsible for that. He is required to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He's done exactly the opposite." In his House speech, McClintock also warned that history is littered with nations that failed to protect themselves. "History is shouting its warning at us: nations that either cannot or will not defend their borders aren't around very long," he said Thursday. McClintock elaborated on that statement later, saying the U.S. is perilously close to becoming one of those nations. "I think we're at the tipping point right now. A majority of Americans have awakened to the fact that we face an unprecedented crisis on our southern border. For the first time in American history, that border, as a practical matter, is completely undefended and wide open and is being crossed by thousands and thousands of illegal immigrants," said McClintock. The congressman says this entire border cris would have been avoided if the Obama administration simply enforced existing laws or even just some of them. "What we really need to do is enforce is enforce the existing immigration law, which provides for serious sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants and completion of the border fence. Also, we've got to deport illegal immigrants who come into contact with law enforcement or who apply illegally for government assistance. Current law provides for their deportation. If we are not willing to deport such illegal immigrants, then our immigration laws become meaningless," said McClintock. On Friday, the White House announced it was considering granting special refugee status to minors in Honduras because of the country's high crime rate. No decision has been made, but McClintock is outraged at the mere mention of such a policy. "Think about what they're actually saying. They're saying, 'This wave of illegal immigration is not arriving here fast enough so we want to fly them to America,'. That's what they're saying" said McClintock, noting that such an approach to refugees would quickly lead to a very slippery slope. "If they're conferred refugee status for simply fearing violence, that makes eligible every person in every part of the world, including the south side of Chicago and most parts of Detroit. Refugee status, by the way, entitles them to welfare benefits and legal residency," he said. "Hopefully, (Congress) won't have to address that. If we do, I believe that Congress would have no choice but to exercise the full power of the purse and seriously consider other options," said McClintock. As for the current border emergency, McClintock believes House Republicans are largely in lockstep on what needs to happen next. "We need to detain all new arrivals rather than releasing them into the general population, expedite deportation hearings, provide unrestricted access for law enforcement to all federal lands at the border. Right now, they're severely restricted over which lands they can even access," said McClintock, who also wants to see the National Guard activated in whatever capacity it is needed to secure the border. With Democrats controlling the Senate and Obama in the White House, Republicans have their work cut out for them. However, McClintock says conservatives have a crucial ally that just needs to get engaged. "I think the American people are going to need to weigh in on this," he said. "I think these are all measures the American people recognize are desperately needed and which they would overwhelmingly support. I think if the Senate were to stand in the way of such emergency action, there would be hell to pay." McClintock says the devastating impact of unchecked illegal immigration is not hypothetical. He says California is living through it right now. "The impact goes to every part of our social service structure. If we're going to provide free food and clothing and housing and medical care and transportation and legal representation and relocation, the implications are overwhelming. We're already seeing our schools, our hospitals, our courts, our law enforcement, our prisons all being overwhelmed by this flood of illegal immigration. Local and state budgets are being stretched to the max," said McClintock. Perhaps of even greater concern, he says, is that the current episode on our border could permanently damage the rule of law in this country when it comes to immigration. "We're also going to watch our legal immigration laws simply become irrelevant. Why would anyone go to all the trouble of obeying our immigration laws when they can reap the same benefits by ignoring them?" said McClintock. |
| Get Out, Joe! |
| Fri, 25 Jul 2014 15:40:43 EST Hillary Clinton's disastrous book tour has more high-profile Democrats contemplating a run for the White House in 2016. That includes Vice President Joe Biden. In their latest parody, the Capitol Steps bring Clinton and Biden together. Listen as Hillary tries to force Biden out of the race while Biden vows to run. |
| Why Millennials Should Care About Social Security Now |
| Thu, 24 Jul 2014 16:14:11 EST When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, it 19s possible he didn 19t understand the huge effect his social welfare plan would have. In 2014, over 59 million Americans will receive almost $863 billion in Social Security benefits. 9 out of 10 individuals over the age of 65 receive benefits and among those, half of elderly married beneficiaries rely on Social Security for 50% of their income. 47% of single, elderly beneficiaries rely on Social Security for 90% of their income. These numbers are in addition to the disabled workers and dependent family members of deceased workers who also receive benefits. In a word, Social Security is huge. Unfortunately, the system is in dire need of repair, and that spells bad news for young people. Andrew Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and he 19s also worked as deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration. When asked if Social Security will be around for millennials, his answer isn 19t reassuring. "The answer to that is yes and no," he says. Biggs says that the program isn 19t going anywhere, but what a young person receives will vary. "The idea that you're not going to get a penny from Social Security, I really think is false. On the other hand, what are the chances I'm going to get everything I've been promised from Social Security? And I think those chances are pretty slim," he says. If that isn 19t depressing enough, Biggs goes on to say that postponing the problem isn 19t helping anyone either. "The Sooner you fix it the easier it is. For every year that goes by, we're essentially putting off the problem and so it gets to be harder to solve," says Biggs. A solution to the problem isn 19t going to come easily, and that shouldn 19t surprise anyone. Economists each seem to have their own ideas of how to create solvency, and they fiercely debate one another over the pros and cons of their plans. Melissa Favreault is a Senior Fellow in the Urban Institute 19s Income and Benefits Policy Center. She says that even if economists can 19t come to an agreement, though, almost all the proposed solutions include some mix of adjustments on the tax or revenue side, and adjustments to benefits. "Some of the proposals that are most common are things like lifting the cap on earnings that are taxable for Social Security. There's also some talk about increasing the taxation of benefits, or broadening the base, for example, to include things like health insurance benefits that are currently not taxed for Social Security purposes," she says. The proposed benefits adjustments are equally varied. "One that we hear a lot about are things like increasing the full retirement age, or increasing the early retirement age. We also hear about things like reducing the cost of living adjustment. Among proposals that we've seen in a lot of recent plans are adjustments in the rate of growth for benefits," says Favreault. Though a solution will likely entail a combination of changes, Biggs says the most likely change he sees is the retirement age. "The retirement age currently is slowly shifting from 65 up to 67. It's something that is not an easy change to make, but I think encouraging people to work longer is really the best way to address these issues," he says. But some are disappointed with any and all attempts at fixing Social Security. When the system was designed, it was based on a three-legged stool of retirement: private pension benefits, private savings, and Social Security. Many see a decline in private pensions and savings and an increasing reliance on the third leg, Social Security. For young people, this means they should start saving for retirement now. For other advocates, the increasing reliance on Social Security is the beginning of a downward trend, and they want the freedom to take their retirement savings into their own hands 14to privatize the system. While privatization models of retirement savings have shown huge gains for savings invested in the stock market, Biggs is quick to point out that the biggest issue in privatizing the system is something called 1ctransition cost." "If you take the money that you're currently paying into Social Security and you put it into a personal account on your own, that's money the system doesn't have to pay out benefits to your grandparents. So during that time, you have to come up with additional money to cover this transition," says Biggs. It 19s that transition cost, and the fact that the current system needs money flowing in to function, that necessitates a multifaceted, well-thought-out solution to Social Security 19s solvency issues. For Favreault, the most important thing for young people to understand, is that Social Security requires a group perspective. "We're kind of all in this together, and we're saying that as a society, we want people of retirement age and people who become disabled, or the children of workers who die before retirement, that they're protected," she says. Biggs admits that, for a lot of young people, that can be hard to swallow. "Is it fair to say that a lot of younger folks are kind of getting ripped of? Well, that's kind of what the numbers show. So you want to find some solution that smooths things out and makes the system sustainable, not just in a financial sense, but sustainable in that people feel it's something they can really support," he says. For a lot of millennials, Social Security is something that they see having little effect on their day-to-day lives. For a solution to the rapidly approaching solvency crisis, though, millennials and other young Americans will have to decide this is an issue they want to fix. Otherwise, they 19ll bear the financial consequences. |
| Israel Halfway to Victory |
| Thu, 24 Jul 2014 16:02:09 EST Retired Israeli Brigadier Gen. Elihu Ben-Onn says Israeli Defense Forces have reduced the Hamas rocket arsenal by about 50 percent and he says the military operation will continue until Hamas has no rockets remaining and its tunnel system is eradicated. "These bloody terrorist had more than 9,000 rockets. We believe we destroyed half of it, that means more than 4,000 rockets. So the mission is not accomplished yet," said Ben-Onn, who is disgusted as the tactics employed by Hamas to maximize civilian casualties. "They protect themselves with children and women and hospitals and mosques. They believe that if they hide behind them, (Israel) will not go there," he said. "They want them to get the bullets first. They don't fight like soldiers (but) like cowards." "We still have to go forward in order to stop all of them. They still have thousands of rockets," said Ben-Onn. In addition to the threat posed by relentless rockets fired from Gaza, Israel is also committed to the arduous task of destroying the elaborate system of tunnels that allows Hamas to slip into Israel underground. "Israel has to move inside and actually go to all basements, all the shelters, all the underground cities Hamas built under the civilians," said Ben-Onn, who described how the tunnel system works. "They were dug in the last couple of years. They start in the living room or the kitchen or in the bedroom of the children. They start it from that kitchen down to the ground and then one or two kilometers, all the way to the border," he said. Ben-Onn admits discovering all the tunnels is a painstaking task. "It's very complicated. you have to go from house to house, from building to building. You need a lot of information, a lot of intelligence. Of course, when you find those terrorists, it's sad they don't go out and fight. They prefer to be behind human shelters," said Ben-Onn. Several media reports have explained that Hamas regularly fires rockets and stations known military targets in areas of high civilian populations, such as schools, hospitals and even United Nations relief shelters. However, the majority of international reports simply point to the civilian deaths occurring when those sites are attacked by Israel and those reports lead to growing international cries for a cease-fire. "Well, we are used to that. Unfortunately, for many years, some international media prefer to take the propaganda point of view of the terrorists. I always explain it as simple as it is. If you have a daylight robbery in a bank and terrorists are holding a hostage with a pistol on their head, if you are a police officer you must shoot him before he kills all the hostages," said Ben-Onn. The United States government played a key role in two stories connected to the Middle East conflict. On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced a halt to all U.S. flights into Tel Aviv. Many European nations and airlines followed suit. The U.S. allowed flights to resume late Wednesday night. "We were a little bit surprised because British Airways from London didn't stop the flights to Tel Aviv. I'm very glad they decided to cancel this wrong decision," said Ben-Onn, explaining that Bengurion Airport is the most secure in the world and Hamas rockets aren't even a threat to aircraft. On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry was caught on a live television microphone saying he needed to head to the Middle East to broker a truce and he seemed to be mocking the notion that the Israeli military actions were part of a pinpoint operation. Nonetheless, Ben-Onn believes the Obama administration remains a strong ally of Israel. He's also touched by the outpouring of support from the American people. "We would like to thank the United States of America, the people. We have thousands of supporters. People are calling my radio station, sending emails, faxes and Facebook (messages). They say, 'We support the state of Israel. We understand your struggle, your efforts," said Ben-Onn. For those who believe Israel's response to the rocket attacks from Hamas is no proportionate, Ben-Onn suggests Americans consider how they would react if Washington, D.C. were attacked day after day by rockets from a neighboring country. Ultimately, he says, Israel must defend itself. "We have an enemy. Our enemy doesn't recognize our right to exist in this area. The enemy is attacking Israel by missiles and rockets, especially our civilians. They are war criminals and we have to protect ourselves," he said. |
| Vitter Pushes Speedier Deportations |
| Wed, 23 Jul 2014 17:32:01 EST Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana) is spearheading a legislative approach to address the border crisis, one that he says will result in far more deportations in less time and slam the door shut on the Obama administration's ability to use it's own discretion on enforcing the existing laws. The plan calls for expediting the deportation process, greatly reducing the grounds for asylum in the U.S. and requiring those in violation of immigration laws to be detained until they are sent home. The senator also says his bill is far more aggressive than the bipartisan plan sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), which also promises to speed up the processing of those in the country illegally. "(There are) two main differences. First of all, we raise the standard for anything like an asylum claim. They do not. Secondly, we absolutely ensure that these illegals are detained and not given over to anyone, like family members, until they're deported out of the country, assuming that's appropriate. They do not," said Vitter. Vitter says his legislation also gives the president far less wiggle room in using the law to advance his political agenda. He says he doesn't trust the administration to enforce the law, so he believes tying its hands through this new legislation would also be an improvement. "Quite frankly, I don't trust the administration with regard to enforcement in general, and that's why my bill doesn't give them room to maneuver. It doesn't leave much, if anything, to their discretion. That's another big difference between our legislation and some other alternatives out there in Congress, even among Republicans," he said. What needs to change in our border policy is not particularly complicated, according to Vitter. He says there are certain things that obviously need to change to stem the current tide of people illegally crossing the border and dissuade others from coming in the future. "We need to detain these illegals and not let them go and not release them into American society but quickly and efficiently deport them to their home countries," said Vitter. "Way too many of these illegals coming in are basically caught and released to family members in the country, many of them illegal. The great majority of those are never heard from again. They're given a court date and a 'pretty please' note to show up in court. Ina great majority of cases, that never happens." Another headache for Border Patrol officers and other officials dealing with the border surge is the vast number of people issuing rehearsed pleas for asylum. Vitter says the approach to that would change through his bill as well. "There will be a very, very small percentage who have a real sort of asylum claim. We also strengthened the standard so that people can't just lie their way through that," he said. "You have to do more than just say a few magic words. Part of the problem now is folks quickly learn what magic words or vague claims they have to make to possibly have that argument. We raise the standard, make it more stringent and meaningful, so that they have to have a lot more detail or documentation about these sorts of issues," said Vitter. Genuine war refugees and victims of sex trafficking, among others, can still find safe haven in the U.S. under Vitter's plan. However, he says there is a specific standard that must be met to be allowed to stay. "Is it clear when they go back to their home country that they are going to be in a completely untenable situation. That doesn't mean, 'Are there problems in their home country? Is there poverty in their home country.' Of course, that's been the case forever and it's going to continue to be the case for awhile, unfortunately," said Vitter. Democrats regularly reject such an approach, arguing that the moral thing to do is help these people, many of them children, who are desperate for a better life. Vitter says the current policy is having exactly the opposite effect of that stated goal. "Right now we have a policy that causes that humanitarian crisis to grow, to get worse, more minors being put into the hands of more criminal gangs, coyotes, dangerous people who often times who often times abuse these minors. It's not a humanitarian policy if that policy is causing that to continue and to grow," he said. Within the past few days, Texas officials started to cast doubt on the media narrative that the vast majority of the unaccompanied minors are small children, going so far as to estimate 80-85 percent are teenagers and many of those affiliated with gangs. Does Vitter believe the media are getting the story right? "No I don't, because I think they, for the most part, convey the story line that these are all tiny kids. They're not. It's much more of a mixed bag. It depends on what media reporting you look at. I think the more accurate picture is slowly getting out," he said. That said, the senator insists the government needs to treat everyone with respect. "We need to treat them all carefully and humanely. The question is what do we do with them. We need to detain them and then quickly deport them. That's what's going to stop this flow from continuing and continuing to grow," said Vitter. In addition to the impact on the border states, Vitter says this crisis impacts every other state as long as the government is actively handing off illegal immigrants to sponsors here in the U.S. He is aware of 1,200 cases in Louisiana alone since this crisis began. But what are the political odds and how is the bill being received by lawmakers? "Great support on Capitol Hill, even greater support in America," said Vitter. "I think it's galvanizing the American people around the common sense notion that we need to do something meaningful in quickly, effectively deporting these folks back to their home country." However, just as Democratic control of the U.S. Senate stymies the GOP on other issues, Vitter's bill will struggle to reach the floor. Nonetheless, he remains hopeful. "Harry Reid seems determined to just take up a spending bill that's basically given President Obama a big chunk of money, mostly to house and feed these illegal aliens, not to fix the problem. That isn't going to go anywhere. I hope when that doesn't go anywhere that opens up the debate and we look at real enforcement measures that can make a difference," said Vitter. |
| Subsidy Showdown Threatens Obamacare |
| Tue, 22 Jul 2014 16:48:37 EST Conflicting federal appeals court decisions might soon bring Obamacare back to the Supreme Court, this time to determine whether patients can receive subsidies through the federal health exchange even though the Affordable Care Act says they are only permitted through state-run exchanges. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 that the law repeatedly refers to subsidies being available only through state exchanges and, therefore, the law must be interpreted that way. However, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that subsidies could come through either the federal or state exchanges. However, the D.C court is more prominent, and observers say its verdict carries considerable weight. "This is a hugely important decision. The government has now lost a case that really addresses the heart and soul of what this law is supposed to do," said Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute. "The law specifically says, at least seven times, that the subsidies are only allowed through an exchange established by a state. It was part of Congress' coercion to try to get the states to set up their own exchanges," she said. "The states basically called their bluff and said, 'Nope, we're not doing this.' So when the law says seven times that tax credits for health insurance can only be distributed through an exchange created by a state, the court said, 'The law must mean what it says and we're going to rule that way.' Congratulations to them for upholding the rule of law." The administration is appealing the decision of the three-judge panel to the full D.C. Circuit, which includes seven Democratic appointees and four selections by GOP presidents. According to Turner, precedent suggests the full, or en banc, court will not be interested in second-guessing three of their colleagues, but she says there is a tinge of politics on the bench that did not exist until recently. "The judges really respect each other. They don't want to overrule one another, although the Obama administration has been stacking this court with several new appointees. They very likely would have the votes to overrule the three-judge panel, but it would look very, very political and would likely discredit future decisions," said Turner, who says it is vital for one full appeals court to rule in line with the three judges. "It is consequential, because in order for this to go to the Supreme Court, you would then have to have different rulings in the different appeals courts. There are four similar cases going through the courts. So you'd have to have another court decide the same as the D.C. Circuit Court panel has today for the Supreme Court to heart it. If there are no conflicts in the appeals courts' decisions, then the Supreme Court would less likely take it up," said Turner. Tuesday's decision in the D.C. Circuit does not force an end to subsidies through the federal exchange while the appeals process plays out. But if the decision is ultimately upheld, the implications are huge. "About 4.5 million people, who are getting subsidies through the federal exchanges, are not getting them legally. Eighty-seven percent of the people signing up for health insurance in the exchanges are getting subsidies, some of them significant subsidies of $12,000-14,000. Those are not legal in the healthcare.gov website," said Turner. If the Supreme Court were to declare subsidies obtained through the federal exchange illegal, Turner says it would give great incentive for lawmakers to take a smarter approach to health care reform. "Congress would then have to go back to the drawing board. I think people that opposed this law all along would actually have more bargaining power now to be able to move to a place where we can actually get subsidies that are structured the right way, not this "mother may I," 159 new government rules and commissions that are basically running our health sector," said Turner. She says urgent action would be need to help people trapped in a system where they had to buy health insurance but could not get any help in paying a much higher than expected price tag. "They're not going to leave the millions of people who've been thrown out of their coverage out in the cold. They're going to try to figure out how to come up with a better solution, but one that gives people and doctors choices, not government bureaucrats and politicians," said Turner. |
| Obamacare Takes a Hit |
| Tue, 22 Jul 2014 15:53:20 EST In an unexpected blow to Obamacare, a federal appeals court has ruled against the federal health care exchange, HealthCare.gov, saying it may be violating the mandates of the Affordable Care Act. In essence, the court 19s decision attacks the Obama administration for creating a nation-wide system for delivering health care subsidies when the law, known commonly as Obamacare, only allows for subsidies to be distributed in state-based health care marketplaces. Fox News contributor and author Dr. Ben Carson said that he isn 19t surprised by the court 19s decision. "This is completely what I've expected, and there will be more revelations as time goes on," he says. Carson went on to say that he feels this is emblematic of the administration 19s desire to simply take control of the situation and do what they want. "The Obama administration has been, along with the Internal Revenue Service, saying they could do almost anything they wanted. It states very specifically in the law, the ACA, that subsidies were going to come through the state exchanges. And many of the states decided that they were not going to set up these exchanges. The administration decided to give them subsidies anyway. Well, it doesn't say that. That's not part of the law," says Carson. Though the decision is almost guaranteed to face an appeal by the administration, it 19s reach is quite expansive. 36 states haven 19t yet set up state-based health care marketplaces. That means Obamacare enrollees in those 36 states may have received subsidies illegally. Though the court 19s decision is considered a blow against Obamacare, the likelihood of it having any power to fully derail Obamacare is slim. |
| The End of Christianity in Iraq? |
| Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:13:41 EST The rise of a self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq is already responsible for the eradication of Christianity in the historic city of Mosul, and this could be the first step towards much greater persecution in the weeks and months to come. Even before the rise of ISIS, Christianity was greatly endangered in Iraq. Open Doors USA listed it as the fourth worst persecutor of Christians in the world earlier in the year. "Iraq was already a very dangerous place for Christians because of the weakness of the central government and their inability of unwillingness to protect Christian churches and Christians who wanted to choose for themselves what their religious beliefs worse," said Open Doors USA President and CEO Dr. David Curry, who says the latest developments in Iraq are making things exponentially worse. On July 19, ISIS announced every Christian in Mosul had a choice by noon Saturday to convert to Islam, pay a financially crippling tax or leave with no possessions but the clothes on their backs. "Since June 10, when ISIS came in and took over...it's been incredibly difficult. Over 3,000 families, just from Mosul, are homeless, are on the run and have had to leave everything and it's really unprecedented in this modern age to have a group call out this kind of segregation of a religious minority and force them out of their homes with impunity. No western government seems to be standing up or protecting these folks," said Curry. Not surprisingly, the persecution is leading to a significant humanitarian crisis. "Those that have the resources are heading out of the country entirely. Most of them, of course, don't have the resources to get on a plane and fly out so they're heading north into the Kurdistan regions, where there is more security," said Curry. Open Doors USA is racing to meet the physical needs of those heading for an uncertain destination. "Open Doors has set up response to help the refugees. We've got a project that is giving them food, water, tents, whatever we can do to help them stabilize in their homeless condition and try to acclimate them back into society if possible," said Curry. Curry says those who choose to turn a blind eye to the treatment of Christians in Iraq are making a horrific mistake. "I think people underestimate how fast this kind of persecution spreads and to our detriment. This sort of persecution in the Middle East could certainly spread to other religious groups, like Jewish minorities, certainly Buddhist minorities. When we let this kind of aggression stand, I think it's a very bad sign for the rest of civilization," said Curry. "I think you could see problems in Jordan. I think you could see problems in parts of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There's still key parts of Iraq. It certainly is a major shift in the Middle East. I think it could get worse," he said. That's why Curry says western nations need at least to publicly condemn ISIS for this persecution. "Government need to stand up and send clear messages of support to the Christian minorities, to do what they can to put diplomatic pressure on these groups and to make this very difficult to happen anywhere else and to hopefully turn the tide in the coming weeks," said Curry. The upheaval of the past 11 years is taking a severe toll on the Christian population in Iraq. Curry says there were a million believers in Iraq in 2003. Now he says some estimates are as low as 300,000. |
| Should a Young Person Rent or Buy? |
| Mon, 21 Jul 2014 11:49:29 EST By Ryan Brown The 2008 housing crash is still having a huge effect. During the recession, Americans lost more than a quarter of their net worth. Housing prices dropped 20% and total home equity in the United States dropped $4.2 trillion. All told, losses during the recession totaled $8.3 trillion. But some of the losses appear to extend beyond mere dollar value and penetrate Americans 19 psyche. In 2011, 53 out of every thousand eligible young adult renters became a homeowner. That 19s 38% lower than the pre-recession 85 per thousand, recorded in 2001. It shouldn 19t be a surprise, then, that so many young people pause when confronted with the question of whether they should rent or buy. Among an age group where only 43% respond that they are 1cvery satisfied 1d with their current job, researching the question to buy or to rent is a tough situation. That situation isn 19t made any easier when a lot of experts agree that the best answer is, 1cit depends. 1d Rick Harris is regional vice president for the National Association of Realtors and the owner and broker of Coldwell Banker Pro West Real Estate in Ashland, Oregon. He agrees that it does depend, but adds that there are a few criteria by which young people can base their decisions. 1cIt depends on some things that you can point out. It depends on a person 19s financial situation and what their goals are. It depends on what kind of credit they have. It depends on where they live, what the market is like where they live, how long they plan to stay there, and really how flexible they want their lifestyle to be, 1d says Harris. If a young person can 19t give good answers to those questions, Harris says the best thing to do is wait and keep renting. That, in itself, he says, may have some added benefits. 1cRenting gives you great flexibility. You can move for jobs more easily and you can live where you want to. Unless you have a lease you can be out of a rental and move to a different place relatively quickly. Up front it costs less to get into a rental investment and you can call the landlord if the roof leaks. If the paint needs to be redone a landlord will often do that, or if there are plumbing repairs they 19ll often deal with that, 1d he says. But when a young person is ready to sacrifice some of the flexibility of renting and buy a house, Harris recommends they remember one important fact from the recent housing crisis. 1cUnderstand that real estate is a long-term, not a short-term investment. In the bubble, a lot of people were doing what was essentially day trading in houses. They would buy houses before they were built and flip them. It worked like the stock market works, but the same thing that can happen in the stock market happened in the housing market 14the bubble popped, 1d he says. As with any complicated issue, however, even when someone is ready to own a home after answering some of the important questions in home-buying, those questions open the door for even more questions. In renting and buying, many of those new questions focus on real estate 19s biggest issue, location, location, location. Jed Kolko is chief economist and vice president of analytics at Trulia, an online real estate site. He says where you plan on living might help you determine whether to rent or buy. 1cWhen we look across the country and compare a similar unit for rent and for sale, similar-sized units in the same neighborhood, it looks more than a third cheaper to buy than to rent. But that 19s only if you get today 19s low mortgage rates and if you stay put for seven years, 1d says Kolko. A closer look at the data shows that buying ranges from being just 5% cheaper per month than renting in Honolulu, Hawaii, to being 66% cheaper per month than renting in Detroit, Michigan. Kolko is quick to point out, though, that the length of time you plan on staying in an area is still the most important factor. 1cOne of the most important factors in deciding whether the math makes sense to buy or to rent is how long you 19re going to stay put in a place. People who aren 19t planning to stay put at least five or seven years, might be better off renting, 1d he says. For young people who plan to stay for seven or more years, have a great job, and want to settle down, though, there are still hurdles they may face, simply because they 19re young. 1cThere are a lot of obstacles right now for young people who might want to buy. The first of course is the down-payment. Qualifying for a mortgage is also a hurdle. And, as student debt is rising, debt might make it harder for some young people to qualify for a mortgage, 1d says Kolko. To make sure that young people do all the necessary research and get all their facts straight, Kolko recommends they use a rent versus buy calculator to really make sure that the details all point in the direction of renting or buying. 1cA rent versus buy calculator lets you compare for any two units whether buying or renting is going to be the better deal. The calculator lets you put in what your tax bracket is, how long you 19re going to stay in the home, and your location, to get a very personalized calculation of whether it 19s going to be cheaper to rent or to buy, 1d he says. But using a rent versus buy calculator can leave some questions unanswered. Jared Gerlach is a software developer in Provo, Utah. He says that even after a lot of research, owning his first house came with some surprises. 1cBefore I bought a house, I didn 19t realize all the different things that I would need to do. I have to worry about paying utilities and the mortgage on time, watering the lawn, taking out the trash 14stuff like that, 1d says Gerlach. Though the decision to rent or buy might seem to be subjective, by using rent versus buy calculators, taking into account the flexibility of their lifestyle, and looking at location, young people can navigate this difficult decision. |
| What Congress Can Do About the Border |
| Wed, 16 Jul 2014 17:26:28 EST Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) says congressional Republicans are ready to start acting in response to what they consider to be President Obama's refusal to honor the rule of law and defend our nation's borders. Gosar says the upcoming actions include tightening funding to the relevant federal agencies accused of not doing their jobs, enforcing strict constraints on who is allowed to stay in this country after coming illegally and bypassing the president to work with states to restore security to the southern border. The first tool the GOP plans to employ is the power of the purse, which does not require approval from the Senate or the president. "September is the largest spending month in federal workforce calendars. So why don't we re-prioritize these aspects within the IRS, which has hardly been a stalwart aspect of upholding the Constitution? How about the Department of Justice? How about the executive branch? I think all these can suffer a little bit in regards to bringing that money forward so that the American taxpayer doesn't have to be impugned by additional finances," said Gosar. On Wednesday the House voted to reduce IRS funding in Fiscal 2015 by $566 million below current spending levels. The congressman says the exact strategy on reducing funds is not fully worked out, but he says GOP members are definitely in agreement on the general idea. "I think there's a lot of consensus that there's opportunity here to look within the current budget and making sure that the president is brought before the Constitution so that he upholds the Constitution," said Gosar. A 2008 immigration law is causing frustration for some border security advocates since it mandates due process for children crossing the border rather than simply turning them around and sending them home. However, Gosar says the law also puts clear limits on who can stay here in those circumstances. "(We need to be) streamlining the process, holding the administration accountable with respect to the 2008 law. they'd have to show that they were part of sex trafficking. That's the only detail that most people are not talking about. It's not just anybody from a contiguous state, it's those that are involved in sex trafficking (who can stay). Hardly every single individual that's been transported is involved in sex trafficking," he said. Gosar admits that demanding Obama enforce the law only goes so far. However, if he refuses to do his job, the congressman says Congress can go over his head and coordinate with border state governors who do take national security seriously. "It's time that we start to work with the states, like Texas. Gov. (Rick) Perry has shown that he's ready to move. I think the governor of Arizona (Jan Brewer) would be another good place given her stalwart actions in regards to defense of the border. I think California will also join along. New Mexico, I think, would also because a plurality in New Mexico want border security enforced," said Gosar, who elaborated on the steps Congress can encourage the states to take. "The first thing that states have is the National Guard. They have the power of their purse in regards to initiating that response to the border as well as police enforcement. So I think the first aspect is a show of force to make sure the rule of law is actually supported," said Gosar. Two other legislative efforts are underway, but neither will have the support of Rep. Gosar. Earlier this week, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) introduced a bill mandating much faster processing of the tens of thousands illegally crossing the border. Their plan would require each case to be heard within seven days of each person clearing HHS inspection and a decision on whether a person can stay in the U.S. to be rendered within three days of the hearing. Gosar says this plan isn't terrible but is completely unnecessary. "The president already has in his arsenal the ability to accomplish exactly those things: to speed up the opportunity, executively change the process. He has the ability to do that right now," he said. The congressman also has little use for Obama's request for $3.7 billion in emergency spending. He says Obama is jamming unrelated spending priorities into this bill and it won;t really solve the problems. "I think throwing money like he's asking for at this problem without having a stalwart plan...is not a good plan at all," said Gosar. Gosar says Obama owns this problem because of his unilateral implementation of several DREAM Act provisions in 2012 and for championing the Senate bill which provides for instant legalization for the vast majorityof those in the country illegally. He also says the rule of law is breaking down because the president refuses to enforce what's on the books and his constituents are noticing. "We have a lot of people very upset. They range from folks that are on the liberal side to the conservative side, saying this is out of hand. This is a humanitarian crisis but also a crisis on the sovereignty of this country," said Gosar. The president contends the problem lies at the feet of congressional Republicans, who refuse to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation. However, Gosar says the voters are not fooled and the failure to resolve this crisis soon will backfire on Obama and his party. "I'd hate to be a Democrat come November," he said. |
| Does a $10.10 minimum wage give Americans a raise, or leave them the bill? |
| Wed, 16 Jul 2014 10:27:57 EST By Jack Howard President Obama supports a $10.10 minimum wage. He said in his State of the Union Address that it will put more money in consumers 19 pockets and help families. 28 1cGive America a raise! 1d he said. But some say a higher minimum wage will cause businesses to hire fewer young people who work low-skilled jobs, leading to higher unemployment. Obama cited the example of a pizzeria in Minneapolis as proof that businesses can thrive if wages increase. President Obama says that move eased workers 19 worries about money and boosted morale. And a higher minimum wage would do the same across the country. Cato Institute 19s policy analyst Jeff Miron disagrees. 28 1cI mean, if that were true, that employers weren 19t going to respond at all to a higher minimum wage, then maybe we should mandate it to be fifteen dollars an hour or five hundred dollars an hour," said Miron. Instead, Miron, who is also a Harvard professor, says employers would just replace minimum wage workers. He says he experienced this fifteen years ago when he was lost in a parking garage in France where the minimum wage is much higher than it is in the US. He couldn 19t find a parking attendant to pay because the position had been replaced by a machine. 1cA higher minimum wage had given people a much higher incentive to invest in machinery that would accept those tickets. That was a clear example where the mix of machinery relative to people was different in two different places because one had a much higher minimum wage than the other," he said. The Congressional Budget Office estimates a $10.10 minimum wage would cost five-hundred thousand jobs. Center for American Progress expert Sarah Ayres says their research is off. 1cThe best empirical research that has been conducted over the last few decades has not found that. It 19s overwhelmingly found that raising the minimum wage does not cost jobs. And does help millions of people and provide an immediate boost to the economy by putting more money into peoples 19 pockets," she said. She says a higher minimum wage doesn 19t necessarily mean fewer minimum wage workers. Ayres says fast food workers shouldn 19t be worried about layoffs after a minimum wage raise. 1cThis is true not just generally but they also don 19t create job losses among teenagers or among restaurant worker," said Ayres. In 1992, Ayres says a natural minimum wage experiment happened. New Jersey raised its minimum wage, and neighboring Pennsylvania didn 19t. She says researchers David Card and Alan Krueger found no difference in fast food employment. Heritage Institute economist James Sherk says it 19s not so black and white. He says a higher minimum wage is OK for a place with a higher cost of living for everyone. 1cCalifornia is free to raise the minimum wage as much as they want. I would think that would not be the best economic policy. But it 19s going to be less harmful for California than it would be if you force that same pay increase on West Virginia," said Sherk. In addition, a California business would also raise prices 13 making the cost of living even higher. 1cThe typical restaurant has a profit margin of 2 or 3 percent. They can 19t simply absorb that a 20, 25 increase in the cost of their labor. The only way they can cover that is by raising their prices. And who are the people affected by that? Their customers," he said. Continuing with the restaurant example, Sherk says prices would rise 10 percent. He says that rise is a large price to pay for a reduced number of minimum wage workers to get a raise. And he says the cost of living for the rest of us would rise. Ayres rejects that conclusion. She says the rest of us would also get a raise. 1cSo what we found is that raising the minimum wage leads to spillover effect for workers who are making above the minimum wage. Those workers will also benefit in the way of higher wages," she said. As lawmakers decide whether a minimum wage increase amounts to a living wage or places an artificial value on labor, all of us will soon learn whether we all benefit or the rest of us end up with the bill. |
| Where Is Congress on Border Crisis? |
| Tue, 15 Jul 2014 16:42:55 EST Congressional Republicans are slow to denounce President Obama's "lawless" actions and doing even less in response, according to Center for Immigration Studies Legal Analyst John Feere. As the latest crisis on our southern border swells, many Republicans accuse Obama of inviting people to come to the U.S. illegally through his unilateral implementation of much of the DREAM Act in 2012 and by endorsing instant legalization through the Senate immigration bill. But while the criticism of Obama has been prevalent, what they're doing about it appears less clear. "Unfortunately, Congress has been largely absent. The truth is, it shouldn't have gotten to the point it's at now," said Feere, alleging weak GOP reaction to Obama's de facto legalization efforts in 2012. "As soon as President Obama did that, Congress should have immediately reacted and demanded that he stop that lawless program. I mean, the American people have said no to the DREAM Act through their elected representatives numerous times. That wasn't good enough for the president. He unilaterally decreed it into law through this deferred action, but Congress was largely silent," said Feere. And Feere says that response simply continued an existing pattern. "Years prior, Congress was largely silent when President Obama narrowed the scope through what we generally refer to as the Morton memos, which are a series of memos that limited immigration enforcement to the worst of the worst: the murderers, the rapists, the people who are involved in violent crimes. Certainly it makes sense to go after those people first, but the way those memos operate is to give a pass to virtually everyone who isn't engaged in the violent crime who's here illegally," she said. So what should Congressional Republicans be doing right now? Feere offered multiple suggestions. "I think what they should be demanding is that the president cease all public discussions about amnesty and the legalization of illegal immigrants and demand that he instead send a message to people around the globe who are thinking of coming here illegally, that the U.S. is going to defend its sovereignty. We're not going to welcome those who seek to violate it," said Feere. He also says Congress needs to push back hard against Obama's suggestion that if lawmakers don't pass his version of immigration reform he will simply legalize lawbreakers through executive orders. "That type of commentary only encourages more people to come into the United States illegally. I think that Congress really needs to demand that the president get a little more serious about the rule of law," said Feere. The one legislative initiative before Congress is the $3.7 billion in emergency appropriations the Obama administration says it needs to bring more judges to the border and expedite the deportation process. Feere does not believe that's the top priority for this president. "I think people need to be very cautious about the language some of these journalists are using about how this funding is going to be used to speed up the deportation of those here illegally. That's not quite the case. It may speed up the processing of illegal immigrants, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be returned home," said Feere. As a result, he says passing the spending bill in it's current form would only make the problem worse. "Not very much of it's going to be going towards actual enforcement measures. If we should expect the funding to be spent that way, then we should also expect more illegal immigration because people are going to be hearing that the United States is bending over backwards to process anyone who comes to the border. Until people overseas see their neighbors and their family members returned home, the flow of illegal immigrants is going to continue," said Feere. Feere says the only reason for Congress to support such a bill is if it were allocated to unequivocally beef up border security and trigger a serious enforcement of existing immigration laws. |
| Is the Ivy League Really Worth It? |
| Tue, 15 Jul 2014 12:34:11 EST College tuition and debt are rising. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that in the 2013 academic year, the average sticker price for a college education rose to $8,893, a $247 increase from 2012. Additionally, the Institute for College Access and Success reported that the average college student graduating with a bachelor 19s degree in 2012 had a student loan debt over $29,000 1465 percent of an average graduate 19s starting salary. With rising debt numbers, a lot of students are wondering if an education at a top-tier university is really worth the extra debt load. Anthony LeCounte is a 2011 graduate of Yale College who tells a different story about his Ivy League education. LeCounte graduated with hopes of following the path of his father, a career soldier, and landing a job in the defense sector. In a blog for the Huffington Post, LeCounte says it's hard to find a job due to increasing cuts in defense spending. Instead, he pursued a series of internships and temporary positions. Not only does he not have a full-time job, but because he had to take out loans to pay for his Yale education, LeCounte also has a lot of debt hanging over his head. He deferred payment of those loans due to unemployment. It 19s clear from the title of his blog post, 1cTurns out my Ivy League education is worth squat, 1d how LeCounte feels about his time in expensive education. Delece Smith-Barrow, an education reporter for U.S. News and World Report covering graduate schools, says an expensive education may still be a wise choice. 1cIt 19s better if you have an idea of what you want to do 14the career you want to go into 14to look at that first, and see which school can offer you what you need," she said. She says that certain schools have specializations, and believes that should mean more to a prospective student than a specific ranking. 1cEvery school is different, and typically every school specializes in certain career paths. If you want to go to law school and specialize in health care law, whether it 19s an Ivy League institution or a state school, the offerings at the school can really vary," she said. Specializations aside, however, the fact remains that it seems like many who attend a private, expensive university end up being better off. Kendell Christensen, a 2013 University of Pennsylvania alum, who 19s now working for corporate training startup Self Spark, said that in a perfect world this wouldn 19t be the case. 1cThe information you need to be competent is out there. If it 19s all about what you can deliver, what your skills are, what knowledge you have 14if it were only about that, I would say stay away from the Ivy League. It is hugely, ridiculously, almost embarrassingly over-priced," said Christensen. He notes, though, that the opportunities that can come with a well-known university can often be worth it. 1cIt 19s not just about competency. We live in an era of snap-judgments. People take ten seconds to look at your resume. I kid you not when I hand out my resume the first thing they say is 18Oh, the University of Pennsylvania!'," he said. This doesn 19t mean that you should drop whatever you 19re doing and apply to an Ivy League school, however. Reyna Gobel, author of CliffsNotes: Graduation Debt and a Forbes contributing writer, cautions against going after a degree just because of the institution 19s name. 1cYou shouldn 19t get a car that you 19re not really going to drive and that isn 19t going to get you to work on time. You should get a car that is practical and reliable and is worth what you 19re spending," she said. Gobel warns that, besides the name, students need to look at their future career goals and match that with what they 19re paying for school. 1cIf the school is 40,000 a year, you better get a pretty nice job when you get out that 19s going to allow you to pay for that," she said. So how can you determine if the money you 19re putting in is really worth it? That 19s where something called an ROI, an abbreviation for Return on Investment, can come into play. Allie Bidwell, another education reporter for U.S. News and World Report, says that looking at the ROI for a school is a vital step in researching a college education. 1cTypically return on investment looks at the costs that students are paying for their college education versus how much they 19re making in their jobs after they graduate. It focuses on whether they end up making a profit, coming flat, or losing on their investment," she said. So what 19s the school out there with the best ROI? If you thought Harvard you 19d be wrong. The best return on investment actually comes from Harvey Mudd College, a private science college in Claremont, California. Tuition at Harvey Mudd will run you a four-year cost of $229,500, but the return on that investment is huge. You 19ll ultimately make out with $980,900. And what 19s the worst? Valley Forge Christian College. Four years will cost you over $114,000, and the thirty-year ROI is $-178,000. At the end of the day, however, a degree is really what you make of it and students should not hesitate to ask questions as they decide which school to attend. 1cCall up the places you want to work for and ask them, 18Will this make a difference if I have a degree from X school? 19 Schools can tell you whatever they want, they 19re still salespeople. But the place where you want to get employed, those are the people that you should care about," says Gobel. As more and more families see college expenses continuing to rise, determining whether the cost of higher education is worth it will become even more important. |
| How To Stay Safe From Identity Theft At Hospitals, Online Quizzes and Job Interviews |
| Tue, 15 Jul 2014 10:57:21 EST By Jack Howard In 132 days, you may realize your identity was stolen. Eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds take that long on average to realize they've been targeted. By contrast, their parents figure it out within 50 days, according to a Javelin Strategy and Research report. Consumer advocate Adam Levin says it's no surprise under 30-somethings account for the most identity theft complaints too. Almost 60,000 cases of stolen personal information were reported to the Federal Trade Commission from that demographic last year. After all, young peoples' personal info is all over the place - from social media to even online quizzes. For instance, BuzzFeed responses could unlock a bank account's security question. Levin says it's not safe to reveal even your favorite color or cat's name. "It's almost like components of a nuclear weapon," he said. "In and of themselves, many of the components are completely harmless. But when assembled, all together, they're lethal." Levin says online activity is one reason why identity theft has become inevitable. "I believe breaches are rapidly becoming the third certainty in life behind death and taxes," said Levin. On average, identity theft costs individuals almost $5,000 to restore their credit rating and peace of mind. Businesses lost an estimated $5.6 million as a result of fraud. And, approximately 13 million Americans were impacted last year. Free credit score reports give a heads-up your identity has been stolen. Then the real work starts, says identity theft lawyer Hugo Blankingship. "So you still have to go through the process. You have to write the dispute letters. You have to send them out. You have to wait for the response to come back. And then you need to send them another dispute letter with even more information and documentation. And wait for that response to come back. And once all of that has happened, then you can hire a lawyer. And the lawyer will get your problem solved," he said. In short, getting back the identity you lost online requires snail mail, says Blankingship. And some patience. The first step is reporting the theft to the police. Their report becomes evidence for credit agencies. Levin says these credit agencies and some bank and employer programs can help. He says identity theft is becoming harder to clean-up by yourself. "So many forms of identity theft have become so much more sophisticated than ever before, that it's really beyond the ken of most people to understand what's happening to know what you need to do to get yourself out of the mess," he said. Identity theft can happen when you're at the hospital too. Last year, 43 percent of all reported incidents happened there, according to an Identity Theft Resource Center report. Don't give out your Social Security number until you know you can trust a new hospital. Same goes for a job interview. Levin says an employer shouldn't require your social until you're hired. This may sound overcautious. Worrying about taking online quizzes and giving out your Social Security number all the time isn't a fun way to live your life. A start-up called Distil Networks is working to protect your data. Director of Engineering John Bullard says bots can steal personal data from websites by pretending to be you. "It can do anything you can do logging into a website. It can log into your bank account and download all of your transaction history for the last two to three years so they can really simulate who you are based on your buying history," he said. Distil works with businesses to make data safer. They differentiate bad bots like the recent Heartbleed Virus from good bots like Google. Bots are programs that repeat different tasks using code, or instructions. Last year, Distil found 2.2 billion bad bots. "By cutting out the bot vector, and all of these easy-to-use automated tools, we make websites much safer," Bullard said. Bullard says Distil is in a good position as the internet becomes more open to protect those users. In the end, consumer advocate Adam Levin says you still have to be careful how you share any personal info. He says identity thieves' day job is to disrupt yours. |
| Dem Assesses Obama on Israel |
| Fri, 11 Jul 2014 15:22:37 EST A former Clinton administration official believes President Obama is doing a pretty good job responding to the immediate Middle East crisis but is decidedly unimpressed with the administration's overall Middle East policy and its attempt to establish a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians. He also says Israel needs to stay aggressive in its current military campaign until some long-term goals are met. Larry Haas was spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Clinton administration. He is now a columnist who writes frequently about the Middle East and the need for U.S. foreign policy to be a staunch ally of the Israelis. Haas is also the author of "Sound the Trumpet: The United States and Human Right Promotion." Haas says it's only a matter of time before the Obama administration and other world leaders declare the Israeli military action has gone on long enough and demand a cease-fire. He says Israel should ignore those calls until lasting damage to Hamas has been achieved. "I hope that Israel is prepared to deliver not just a weakening, not just a blow to Hamas, but a mortal blow to send a signal, not just to Hamas but to other terrorist organizations in the region, that Israel is not going to tolerate this sort of thing," said Haas. "It has to send a signal to its own people in southern Israel that it's going to protect them. That is the fundamental thing a government needs to do for its own people, provide them safety and security. So I hope that Israel does not let up until it really delivers a blow that Hamas either will never recover from or will not recover from for a very long time," he said. Haas is also not impressed by an Obama editorial in the the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in which the president sserted that the recent murder of three Israeli teenagers was not cause for retaliation but for a new commitment to a two-state solution in the region. "There's a little too much moral equivalency in the writing of that piece," he said, quickly adding that outside of that article, he believes the administration is responding to this crisis the right way. "From Washington, the president and his team have actually been quite good. They have made it abundantly clear that the problem is on the Palestinian side, specifically with Hamas, that Israel is defending itself as any other nation would, that no nation should have to live under a constant barrage of rocket fire," said Haas, noting that the current military action would be happening even if the teenagers had never been murdered. He says weeks and months of incessant rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel required a response. While giving the administration credit for its reaction to current events, Haas says Obama's overall Middle East policy leaves much to be desired. "In a larger sense this administration has not been good. They have leaned much too much on Israel and they've made Israel the actual impediment to peace, talking about final borders and the settlement issue," said Haas. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) was the first prominent voice to call for an end to U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinians once Hamas was welcomed back as a governing partner in the Palestinian Authority. He'll get no argument from Haas. "I absolutely agree with those who say we should have an absolute cut-off now with Hamas as one of the government partners," said Haas. "It is absolutely intolerable that the United States would be sending aid to a government that is, at least in part, run by an organization dedicated to the destruction of one of our key allies. I don't see how we provide aid under those circumstances," he said. While Haas says giving taxpayer dollars to a government that includes Hamas constitutes a fool's errand, he says the track record of Fatah really isn't much better. "It is not as clear of a distinction between Hamas and Fatah as we would like to believe it is," he said. "Fatah is considered the more moderate of the two outfits here, and I suppose that's true, but they have not really held themselves up very well in the recent conflict. They have not really broken with Hamas. They have glorified the fight on the Palestinian side." The re-emergence of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority also means any meaningful peace negotiations cannot happen anytime in the near future. "I don't see how any serious person can believe that we can have fruitful negotiations with another government which contains an entity that is dedicated to the destruction of the other partner across the table. I just don't see how logic would allow for such a thing," said Haas. Earlier this week, Obama's coordinator for the Middle East, Philip Gordon, told a conference in Israel that it is incumbent upon Israel to forge progress towards peace and the creation of a Palestinian state. 1cHow will Israel remain democratic and Jewish if it attempts to govern the millions of Palestinian Arabs who live in the West Bank? How will it have peace if it 19s unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security and dignity? How will we prevent other states from supporting Palestinian efforts in international bodies, if Israel is not seen as committed to peace? asked Gordon. 1d Haas is having none of that. He says President Clinton proved in the final year of his presidency that the Palestinians have no interest in any settlement that respects the existence of Israel. "Israel offered the Palestinians 97 percent of what they said they wanted at the end of the Clinton administration in 2000. They walked away because they're not prepared to make peace. Those who burden Israel with the task of making peace singularly are completely off base. So I disagree with the Phil Gordon statement and some of the other comments that we've seen of that ilk from Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama," said Haas. |
| Sixteen Times |
| Fri, 11 Jul 2014 14:52:39 EST Hillary Clinton's book tour is not turning out quite as she hoped. Rather than selling books at lightning speed and whetting the appetite of the American people for a 2016 White House bid, most coverage has been about lackluster sales, evasive answers on Benghazi and, especially, her insistence that she and her husband were 'dead broke' upon leaving the White House in 2001. To help clear up their money woes, Bill Clinton joins The Capitol Steps to discuss the real story and why they want you to buy the book. Our guest is Capitol Steps Co-Founder Elaina Newport. |
| Another Obamacare Court Showdown |
| Thu, 10 Jul 2014 17:39:29 EST While critics of the employer contraception mandate celebrate last week's victory at the Supreme Court, another looming legal decision in Washington has the potential to gut the most significant components of the entire Affordable Care Act by declaring the majority of health care subsidies illegal. "This is a really serious one that goes to the heart of the law because it's all about subsidies. If these subsidies aren't legal, then all of Obamacare is really called into question," said Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a leading health policy research group. Attorneys and activists on both sides of this debate are awaiting the ruling of a three-judge panel on the D.C. Court of Appeals in the case of Halbig v. Burwell. The plaintiffs contend the health care law plainly states subsidies are only to be granted to those who enroll through state exchanges. However, as the result of a 2012 Supreme Court decision, 36 states opted out of that responsibility and the federal government filled the gap through its infamous exchange at healthcare.gov. Turner says the law is clear about how subsidies are to be distributed and this potential court disaster is largely the result of the haphazard way the law was passed in the first place. "This law was very sloppily written and never intended to go into effect as it was done. Because of a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, we wound up basically with a draft as the law. Well, the law says that the subsidies for health insurance can only be distributed through state exchanges," said Turner. "That means that the folks in the 36 states that did not establish an exchange are not getting legal subsidies. It blows a hole through the middle of Obamacare. That means if the exchanges are not available, there's no way to enforce the individual mandate or the employer mandate," she said. Losing subsidies would mean substantially higher premiums for millions of people, but how exactly could it trigger the implosion of the key mandates? Turner says it's all in the numbers, noting that billions in subsidies and the family budgets of four to five million Americans are potentially at stake in this decision. "On the employer mandate first, the law says that employers are only subject to the fines and penalties if any of their employees were to get a subsidy for health insurance through the exchange. If there's no exchange through which they can get a subsidy, then employers are off the hook for the employer mandate," said Turner. "Individuals are not required to purchase health insurance if the cost to them for the premiums would be over a certain percentage of their income. I believe it's about 8.5 percent. What this would mean is that people would then be faced with the full cost of their [premiums], not their subsidized cost. Eighty-seven percent of people getting health insurance through the exchanges are getting subsidies. They would then have to pay the full cost. For the great majority of them, that would be over the 8.5 percent of their income. Therefore, the individual mandate would not apply to them," she said. The decision is expected any day from the three-judge panel. Turner was in the courtroom in March when oral arguments were heard. She says the judges seemed to think the law is clear on how the subsidies are to be provided. "It really sounded to me like the judges were saying, 'You know, this is what the law says.It's not up to us to change the law. If it needs to be changed, you need to go back to Congress to do it. If it says that Congress only thought the subsidies were only going to go to exchanges established by states, you can't distribute them through an exchange established by the federal government,'" said Turner. Turner is cautiously optimistic in a 2-1 decision in favor of the plaintiffs. Even if that happens, she says there would still be a long road to final resolution of this case, possibly starting with the full D.C. Court of Appeals. "This is the court that the president has been stacking with liberal appointees. I think there would not be a win in a full en banc hearing, but there are two other challenges to this, one in Oklahoma and one in Indiana that have not been decided either. If either one of those were to say that the subsidies are not legal, then you have a split. The Supreme Court would have to hear it, possibly next term," she said. According to Turner, any rebuke from the D.C. Court of Appeals would sting the administration, especially in the wake of a string of defeats at the end of the latest Supreme Court session. "It really challenges the administration's modus operandi in deciding they're going to take the law into their own hands and rewrite the law when it suits them. If a court slaps them and says you're not allowed to do that, as the Supreme Court has done thirteen times, then I think that it really is going to trim their sails and make it more difficult for them to make these extra-legal changes going forward. It's going to be harder and harder for them to make this law work because the law is so fundamentally dysfunctional," said Turner. |
| They're Not Going Back |
| Wed, 9 Jul 2014 17:15:17 EST Texas Rep. Michael Burgess says border officials told him most children detained after illegally crossing the southern border will never be sent home and he says federal officials need to be diligent to ensure deadly diseases are not allowed to run rampant after being brought across the border. Burgess is a career physician. Last week he visited an alien intake location in Wesleco, Texas, and a detainment center at Lackland Air Force Base. While there he learned the government has very different plans than the Obama administration's stated policy of vowing to send people back to their home countries. "What I was told on the border last week was that as high as 70-75 percent of these individuals will be remaining in the United States. I don't know quite what the disconnect is between what the president's statements are and the statements I was hearing from people in customs and border control, FEMA and the federal agencies that are charged with taking care of these folks," said Burgess. Burgess says the U.S. is capable of caring for the tens of thousands of border crossers on a very temporary basis. He says if this were the extent of the illegal migration wave it would be daunting enough, but he points out we're only at the tip of the iceberg. "The problem is what happens the next day, and the next day and the next day. From what I could see of the pipeline, there is no letting up. These numbers are not going to recede. It is going to take some time for those that have already started to transit. Even if you were able to stop people at the southern Mexican border right now from coming across, there are a lot of people in the pipeline," said Burgess. "There are a lot of people being held in stash houses in Mexico on the other side of the Rio Grande. There is going to continue to be this pressure on our services, on our resources and on the border. That is the bigger problem here." Another immediate concern is the possibility of diseases breaking out in the U.S. Reports of tuberculosis, swine flu and scabies have been common over the past few weeks. Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey, also a longtime doctor, fears some of these diseases could spread too fast to be contained. Burgess says threat certainly exists, but he says there's no indication that will actually happen. "Potentially it is a very big issue. What I have encouraged people at the agency level is to please take this seriously. Don't be dismissive. Don't try to minimize. At the same time, you want to be truthful with people and if the actual incidences of these illnesses is low, then by all means be truthful about it," said Burgess. "But don't tell people there's no possibility of tuberculosis coming across the border because you know that's not true. When you've got 56,000 people streaming across the border in six months' time, guess what? There are some things that are going to come along for the ride," he said. Burgess has held numerous meetings on the potential health risks posed by the migrants. In addition to his recent visits to the pair of Texas facilities, he's conferred with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Refugee Relocation. "I've been very involved in the last month in this process because I want people to be on the level about this. I don't want there to be unnecessary alarm, but at the same time people do need to use good sense," said Burgess, noting that issues like scabies are not life threatening but other diseases detected certainly do. Burgess says processing of the tens of thousands of the people is s cumbersome process. He says after being taken into custody, the illegal border crossers go to an initial facility like the one in Wesleco, where as much can be learned about the people as possible. Then they are flown to a separate facility to have their health evaluated. Finally, they are sent to a temporary detention center like he saw at Lackland Air Force Base. However, not everyone stays within the system. Burgess says he has heard of some intake locations that are simply overwhelmed and the illegals leave and look for assistance in the nearest towns. Unlike some members of Congress, Burgess was granted access to the two facilities, but he says his activities in both places were very restricted by government officials and no cameras or recording devices are permitted inside. The congressman says President Obama should "see what I saw" at the detention facilities, including many children being locked inside individual cells. He also says Obama has an obligation to implore Central American leaders and parents not to send their kids to the U.S. "He must go publicly, directly to the people in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico and tell the parents in those countries, 'Do not send your children across the interior of Mexico to come across the Rio Grande into Texas. Do not send for your children if you are in this country and you have children back home. Do not send for them through this coyote system that has been developed,'" said Burgess. Burgess also says Obama needs to get tough on Central American leaders to do much more in securing their own borders and not allowing children and families to be prey for human smugglers. |
| Eyewitness to Border Mayhem |
| Tue, 8 Jul 2014 16:04:28 EST A filmmaker with extensive knowledge of the current border crisis says this chaos is exactly what President Obama wants and planned for and he says the current media fixation on abandoned children means criminals, drug smugglers and terrorists are coming to the United States without even being noticed. Dennis Michael Lynch directed and produced "They Come to America" and "They Come to America II" and has extensive, daily contact with U.S. Border Patrol agents about the true state of our southern border. He says there are essentially four groups of people pouring across the border: families of various sizes, unaccompanied minors, drug smugglers and career criminals and terrorists. Lynch says while the media focuses on the kids, really bad people are easily slipping into the country. "I can tell you from the people I speak to in the Border Patrol who are in the intelligence unit, they have told me that gang members are receiving as much as $50,000 per head to bring a person through. Those people are typically from the Middle East or from China," said Lynch, who predicts the people waltzing into the country will perpetrate an attack on the U.S. that will rival or exceed 9/11. "You will absolutely see terror attacks. They may not come in the form of airplanes crashing into buildings, but they're going to come in different ways: water treatment plants, electrical grids. You name it, it is there for the possibility of taking," he said. President Obama is urging Congress to approve $3.8 billion in new funding that he says is designed to expedite deportation, while critics contend there's a lot more about prolonged care for the detainees than there is about deportation in the legislation. Lynch isn't buying anything Obama is saying at this point. "This president has no intent of sending anybody home, just like he didn't intend for you to be able to keep your doctor if you liked your doctor and just like he knew that there was no video that would spur a terrorist attack in Benghazi. If you believe what he says right now, I have a desert to sell you," said Lynch. According to Lynch, this crisis is exactly what Obama wanted to happen. "He is enjoying what he is seeing down at the border. That is why he's trying to work now with the UN to try to get war refugee status for these children. That's why he's sending them across the country and just releasing them," he said. "This is not about reform. That's all rhetoric. This is about fundamentally transforming the country." Lynch even alleges that this is the biggest legacy of this administration, topping even the massive overhaul of the nation's health care system. "Everybody always thought that Obamacare was his baby, that Obamacare was going to be his legacy and how he wanted to transform the country. I say no. That is just a really heavy insurance policy that the next president could repeal, or alter, or change or lessen the damage on businesses. When you turn around and let this many people into the country, when you give amnesty or give an executive order that says they can work and stay in the U.S., you can't repeal people. You can't deport 20, 30, 40 million people with a pen. This is what transforms a country. This is what Obama wants," he said. In addition to asserting Obama wants to make these people citizens and have them voting Democratic for generations through an endless flow of federal benefits, Lynch says this is about moving America closer to the poorer nations of the world. "I think he does want to put the United States of America on an equal playing field with the rest of the world. I think he's doing that, because the more people we take in from the third world, all it does is weaken every part of our country. It weakens our health care system, our schools, our finances, you name it. It increases the welfare state," said Lynch, who elaborated on the immediate impact on our schools. "From a health and school perspective, I don't think America is really going to understand what is taking place down on the southern border, not only now but over the past six, eight, nine months to a year. When school starts again in September, people are going to be amazed by how many kids are coming in who do not speak English. I mean the schools are going to get flooded," said Lynch. Based on his conversations with Border Patrol officials, Lynch described how this new border crisis was carefully orchestrated. "When you speak to Border Patrol agents like I do, you hear from the Border Patrol agents that they are beside themselves due to the fact they cannot enforce the law," said Lynch, noting the federal government announcednew orders in January not to turn anyone away. "They were told by the station head, 'Going forward, we are not going to capture and deport. We are going to capture and release," he said. "That's when the whole thing started with them taking in families , doing a quick look over, which really is just ridiculous, and then taking them to a bus station so they could go to somewhere in the USA," he said. That same month is when the Department of Homeland Security is known to have sent out Requests for Information on the cost and feasibility of escorting newly arrived illegals to various locations around the country. In addition to the threat this presents to the nation, Lynch says it is having a horrific impact on the morale of the Border Patrol. "These guys are at an all-time low. I talk to them every day. They send me pictures. Guys are leaving the department. They say they're just not doing it anymore. These guys are overpaid taxi drivers. They give illegal aliens the transportation they need from the border to the Border Patrol Detention Center and then to the bus depot. How would you like to have that job? These guys signed on to protect America, and all they're doing is driving a fancy taxi," said Lynch. |
| Israel Must Stop 'Those Bloody Terrorists' |
| Mon, 7 Jul 2014 15:54:50 EST Retired Israeli Brigadier Gen. Elihu Ben-Onn says Hamas kidnapped and murdered three teenagers in an attempt to free "bloody terrorists" held in Israeli jails, and promises his country's response will continue until Hamas decides to stop firing rockets into Israel or they are stopped by force. Ben-Onn also says there is no credibility left among the Palestinians to restart any peace process and suggests it's time for the United States to start punishing terrorism by reducing foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. The international community is imploring Israel to show restraint, but Ben-Onn says that's impossible as long as Hamas keeps attacking southern Israel. "In the last 48 hours, Israel suffered more than 200 rockets that were launched towards Israeli communities and settlements inside the state of Israel," said Ben-Onn, noting that over 1,000 reservists have been called up by the government. "We are talking now about ground forces that might go again inside Gaza in order to stop those rockets from falling on Israeli cities, communities and villages," he said. He says this latest conflict will end when the rockets stop flying into Israel - no matter what it takes to make that happen. "The situation is very tense now, because if Hamas will not stop shelling Israeli villages and cities, I believe ground forces will have to go in to stop them," said Ben-Onn. Casualties appear to be very light, although firm numbers are difficult to find. Ben-Onn says if lives have been spared, the Israeli missile defense known as "Iron Dome" deserves much of the credit. "Thank goodness we have Iron Dome. This is a wonderful system that can stop the rockets on the way. In the last 48 hours, they intercepted more than 21. Thank goodness they didn't reach the civilian targets in Israel," he said. Rockets are not the only sign of ongoing terrorist efforts to attack and destabilize Israel. "Last night, another tunnel that was [dug] from the Gaza strip to Israel was found and seven Hamas terrorists were killed inside while they tried to continue digging toward Israel and again tried to kidnap Israelis along the border," said Ben-Onn. For Israelis, that is the exact motive believed to be at work in the recent killing of three Israeli teenagers. They were found murdered after going missing in Gaza three weeks earlier. Ben-Onn says the search for the boys brought a nation together, even though many feared the worst. "For 18 days, all Israelis prayed that we would find them, but it was quite clear to all of us that the reason they were kidnapped is in order to try to release those bloody terrorists from Israeli prisons," said Ben-Onn, who says radical Islamists are constantly looking to create conditions for a prisoner exchange, citing the 2011 release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for Israeli POW Gilad Shalit. Reports from Israel suggest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking heat from his political right. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman believes Netanyahu is being too soft and suggested to reporters that he and his party could no longer remain part of the ruling coaltion. Ben-Onn says Lieberman is well known for his grand pronouncements but is highly unlikely to leave the government and force new elections. He suspects the more likely scenario is Lieberman trying to establish himself as the next prime minister whenever Netanyahu decides to step down. All of this comes on the heels of Hamas being welcome back into the Palestinian Authority by Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Fatah movement. Ben-Onn says that gesture alone speaks volumes. "If Hamas is the partner of Fatah, what kind of future are we looking at with the Palestinians? The fact they have a joint government together is a bad sign for a peace agreement. That's the reason why most Israelis have the feeling that the leader of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, is too weak and he cannot deliver the goods. And behind our back, he's signing an agreement with Hamas," said Ben-Onn. A growing number of American political figures and activists insist that Hamas being welcomed back into the Palestinian Authority without renouncing terrorism or acknowledging Israel's right to exist should mean an end to any U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinians. Ben-Onn largely agrees. "Maybe (the U.S.) should give a clear threat that if Hamas will not change their policy and Fatah will still keep them in the coalition, the United States should really consider the possibility to downsize, to cut part of the financial aid in order to tell them that's not the direction towards peace," said Ben-Onn. "The direction is to come to the negotiation table, speak face-to-face to each other. Find the solution at the negotiation table not on the battlefield, not relying on those bloody terrorists from Hamas," he said. "The United States should make it very clear that if they don't talk and find solutions, they should suffer." |
| Gohmert Rips 'Monarch" Obama |
| Thu, 3 Jul 2014 15:54:44 EST Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says President Obama is acting like a monarch in unilaterally changing immigration policy and threatening to do it again on a grander scale. The congressman says Obama is personally responsible for the surge of illegals, including unaccompanied minors, across our southern border, and Congress should begin a process of withholding funding for any department of government that refuses to enforce the existing laws. In a White House Rose Garden statement on Monday, Obama ripped congressional Republicans for refusing to approve comprehensive immigration reform and said they left him with no choice but to pursue reform on his own. "I would greatly prefer Congress actually do something. I take executive action only when we have a serious problem, a serious issue, and Congress chooses to do nothing," said Obama. While the president may be frustrated, Gohmert says Obama surrendered the authority to make or change laws the minute he left the legislative branch of government. "He didn't run for the legislature. He left the legislature and ran for president. Legislating is not an option for him unless he wants to destroy our Constitution or create a constitutional crisis, which he is quickly moving us toward," said Gohmert. In the same Rose Garden statement, Obama stated he is asking Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder for recommendations on what he can do on immigration policy through executive action. If Obama makes good on that promise, Gohmert says House members need to take swift and decisive action. "The founders gave us the power of the purse. It's going to take a lot of courage to stand up to the president and say we're going to start defunding anything that you care deeply about that's not important to the American people," said Gohmert, who wants to start by removing funding for the attorney general's office and rescinding salaries for anyone held in contempt of Congress. "We need to start eliminating any money for any federal agency or department, including the White House, that is not following the law. Then you get their attention. That's what the founders anticipated. I know our Speaker (John Boehner) says we're only half of one-third (of the government). Well, we're the most important half of the appropriations process. If we don't agree to an appropriation, it doesn't happen. It's time we took a stronger stand in that regard," said Gohmert. Obama also claimed on Monday that comprehensive immigration reform was an urgent priority because the present surge of illegal immigrants is proof that our existing laws are very confusing to people yearning to live in the U.S. Gohmert says that analysis is exactly backwards. "The current rules are confusing because the law is very clear and yet the president came out and announced, like a good monarch would, that he didn't like the law and so he pronounced new law. 'If you meet these requirements, then we'll let you stay here. So I have spoken, so shall it be.' That's what monarchs do. So because of that, it is confusing. The law itself is not," said Gohmert. In addition to its alleged failure to enforce existing immigration and border security laws, Gohmert says the government is actively thwarting other laws and putting American lives at risk. "Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, they are engaged in human trafficking. So if you get into this country, then you are transported to other parts of the country. If you have a parent who is here illegally, then Health and Human Services, which is no longer about health, and Homeland Security that is no longer about security will engage in human trafficking and help you violate the law by getting you illegally wherever you want to go," said Gohmert. The congressman made headlines earlier this week by telling radio host Sean Hannity that the U.S. is on the road to becoming a third world country. He elaborated further on that characterization, noting that the warehousing of kids and adults does not represent a modern society and neither does the practice of letting people with communicable diseases roam around our country. But he says there is an even greater concern that smacks of a third world regime. "One of the things that makes a third world country a third world country is that they don't follow the law and they don't enforce it fairly. There's graft. There's corruption. Officials can be brought and they can be bribed. They will do whatever they want. We have people fleeing countries like that to come into the United States because we have been observing the rule of law for the most part. We do try to apply it fairly across the board. Then once they get into this country, then they say, 'We want you to become like our country and quit enforcing the law,'" said Gohmert. Gohmert's solution to the surge across the border is to enforce existing law to the fullest extent and stop people from entering the country and them back to where they came from. He says history proves this works. "Border Patrol men can't afford to say it on the record because of their jobs, but what I heard from them over and over is, 'We had a problem with Brazilians coming in when they got word we wouldn't send them back. Once we were allowed to send a few families back, it stopped immediately," said Gohmert. As for the tens of thousands who have just arrived, Gohmert says basic compassion should apply in terms of feeding and providing other immediate needs, but he says they simply need to be told they can't stay and then escorted out of the country. "You say, 'You're not coming in legally. Our laws means so much. That's why our economy is better than yours, because we apply the rule of law. We can't let you destroy the economy by forcing us to quit following the rule of law. Therefore, we are sending you back,'" said Gohmert. "It would require some manpower, some expense to send people back, but nearly as much as the damage to our country would be by letting people come in just willy nilly as they wish to," he said. Obama is also asking for Congress to approve two billion dollars in new spending to provide better temporary shelter and to set up more judges and courts to process the cases of the illegal immigrants. Gohmert sees no need for aliens caught illegally crossing the border to get a day in court. "No, they don't need to be in court. What should be done is what's called a turnaround. If you attempt to come in to get on our soil and you're caught at the border, then you're turned around and sent back. You don't need a judge to hear your case. If you did not come in legally and have the proper papers, you go back. You go back to where you came from. That ought to be what we do," said Gohmert. In the final analysis, Gohmert says the current crisis is a result of the federal government not doing its job in protecting our borders. He says there's no reason to work with Obama on immigration legislation as along as the president thumbs his nose at the current laws. "Once we have a president who agrees to follow the law, shows us he will follow the law, then we can get a reform package. There's no sense in reforming anything until the president is willing to follow the law. The courts have made clear that it is up to the federal executive branch to enforce our immigration laws," said Gohmert. |
| Middle East Teetering Towards Anarchy |
| Wed, 2 Jul 2014 16:28:29 EST Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says the Middle East is facing more instability now than at any time in the past 50 years and he blames the Obama administration for fueling the chaos through cozy relations with Iran, abandoning Iraq and funding terrorism through foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. Bolton says the most alarming developments center on Iran, the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the latest escalation of tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, but he says the erosion of stability impacts far more places in the region. "It's worse than at any time, I think, since before the 1967 war between Israel and the Arabs. In each of the countries, (including) Libya or Egypt or Yemen or other states that are just dissolving in front of us, you could see this series of crises merge into the entire region and really spinning into anarchy," said Bolton. Over the past few weeks, the greatest concerns stem from the growing success of ISIS in its effort to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and the specter of Iran taking a more dominant role in the region as it tries to fend off the attempts of ISIS to overthrow the Shia government in Baghdad. Bolton says he wishes it were possible for both sides to lose, but sees one as a much bigger threat than the other. "As bad as ISIS is, never forget that Iran remains the principal enemy. It already has nuclear weapons. It's the world's central banker of international terrorism, fully capable of giving a nuclear device to a terrorist group. So Iran remains the central threat but it does not in any way diminish the potential that ISIS has. We're just in a situation where two powerful groups are in play and neither one of them is a friend of the United States," said Bolton. As for ISIS, he says fears that a region of Iraq and Syria under the control of radical extremists could make that part of the world the new breeding ground for terrorist attacks, much like Afghanistan was in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks. "If they were able to establish a stable control over that area, as when the Taliban and Al Qaeda were running Afghanistan, it very much could be a base for terrorist operations. We've had reports there are lots of Americans and Europeans fighting with ISIS, who could well come back to Europe or the United States," said Bolton. The ambassador says many of the Sunnis fighting alongside ISIS are not radicals but see an opportunity to overthrow the hated Maliki government in Iraq. Bolton says President Obama's decision to leave Iraq entirely at the end of 2011 was the trigger for the chaos we now see there. While lamenting what he sees as the squandered U.S. sacrifice in Iraq, he says the U.S. has very limited options in addressing the problem. The latest explosion in the Middle East is the murder of three Israeli teenagers, and U.S. and Israeli intelligence strongly suggests Hamas is involved or even responsible for the bloodshed. Given the recent reuniting of Hamas and Fatah under the banner of the Palestinian Authority, Bolton says this episode is proof that peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is impossible. "It really brings into focus this endless cycle of terrorist attacks that Israel is subjected to from Hamas and others. I think that justifies a very, very strong response from Israel. We all probably look at this as a crime. It would be if it were committed in the United States, but the fact is this act of terrorism is part of Hamas' ongoing war against Israel," said Bolton, who is comfortable with whatever level of response Israel sees fit to inflict. "It's an asymmetric struggle, the way the terrorists conduct their affairs. So, I think Israel is entitled to treat it as an act of war and to respond accordingly. Once you see that logic, it certainly doesn't have to be a proportional response. I think it can be anything up to and including destroying Hamas," said Bolton. As for the U.S. response to the latest terrorist attack, Bolton agrees with the likes of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) and others who say the reconnecting of Fatah and Hamas means the American foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority should vanish. "I think it is the right call. I think Fatah itself has very little legitimacy. When they team up with Hamas, I think it's a statement that they would prefer to be making agreements with a terrorist group than making agreements with Israel," said Bolton, who believes a two-state solution has proven to be unrealistic. "I think the United States has to indicate that this charade is coming to an end and the whole thing is a tragedy for Israel and really a tragedy for the Palestinian people, who have been used as pawns in this struggle by radicals in the Arab world for a long, long time," he said. Nearly lost in the commotion throughout the region in recent weeks is President Obama's latest effort to assist what he considers to be the moderate rebels in Syria. Obama wants Congress to approve $500 million to train and equip moderate forces trying to remove Bashar al-Assad from power. Bolton says this is an idea without a plan and the recent exploits of ISIS should serve as a cautionary tale. "It's purely a political gesture by the president. He doesn't have any strategy in mind at all here. I think what we saw ISIS do when the Iraqi army collapsed in Mosul, Tikrit and other important Iraqi cities, that allowed ISIS simply to scoop up their weapons and a considerable amount of finance. You can put weapons in the hands of so-called moderate, assuming we could agree on what the definition of moderates is. We could give them weapons, but there's no way we can ensure that they'll be able to hold on to those weapons," he said. Bolton says this is a very dicey time for all responsible actors in the region and he believes the absence of American leadership is making everyone vulnerable. "I'm extremely concerned about it. I'm concerned about American interests. I'm concerned about our friends like Israel and the oil-producing monarchies of the Arabian peninsula. It's a very dangerous time. Honestly, it's not just that the president doesn't have a policy to deal with it. He's not paying attention to it," said Bolton. |
| 'Israel's Looking at the Big End Game' |
| Tue, 1 Jul 2014 16:26:46 EST A prominent Middle East scholar with close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says three Israeli teens were captured and murdered just for being Jews, Israel is looking at a much bigger threat than a resurgent Hamas and the region is imploding due to failed U.S. leadership. The bodies of Eyal Yifrah,Gilad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel were discovered Monday, more than two weeks after they were abducted. Frankel also held U.S. citizenship. "(Hamas) planned the target and murder of them. They didn't know them. They just wanted to kill Jews," said Evans. "Hamas is part of the Palestinian government. As a matter of fact, the PLO website had a picture of three rats depicting these three children. In Ramallah and in Gaza, they were singing songs. They were passing out candy. They were celebrating the deaths of these three teenagers," said Evans, noting that killing Jews simply because they are Jews is reminiscent of the horrors of the Holocaust. Evans says one simple step Israel can take is to forcefully demand the U.S. stop foreign aid to the Palestinians, particularly since Hamas is still listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department. Currently, the U.S. targets one billion dollars annually to the Palestinian Authority, which just recently reunited with Hamas. Netanyahu has not indicated what the scope of the immediate response would be, but Evans says his friend needs to think bigger than Hamas. "This is really a declaration of war in many ways. Iran is behind Hamas. Iran funds it and fuels it. Al Qaeda is also there," said Evans. "This is a very serious existential dilemma and here's why: we pulled out of Iraq. We pulled out of Afghanistan. We told jihadists of the Middle East, 'It's yours.' They're taking us very serious. Now we've got a brand new caliphate in Iraq. They're taking over the country. Israel just told the Kurds they should proclaim statehood. "Israel's looking at this heading at their borders from Jordan. You've got that. You've got Iran on the Hezbollah front and then you've got Iran nuclear. So Israel's looking at the big end game and I think the prime minister's going to have to look at this more serious than just Gaza. He's going to have to look at this entire octopus and decide is it time to deal with the head of the octopus as opposed to the tail," said Evans, referring to Iran. In addition to blaming Obama administration policy for much of the recent upheaval in the Middle East, he says the recent coziness between the U.S. and Iran over the ISIS threat in Iraq is reason for even more concern. "Obama has invited Iran to partner with him in fighting this new Sunni state, this new Islamist jihadist state. The quid pro quo, I'm sure, is an atomic Iran in exchange for that. So Netanyahu is looking at that and they realize the state of Israel is on their own," Evans said. |
| SCOTUS Upholds 'Cherished Principle' |
| Mon, 30 Jun 2014 16:08:11 EST A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that closely-held corporations do have the right to reject paying for contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs if doing so violates their conscience or sincerely-held religious beliefs. By a 5-4 ruling, the court sided with the Christian owners of arts and crafts giant Hobby Lobby and the Mennonite leaders of Conestoga Wood Specialties. Hobby Lobby in particular was fine paying for some 16 different types of birth control, but refused to cover the cost of medications that induce abortion after conception. The decision in no way prevents women from obtaining any of the drugs in question with their own money. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the ruling was narrowly limited to the issues at hand and did not give blanket permission for Americans to disobey any laws they wanted by claiming it violates their conscience. Family Research Council Senior Legal Fellow Cathy Ruse says this was not just a case about reproductive health but about the larger ideal of religious freedom. "The right to religious freedom and the right to conscientious objection is just one of those basic fundamental rights in our Constitution. It is embraced heartily by Americans and has throughout the centuries. It is one of those freedoms where the individual gets to put his hand up and tell the government, 'No, you've gone too far,'" said Ruse. "The court didn't create a new principle here. It sure upheld and applied one of the most cherished principles that Americans own and that is our right to conscience," she said. The mandate was issued by the Obama administration in early 2012, as employers were ordered to cover all costs for birth control and abortafacients for women. The fierce backlash led the Obama campaign and like-minded allies to accuse opponents of waging a war on women during that year's campaign. On Monday, NARAL Pro-Choice America blasted the decision. "Today's decision from five male justices is a direct attack on women and our fundamental rights. This ruling goes out of its way to declare that discrimination against women isn't discrimination," said NARAL President Ilyse Hogue in a statement. 28 28 "Allowing bosses this much control over the health-care decisions of their employees is a slippery slope with no end. Every American could potentially be affected by this far-reaching and shocking decision that allows bosses to reach beyond the boardroom and into their employees' bedrooms. The majority claims that its ruling is limited, but that logic doesn't hold up. Today it's birth control; tomorrow it could be any personal medical decision, from starting a family to getting life-saving vaccinations or blood transfusions," she said. Ruse is dismissing the pro-choice denunciation out of hand. "To NARAL, I would say stop being hysterical, but I don't have much hope that they will because that is their modus operandi," she said. In her comments outside the Supreme Court, Ruse said this was not a major setback for women but is one that further liberates women and Monday should be a day of celebration for them. In fact, she says women have been leading the charge against the mandate. "Of all the plaintiffs that have filed lawsuits against the mandate, many of them are in fact women: women who run non-profits like the Little Sisters of the Poor and others but also business women who are part of small family businesses have filed suit to stop the mandate. One-third of all business plaintiffs who have filed suit against the mandate are women. This is a big win today for women in business and women job creators," said Ruse. Ruse also points out that as a myriad of judges heard challenges to the HHS mandate, a solid majority have sided with the challengers, although all three female justices on the Supreme Court voted to uphold it. She also says public opinion polls show women to be very uncomfortable with the mandate. Beyond that, Ruse says there was a "perverse incentive" behind the mandate. She says instead of trying to champion women, the administration was really trying to saddle them with fewer options and higher health care costs. "This mandate, and it's perverse incentive to dump employees into the exchanges is not good for women at all. It means that women would face losing their trusted doctor, their trusted medical specialist, their trusted pediatrician who has cared for her children all their lives. That is not good for women, not to mention the spike in premiums and the sky-high deductibles that people face when they're forced into the exchanges," said Ruse. In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy made a clarification that could take some of the jubilation out of Hobby Lobby supporters, by pointing out there was nothing stopping the government from footing the bill and making sure there is no cost to women for contraceptives or abortafacients. Ruse says that twist would not be welcome, but she says it's still a better option than forcing people of faith to spend money directly in ways they find morally objectionable. "We are forced to fund things through our taxes that we disagree with all the time. It's not good. It shouldn't be that way, but that is already in play," she said. "It's a far better result to make the government pay for it themselves. They already pay for contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs in the tens of millions with our tax money all across the country in Title X clinics. We don't love that, but it's happening. They already have an easy means to do it because they're already in the business. So why conscript these unwilling employers and make them pay for it out of their pockets," said Ruse. |
| A Supreme Marriage Showdown |
| Fri, 27 Jun 2014 15:29:45 EST The Supreme Court is issuing a flurry of high-profile decisions in the final days of the current session, but an appeals court decision this week virtually guarantees the highest court in the land will rule on the definition of marriage one year from now, On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to strike down a Utah law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The judges did place a stay on the ruling, meaning the current law stands until the Supreme Court weighs in on the matter. State officials insist they will appeal. In the ruling, the two judges called limiting marriage to heterosexual couples a clear violation of gay couples' rights. "We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right to marry, establish a family, raise children, and enjoy the full protection of a state's marital laws," read the opinion. "A state may not deny the issuance of a marriage license to two persons, or refuse to recognize their marriage, based solely upon the sex of the persons in the marriage union," the court said. Traditional marriage supporters consider that rationale and similar court rulings to be ideological nonsense. "There is no logic there. Why draw an arbitrary line between the two persons and where did that come from? Marriage has always been defined as between one man and one woman in the United States and in Utah particularly. Polygamy is outlawed at the highest level of the Supreme Court. What possible rationale is this to say that it is narrowly tailored to two. That came out of left field," said Liberty Counsel Action Vice President Matt Barber, who is also founder of barbwire.com. He admits same-sex marriage advocates are on a legal winning streak and that a majority of Supreme Court justices are personally sympathetic to their argument, based on a pair of 2013 rulings that struck down a California constitutional amendment enshrining traditional marriage and ordered federal benefits extended to same-sex spouses in states where the couples were legally married. Despite the apparent legal momentum on the side of same-sex marriage, Barber says last year's Supreme Court ruling actually strengthens the case on his side of the debate. "Even the United States Supreme Court ruled in the DOMA decision that struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act...the hubris is astounding for (Kennedy) to imagine that he can somehow redefine the institution of marriage for federal purposes. He argued from a federalist standpoint and said unequivocally in the majority decision and in the dissent decision that states have a right to define marriage," said Barber. Barber says other court decisions also weigh in favor of traditional marriage. "The 9th Circuit, the highest level that has looked at homosexuality and whether it is a suspect minority class, has said that it does not reach strict scrutiny," he said. "They have said, 'No, homosexuality is behavior. It is not an immutable characteristic.' So there's hope here yet, but with Justice Kennedy there's no telling. You might as well flip a coin," said Barber. Barber says the Utah marriage case is at the front of the line for this issue reaching the Supreme Court since it is the first to be ruled upon at the appellate level. He says that means the justices will likely hear arguments late this year or early next year with a decision coming down in June 2015. "They may have to rule pretty quick because there has been an emergency stay. That's the good news. The 10th Circuit has granted a stay on this so that we don't see all the homosexual activists clamoring to the courthouses to get their marriage certificates," he said. "I think within a year we will have a final disposition on Section 2 of the Defense of Marriage Act as well as whether or not there's somehow a constitutional right for a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman, something the founding fathers couldn't have even conceptualized," said Barber. Barber says he and his traditional marriage allies are undaunted by the Utah decision and will fight all the way to the finish line. "The homosexual activists are celebrating and the leftists are celebrating, but this is not a final decision by any stretch," he said. |
| Win for Free Speech and Religious Expression |
| Thu, 26 Jun 2014 16:02:53 EST Pro-life activists are celebrating a Supreme Court victory, as the justices unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law requiring a buffer zone around abortion clinics. On Thursday, in the case of McCullen v. Coakley, the court voted 9-0 to strike down the Massachusetts requirement of a 35-foot buffer zone surrounding abortion clinics. Eleanor McCullen sued the state over the law, claiming the buffer zone gave her and other peaceful pro-life activists little opportunity to have conversations with women coming to the clinics. An appeals court previously sided with the state. Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the state could come up with less restrictive ways to preserve free speech for activists while allowing others unobstructed access to the clinic. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a concurring opinion criticizing Roberts for not going further and accusing the court of granting far more leniency to pro-choice groups than to pro-life activists. While the decision could have been even stronger from a pro-life perspective, activists are still thrilled with the decision. "This is huge. What this Massachusetts law intended was a 'heckler's veto.' That's essentially saying that if people don't like the speech that they're hearing from other people or others' freedom of expression, that if they just yell out enough and enough people don't like it then the heckler can veto free speech. The Supreme Court said, 'No, that is not the case,'" said Liberty Counsel Action Vice President Matt Barber, who is also founder of barbwire.com. Despite some conservatives hoping for a stronger ruling, Barber says the fact this was unanimous is a big deal. "This was a surprisingly unanimous decision and speaks well for the protection of innocent human life as well as both freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression in the United States," said Barber. Many activists and court observers also expected the Supreme Court to hand down a decision on the constitutionality of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that all employers cover the cost of birth control and abortafacient drugs for their employees. The Christian owners of Hobby Lobby and the Mennonite leaders of Conestoga Wood Specialties are challenging the mandate on the grounds it would violate their freedom of religious expression due to their opposition to abortion. The court announced its final decisions of the session will come Monday morning and that ruling is likely to be issued. While Barber has no illusions of a unanimous ruling on that case, he hopes Thursday's buffer zone ruling is a sign of things to come on the debate over the HHS mandate. "The fact that even the most liberal justices on the bench ruled that this buffer zone law violated free speech is an indication to me that hopefully, and you can never predict what (Justice) Anthony Kennedy is going to do, but if I'm reading here, it gives me hope. He has shown, in the past, a sensitivity toward the importance of freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression on the first amendment. I'm hoping that it will tip the scales and he will vote affirmatively that the HHS mandate violates the first amendment," said Barber. |
| 'We're Looking Very Much Like the End of the 1970s' |
| Wed, 25 Jun 2014 17:59:59 EST The first quarter of 2014 was the worst for our economy in five years and the worst outside of a recession since the end of World War II, according to revised numbers released by the Commerce Department Wednesday. Preliminary numbers issued weeks ago suggested a one percent contraction. A shrinking of nearly three percent may suggest a worse economy than we really have, but economists say this is still very bad news. "Experts say that this quarter was particularly bad but what we see is economic growth chugging along at around two percent (over the long term). That's not enough to create jobs Americans need. The labor force participation rate is at 1978 levels, which is before millions of women walked into the workforce. That is just too low. We need to do something to ramp up our economic growth so it doesn't just chug along at two percent," said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who served as chief economist at the Department of Labor under President George W. Bush. Economists of various stripes are offering explanations for the lackluster start to the year, ranging from reduced consumer spending to a colder than usual winter. Furchtgott-Roth says not all evaluations are created equal. "I think we need to look at consumer demand. Exports were low. Consumer demand was low. It was clearly not all weather-related. People like to say it's weather-related because that takes the pressure off what they are actually doing. We had bad weather in the fourth quarter of 2013 but that did not have the same effect. Also, when there's bad weather, you spend more money clearing out some of the snow and there's also more of a bounce back. We didn't see that much of a bounce back in March. We'll have to see what the second quarter does," said Furchtgott-Roth. Another nagging drag on the economy, she says, is the worsening level of certainty business owners feel when it comes to adding jobs or planning to expand their business. Furchtgott-Roth says conditions for business owners remind her of a very dreary time in economic history. "We don't have a lot of certainty now. We have even less than we had in the first quarter. The Middle East is blowing up. Iraqis took over an Iraqi oil refinery yesterday. We know that inflation is starting to kick up. We're looking very much like the end of the 1970s, where we had inflation and oil troubles," she said. Furchtgott-Roth is quick to add the oil concerns are far less severe now than in the 1970s because of much greater domestic production today. What would improve certainty and spur economic growth? Furchgott-Roth says the first place to look is tax policy. "There are fundamental reasons why people are not investing in the United States. Our corporate tax rate is the highest in the world. Both President Obama and Republican leaders and Democrat leaders in Congress agree it should be lowered. This is something the administration and Congress should move forward with right away," she said, noting America's corporate tax rate is the highest in the industrialized world and that more and more businesses are engaging in "inversions," the practice of setting up headquarters in other countries to take advantage of more favorable tax climates and taking tax revenues out of the U.S. She says doubling down on energy production could produce a major financial windfall for our country. "We need to have further development of our energy sector, which has been the growth driver of our economy. All the growth in energy has been on private land. There's been a decline in explorations on federal lands. We have a lot of scope to move forward with energy development on federal lands by increasing permitting. That would also increase tax revenues to the government," said Furchtgott-Roth. President Obama is receiving poor marks on the economy in recent public opinion polls, however the administration frequently argues that it's pro-growth agenda is being stymied by Republicans in Congress. It's priorities are often listed as being in the transportation and green energy sectors and by generating more spending in the economy through an increase in the minimum wage and equal pay for women. Furchtgott-Roth dismissed each of those as economic losers, starting with transportation and infrastructure spending. "We had almost a trillion in stimulus, most of which was focused on infrastructure in [2009]. Remember the shovel-ready jobs that never really appeared. It was only last month that our employment reached levels that it was in 2007. It's clear that infrastructure is not a panacea. There are many unemployed people who don;t want to be building roads. They want other kinds of jobs," she said, while also taking aim at the arguments for a minimum wage hike and more spending to develop renewable energies. "Raising the minimum wage doesn't create employment. It just means that people whose skills are less than the new minimum wage , which would be around eleven dollars an hour, don't get to work at all. They have to drop out of the labor force. They are unemployed. Neither of those would really help to raise GDP growth," said Furchtgott-Roth. "Alternative energy, wind and solar, are twice as expensive as producing electricity from natural gas or from coal. Making electricity more expensive does not increase GDP growth. Factually, the measures that the Democrats are recommending will result in less growth rather than more growth," she said. Furchtgott-Roth says urgent action is needed on tax and energy policy, but she doesn't expect much progress this year. "I wish I could say that this bad economic news is going to make the Republicans and Democrats get together and develop sound economic policies, but I think that's too optimistic in the climate of Washington right now. I don't know what's going to happen, but it probably won't be sensible coordination on economic policy," she said. |
| A Chronicle of Eric Holder's Injustices |
| Tue, 24 Jun 2014 15:43:21 EST Over five -and-a-half years, Attorney General Eric Holder has politicized the Justice Department in ways never seen before, and the department's external and internal actions are establishing a pattern of using the law to achieve political ends and taking cronyism to a new level, according to a scathing book on Holder's tenure. In addition to chronicling Holder's personal and professional drift to the left and how that ideology manifests itself in his approach to justice, "Obama's Enforcer" by Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund also offers a detailed look into some of the most explosive controversies of the Holder era. Just days after taking office in 2009, Holder labeled the U.S. a "nation of cowards" for not having a more frank national discussion on race. Fund and von Spakovsky contend Holder is blatantly engaging on racial bias, most notably on voting laws such as his fight against any state laws requiring voters to present photo identification before casting a ballot. "They're clearly waging a war on election integrity. I have come to the belief that they really seem to think that any kind of measures that would make fraud harder to commit or might dissuade or deter people who are not U.S. citizens from voting, all of that might hurt the Democratic Party. I think that's one of the reasons they are doing that," said von Spakovsky, who says Holder makes it very clear he views civil rights as a one-way street. "There's an inspector general's report that was released last year about the mismanagement of the civil rights division. They did interview Eric Holder about that. It's very clear that he does not believe in the race-neutral enforcement of federal discrimination and voting laws. I find that appalling in the chief law enforcement officer of the United States," said von Spakovsky, who is himself a former Justice Department official. He says Holder's philosophy is not only evident in the policies he pursues but in the cases he chooses not to prosecute. "I know a case of almost 300 non-citizens who were registering and voting in Virginia. That information was sent to the Holder Justice Department, which refused to do anything about it, despite the fact that it's a federal felony to engage in that type of behavior," he said. In addition to picking and choosing which cases to take up, the authors allege Holder is also fostering a hostile atmosphere within the civil rights division toward anyone not marching in lockstep with his political agenda. They say it's an accusation the inspector general documented in his report. "It documents the extensive bullying and intimidation of anyone perceived to be a conservative. This is done by other liberal, career lawyers and it has been approved of by the Obama political appointees who refuse to do anything about it," said von Spakovsky. Part of the problem, he says, is the track record of Holder packing the Justice Department with political allies as quickly as possible. "This administration has bent and broken federal rules on hiring to put political cronies of the president and his party into career positions as well as hiring almost exclusively from liberal advocacy organizations," said von Spakovsky, who says clearing out the bullies and the political operatives from these key positions is much harder to do than most people realize. "The rules governing career positions are extremely strict and firing someone is very, very difficult. This administration has shown it has no interest in firing or disciplining liberal career folks who engage in this kind of behavior. One particular employee who is still in the civil rights division actually committed perjury by lying to the inspector general's investigators when they were looking at the problems in the civil rights division. She was neither disciplined nor terminated for committing perjury. In fact, she was treated as a hero by the Obama folks who were there," said von Spakovsky. Fund and von Spakovsky say Holder's approach to racial issues also extends to mass fraud and fleecing American taxpayers to further an agenda, seen most clearly they say in the Pigford case. In 1997, a black North Carolina farmer named Timothy Pigford sued the Department of Agriculture, alleging that he had been discriminated against in the pursuit of a federal loan. Two years later, a judge turned it into a class action suit and any black farmer could join the lawsuit. "A claims process was set up in which you would automatically get $50,000 if you simply filled out a form that said you had attempted to farm. That generated huge numbers of claims that were all paid off without question. The estimates are that 80-90 percent of the claims were fraudulent," said von Spakovsky. The payouts continued throughout the Bush administration, and von Spakovsky says the Obama administration doubled down on the fraud. "A second lawsuit was filed in the Obama administration, this one adding Hispanics, women and Indian farmers. It was very clear that this was a bogus lawsuit. There was no evidence that these groups had been discriminated against. The line lawyers at the Justice Department said there was no evidence here. They could easily win this suit. They were overridden by the White House," he said. "There was a meeting called at the White House of these lawyers. They were told this would be settled. It would be paid off. It was very clear the White House wanted to use these taxpayer funds to make payments to these groups that they considered to be political supporters and constituents of the president and the Democratic Party," said von Spakovsky. Beyond the disturbing changes Fund and von Spakovsky see at the Justice Department, they say rolling back these efforts will be next to impossible, even with different leaders in place. "This president has gotten exactly the attorney general he has wanted. It's going to take a new attorney general, someone with very high ethical and professional standards, to try to turn around the Justice Department and clean up what has happened. But they're going to have a very hard time doing that because there will be many entrenched career lawyers there, people hired by this administration who will be doing everything they can to stop and fight any attempt to clean things up," said von Spakovsky. |
| Putting Politics Ahead of Justice |
| Mon, 23 Jun 2014 15:32:57 EST Eric Holder evolved from a widely-respected prosecutor into an increasingly partisan operative, who eventually felt free to trump justice with politics when his ideological soul mate tapped him as attorney general. That's the thesis of "Obama's Enforcer," a new book by former Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky, who is now with the Heritage Foundation. His co-author is longtime investigative reporter and columnist John Fund. Attorney general is a political appointment and those nominated for the job usually share some if not many ideological similarities with the president who chooses them. However, von Spakovsky says there is a stark difference between past attorneys general and what we've seen from Eric Holder. "Holder has put politics at the forefront, ahead of justice. You can look at prior attorneys general and you will find that they, very carefully, treaded the line between working for the president and trying to put his priorities in place but on the other hand, realizing they are the attorney general. The interests of justice and nonpartisan enforcement of the law takes a higher priority. Past attorneys general of both parties have done it very well," said von Spakovsky. "That is not the way Holder has run the Justice Department. He obviously considers himself part of the president's political team first, attorney general a distant second. You can see that in the way that he's conducted himself and the way they have politicized the prosecution process," he said. According to von Spakovsky, Holder approached the law much differently earlier in his career. A generation ago, officials in both parties applauded him as a tough-minded prosecutor and judge. Slowly, his actions began to reflect his deepening political philosophy. "He went from being a very nonpartisan, professional lawyer to having politics and ideology driving him. A (40-year Justice Department) lawyer we talked to thinks some of that may have been influenced by the woman he married (Sharon Malone) because of the very bitter attitude she has towards the experiences of black Americans," von Spakovsky. The book alleges Holder's increasing partisanship was already on display while he was deputy attorney general in the later years of the Clinton administration. "He did things there like recommend pardons for sixteen terrorists in American jails. Why? They were Puerto Rican terrorists and the thought at the time was this might help Hillary Clinton with her Senate run in New York, so sacrificing national security for political advantage," said von Spakovsky. Last decade, Holder shed his Clinton loyalties in favor of Barack Obama, following Obama's meteoric rise during and after his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign. By 2008, Holder was not only solidly on board for Obama early in the race against Sen. Clinton, but was a chief fundraiser and surrogate for his candidate as well. The reason, according to von Spakovsky, was an instantaneous ideological symmetry. He says that can be seen today as both men have little regard for enforcing laws with which they disagree. "This attorney general believes he can refuse to defend any law that he doesn't like and that's the way he has approached his office. That is extremely dangerous. It violates separation of powers. It can tear apart the kind of constitutional structure we have," said von Spakovsky, citing Holder's refusal to enforce immigration law, mandatory drug sentences and the Defense of Marriage Act. Worse yet, say the authors, is that Holder is encouraging like-minded state attorneys general to follow his lead and not enforce statutes that run contrary to their political beliefs, particularly in the state-by-state debates over the definition of marriage. Another development von Spakovsky and Fund find very troubling is the politicizing of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which they claim is critical to maintaining judicial impartiality in the U.S. "The Office of Legal Counsel is a very special office within the Justice Department. Its job has always been to provide legal opinions to the president, and particularly on the constitutionality of proposed legislation and actions the president wants to take. It has the highest, most sterling reputation of any office or division within the Justice Department. They've always been known as an office that will provide an objective opinion. They don't care who's in the White House or what opinion the White House would actually like to have," said von Spakovsky. He says that's all changed under Holder's time in office. "For the first time in it's history, Eric Holder has changed that. He has installed someone who will give him the legal opinions he wants despite them not being correct," said von Spakovsky. The clearest example of this, according to the authors, is President Obama's attempt to make recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, even though the U.S. Senate was not technically in recess. "We spoke to veterans of that office who said that opinion was an embarrassment. It was very clear they had written the conclusion they wanted and then tried to make up the law to fit it. Some of the arguments they made were described as laughable by a former OLC lawyer who had worked for several different administrations," said von Spakovsky. In addition to refusing to enforce laws contrary to his beliefs, Holder is also accused by Fund and von Spakovsky of harassing citizens and businesses with crippling fines and court costs for the smallest and most questionable violation of federal law and regulations. They also say Holder and his allies in the Justice Department have made a habit of getting sued by their own friends to change laws without congressional approval. "The administration and the Justice Department have been engaging in what we call collusive settlements. These are what we call 'sue and settle' cases, where the department will go and solicit one of their allies, a political advocacy organization and say, 'Why don't you guys sue us, claiming that we haven't, for example, issued a particular type of environmental regulation that we all want but don't have the legal authority to issue. As soon as you file the lawsuit, we will not fight it. We'll immediately surrender and agree to settle. The settlement agreement, which we can get rubber-stamped by a federal judge, will let us do whatever we want,'" said von Spakovsky. "Those kinds of cases have skyrocketed under the Holder Justice Department and under this administration. That's a pretty clear indication of the kind of abuse that the department is engaging in," he said. |
| 'Enforce the Law' |
| Fri, 20 Jun 2014 16:13:06 EST Both parties deserve blame for the humanitarian crisis on our southern border and our government is actively involved in making the problem worse, according to a longtime immigration official the solution is as simple as enforcing the existing laws. Tens of thousands of people have flooded the southern border this year, exponentially more than any other full year in recent memory. Many observers expect the numbers to swell into the hundreds of thousands. Michael Cutler served many years as an immigration official, with what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) combating drug trafficking, human smuggling and terrorism. He calls himself a lifelong Democrat, but says this is a political problem where both parties are to blame. "Most politicians, from both the Democrat and Republican parties, are thrilled to have foreign nationals surge across our borders. This isn't an accident. This is something they have been doing everything in their power to encourage," said Cutler, who says politicians are largely acting on the wishes of their donors. "Campaign contributions are nothing more than legalized bribes. The politicians are taking the money and the people giving them the contributions have an expectation. As a federal agent for 30 years, I was not allowed to accept a cup of coffee. If you're concerned that a cup of coffee might influence an agent's objectivity, what do you think thousands of dollars does when given to a political candidate?" asked Cutler. He also points to the failure of the government to enforce border security laws is a key factor because people entering the nation illegally know they probably won't be sent home. "If you're on a highway that has EZ-Pass or a tollgate, and they were to suddenly create a third lane that says, 'Free. No Speed Limit,' what would it say about someone's intelligence or state of mind if they would wait to pay a toll when all they have to do is drift into that third lane where there's no speed limit and no toll," said Cutler. Cutler says the federal government not only wants this to happen, but officials are breaking the law to make it happen. He says reports this week suggesting the Department of Homeland Security is hiring escorts to move illegals around the country is absolutely true. "They're actually using agents to bring these aliens into cities across the country," said Cutler. "What the government is now doing is taking over the job of alien traffickers. If you go to the immigration laws, aiding, abetting, encouraging, inducing, harboring, shielding or transporting are all felonies. This is no longer a matter of what the president would call prosecutorial discretion and I call prosecutorial deception. We are now becoming the competition for the alien smugglers once they get to the border of the United States." "The starter's pistol has been fired, and, for aspiring illegal aliens around the world, the finish line is the border of the United States of America," he said. Much hand-wringing continues in Washington about how to solve the crisis unfolding along the border. Cutler says it's really pretty simple and he cautions Americans not to believe that every unaccompanied teenager is an innocent child in search of the American dream. "Enforce the law. And we keep saying 'young people.' As an agent, I've encountered gang members who were thirteen and fourteen years old. We've seen kinds get involved with carrying out murders for hire at age thirteen because they knew they wouldn't go to jail for a significant period of time. We have to be careful who we're letting in," said Cutler. He says the current mess in the southwestern U.S. is ample evidence that Obama administration claims of much tighter border security are largely fiction. He says the explosion in drug trafficking clued him in a long time ago. "The real way of determining border security is to look at the price and availability of heroin and cocaine. Those chemicals are not produced in the United States. They are purely smuggled in. We are in the midst of a heroin epidemic. Our border is nothing more than a speed bump," said Cutler. "That heroin is behind a lot of the crime that we're seeing. So while everyone's talking about limiting how many bullets we should be putting in our guns and how we need to cut down in salt and sugar, why is no body addressing the issue of the damage that narcotics trafficking and narcotics use has on America and the crime rate?" he said. Not surprisingly, Cutler is staunchly opposed to any sort of comprehensive immigration reform legislation. "Comprehensive reform does not address the problem. It would exacerbate the problem. It would give people lawful status. The argument is we can't deport eleven million people. No one is talking about deporting eleven million. when you have drunk drivers, nobody says, 'The numbers are too great. Let's just forget about it.' You enforce the law as effectively as you can. The answer is deterrent," said Cutler. |
| Signs of the Death Spiral |
| Thu, 19 Jun 2014 15:43:40 EST A new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report designed to show the new health care laws are increasing access and lowering costs may actually provide evidence that the program could be in the first stages of a financial death spiral. When the Obamacare exchanges opened last year, most patients were expected to enroll in the least expensive, "bronze" plans. However, Wednesday's "Premium Affordability, Competition, and Choice in the Health Insurance Marketplace, 2014" report from HHS shows a much larger than expected number of Americans enrolling in the "silver" plans. National Center for Public Policy Research Health Care Policy Analyst David Hogberg says that could be very significant to the financial future of our health care system. "About 65 percent of enrollees have chosen a silver plan. One of the theories behind this has to do with the fact that if you earn 250 percent of the federal poverty level or less, and you choose a silver plan, you get an additional subsidy t help you with your plan's cost-sharing. So not only do you get subsidy to help you with your premiums, you also get one to help you pay for deductibles, co-pays and other types of cost-sharing," said Hogberg. "This cost-sharing subsidy can greatly increase the value of the silver plan. Who is likely to choose a plan that has a subsidy for cost-sharing? It's probably people who are likely to have a lot of medical expenses, people that are sick. Some of the thinking has been that maybe this feature of the exchanges has attracted a lot of sicker people to the exchanges than it optimal. What we've been missing is any real evidence that a lot of people buying silver plans do in fact make 250 percent of the federal poverty level or less. So far, it's been a guess," said Hogberg. He says that guess carries a lot more weight after the new HHS report. "Yesterday's report actually provided some pretty compelling evidence. You go down to Table 2 in the report and it shows the average premium subsidy that people got by plan type. This matters because the lower your income, the larger the subsidy you will get to help to help pay for your premiums. Guess which type of plan had the largest average premium subsidy?" said Hogberg. "[Silver's] average was $276 a month, which is about 20 percent higher than the subsidy for any other plan. What this strongly suggests is that silver plans are attracting a lot of people below 250 percent of the federal poverty level. If the reason they're choosing silver plans is that they have a lot of health problems, then you've got an insurance pool that is probably sicker than average and that will be very costly to cover," he said. Hogberg cannot say with absolute certainty that the die is cast for the death spiral, in which premiums rise and young, healthy people drop out instead of paying high costs for insurance and that process keeps repeating itself until the system collapses underneath its own weight. But the telltale sign in the coming months, he says, will be seeing just how much premiums rise. But how much do they need to be rising to be a signal of financial instability in the health care sector? "I think you would probably be seeing at least 10 percent or more on average and we've started to see a bit of that," said Hogberg. Ohio insurers are already announcing that average premiums will be increasing 13 percent next year. It's 12 percent in Vermont. Virginia and Washington state rates will be jumping nine percent on average, but on insurer in Washington is asking for a 26 percent hike in premiums. Individual insurers in Arizona are requesting increases of 25 percent and 14 percent respectively, but the overall state average has not yet been calculated. "If we see really high increases like that, there's going to be a lot of incentive for young and healthy people who aren't getting very big subsidies or getting no subsidy at all to drop out of the exchanges," said Hogberg. Also this week, multiple sources reported that many Americans may soon be looking at higher premium costs because their subsidies will be reduced or eliminated altogether because their financial information on their enrollment forms did not match what the IRS had on file. Hogberg says this is a headache that was totally preventable. "To some extent it's the administration's own fault that this has happened. They didn't have the technology ready to be able to check people's income with the IRS but they went ahead with the exchanges anyway. And then, about a year ago, they said for a number these exchanges we're going to rely on the honor system to report your income," said Hogberg, saying people took a shot at fudging their numbers when it appeared the government had no intention of enforcing the law. |
| Much Outrage, No Consequences |
| Wed, 18 Jun 2014 18:19:18 EST A key member of the House Ways and Means Committee says he does not believe years worth of emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner and six other figures vital to the investigation are suddenly missing but he also hinted that his committee may not do much to hold anyone accountable for failing to preserve and produce the documents. In the past week, the IRS revealed that nearly two-and-a-half years worth of Lerner's emails are "missing" and cannot be given to congressional investigators because her computer crashed. Subsequently, lawmakers were informed computer problems also wiped out the emails of six other figures connected to the investigation. "As an old cop, there's something fishy somewhere. I have some waterfront property in Arizona to sell. I don't believe a word of it," said Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Washington), a member of the Ways and Means Committee who spent most of his adult life in law enforcement. Both the Ways and Means Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have requested volumes of documents in connection with the alleged IRS harassment of conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status. Reichert says his committee is getting evidence in a slow trickle, but even that glacial pace is turning up information that has the IRS running scared. "We got enough information that helped direct us to certain individuals to focus on and interview. Those interviews then led us to ask for more documentation. This is an investigation very similar to many I participated in in my 33 years in law enforcement," said Reichert. "You interview people. You collect documents. They lead you to other people to talk to and other documents to search for. All of a sudden we're getting close and Lois Lerner takes the fifth and other people resign. I think we're really close to finding the truth because all of a sudden they can't stall us anymore, so now they've got a new excuse. 'We can't find them. They're lost. They've disappeared. The servers are wiped dry and the hard drive is gone and we have no idea how to get this information back,' which is also something I don't believe," said Reichert. Reichert says the committee was informed of the "missing" emails in a letter from the IRS but says that vital information was "buried on page 15 in a 27-page letter." On Friday, the Ways and Means panel will question IRS Commissioner John Koskinen about the emails and other perceived stonewalling in the transfer of documents related to the investigation. Reichert gave us a preview of what he will ask. We're going to ask him a lot of questions. Who is visiting the White House during this period of time? What were they talking about? Especially (former Chief of Staff to the Deputy Commissioner) Nikole Flax, because Nikole Flax is also one of those people whose emails have disappeared somewhere into never-never land. Was she updating the White House on targeting or was she getting orders from people. These are answers we don't have," said Reichert. The congressman also wants to know about any previous computer meltdowns at the IRS. "One of my questions will be, 'Has this happened before? How many times has this happened before? Were you able to recover the information in past events? Did you make any corrections to your system to help prevent this from happening?' Obviously, if this is a true story, they didn't," said Reichert. "It's very suspect that Lois Lerner and these six others who were deeply engaged in conversation regarding the targeting of conservative people and organizations, they're the ones whose emails have been lost," he said. Conservatives suing the IRS for alleged harassment are already making plans to go to court over the missing emails if necessary. However, when directly asked how his colleagues will respond to the recent IRS actions, Reichert says the Ways and Means Committee will likely be content to plow forward with the documents the IRS has disclosed to lawmakers rather than hold officials accountable. "We're continuing our investigation. We still have documents to look over. There are thousands of them. As we go through these documents, they do lead us to other people and other interviews. We're going to continue this investigation. As far as what specific steps we'll take, I think that depends on the testimony that (Koskinen) provides us on Friday," said Reichert. |
| 'I Think They're Lying' |
| Tue, 17 Jun 2014 15:35:52 EST The attorney representing many conservative groups suing the IRS for harassment over their applications for tax-exempt status does not believe the claim that more than two years of critical emails are suddenly missing and she is demanding answers. On Friday, the IRS announced that emails to and from former Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner were missing between the beginning of 2009 and mid-2011, the exact stretch in which the tea party was swelling in activity and political influence. "Just when you think they can't think of anything more bizarre to say that they've done or not done, then they come up with this," said Cleta Mitchell, a highly regarded Washington attorney who is suing the IRS on behalf of True the Vote and other groups alleging IRS misconduct. "They are required under many court decisions and many federal statutes to retain information that would be discoverable and relevant and issue related to litigation," she said. As a result, Mitchell is taking swift action in demanding answers to how the emails suddenly vanished and what the government plans to do about it. "We sent a letter to the (Justice Department) and to the attorneys for Lois Lerner and the other IRS defendants yesterday, giving them until noon Wednesday to respond to several questions. If they don't respond, we will file a motion in court to allow for an independent forensics expert to have access to the computers and the hard drives and to take the necessary steps to recover and preserve the evidence," said Mitchell. Lerner's emails are also being sought by congressional investigators. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen recently assured House lawmakers that the emails existed and were carefully protected. Mitchell isn't buying the explanation and doesn't think much of Koskinen either. "I think they're lying. They're either lying before or they're lying now. John Koskinen may be a nice person but he's like a puppet. He says whatever his staff tells him to say and he trots over to Congress and says things. If I were in his position, I would have some heads because he has just parroted whatever the underlings have told him to say ever since he got there," said Mitchell. The IRS position lacks credibility on at least two fronts, according to Mitchell. First, she points out the investigation is nearly a year old and the IRS could have easily reported the missing emails when they were requested if they really didn't exist. Second, the IRS only agreed to turn over the emails a month ago, which makes the timing of this announcement even more suspect to her and officials have made no effort to recover them. "We have a bunch of people who are lawless. There are statutes that require the retention of these documents. They would not call in the FBI and the forensic experts at the NSA to recover these emails. I've had many, many emails from people around the country saying this is just not possible. This is not 1978. Those emails are not lost. They can be recovered. What I'm worried about is that they've proactively destroyed the sources of the hard drives and computers," said Mitchell. Mitchell insists her clients still have a strong case against the IRS and the government's failure to preserve evidence can be construed by the courts as evidence against the IRS. Nonetheless, she says the Lerner emails could be very revealing. "I think it would be a day-by-day diary," said Lerner. "This was at the height of IRS targeting, when it began, how it began, the communications within the agency and outside the agency. She's at the center of the storm," said Mitchell. The plaintiffs in the case are resolute in their commitment to find justice in this case, according to Mitchell. She says this entire saga is not only another dagger in the reputation of the IRS but is also a scandal for how Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department have done everything they can to prevent the truth from coming to light. "Everybody should be beyond being shocked at what the IRS can come up with. It's just breathtaking this is the most lawless agency. The thing that is most distressing is that if we had independent law enforcement of the nation in Attorney General Eric Holder, instead of an enforcer for the Obama administration's political hatchet agenda, they could fear that the DOJ would step in and bring the FBI in and do whatever's necessary to recover and preserve documents and prosecute those for failure to follow the statutes," said Mitchell, "However, we all know that the Department of Justice is complicit in this effort. My clients are more determined than ever to see this through with litigation, hoping that we'll get law enforcement through the federal courts," she said. |
| 'I'd Be Happy If They Just All Killed Each Other' |
| Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:01:38 EST Retired U.S. Navy Captain Chuck Nash says Iraq is simply turning into "a big mess" and predicts a civil war between radical Sunni and Shia will be very bad news for the U.S. no matter who wins, so the best-case scenario is for the two sides to kill as many of the other as possible. The situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, as forces calling themselves the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) advance toward Baghdad while Iran takes more concrete steps to enter into the fray to bolster its allies in the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki and the government itself prepares to take a stand in the Shia-dominated areas. Nash says the coming clash is obvious, but the end result is not. "Essentially, Iraq is turning into a religious civil war," said Nash, noting that Sunni and Shia hatred for each other is nothing new given centuries of dispute over who should have been the rightful heir to Mohammed. "It's a civil war in that you can't clearly say all the Sunni are fighting on this side or all of the Shia are fighting on this side. They're not. The Iranians had previously funded ISIS when they were fighting in Syria and even before that when they were Al Qaeda in Iraq and they were fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. So the lines are very blurred. It's just a big mess," said Nash. Not only are the lines blurred, Nash says there's a good chance this fight will go on a long time and the considerations are far more complicated than most people realize. "I think what we're going to see is a stalemate. We're going to have the Sunni north and west of Baghdad and toward the Syrian border. You're going to have the two-thirds Shia population, Baghdad and south toward Basra, and then you're going to have the Kurdish north. When that happens, that will start the next round of Middle East conflict," said Nash. "The Turks and the Iranians will not be happy with an independent Kurdistan. The Syrians are not going to be happy with the Sunni to their east," Nash said, adding that every possible outcome is bad news so the U.S. should feel no compunction to get involved or even see the conflict end anytime soon. "Quite frankly, I'd be happy if they just all killed each other," said Nash, noting how the current Shia regime in Baghdad squandered a golden opportunity for stability by exacting revenge on the Sunni in response for Saddam Hussein's brutal treatment of the Shia during his reign. ISIS brings certain advantages to the fight as well as major liabilities. According to Nash, ISIS is much better funded and organized then most terrorist organizations. "Instead of being your run of the mill, barbaric terrorist army, these guys have a very, very sophisticated fundraising and criminal enterprise that has brought them tens of millions of dollars. They are not state supported per se, as the intelligence community originally thought, but in fact have been raising money through a vast criminal enterprise," said Nash, citing one example as ISIS commandeering Syrian oil fields and then selling that oil back to the Syrian government at a significant profit. Nash says the problem for ISIS is the same problem that doomed Al Qaeda in Iraq, namely that fellow Sunni quickly tired of their extremist tendencies and stopped cooperating with them once the immediate threat was past. "They only have a limited amount of time to really entrench themselves in the Sunni population. The Sunnis do not want to live under such a brutal, barbaric government as ISIS would bring forth," he said. Many conservatives assailed President Obama for having a leisurely weekend in California while Iraq is in chaos. Nash says Obama's actions over the past 48 hours are not the problem. Instead, he says the U.S. habit of ignoring Iraq in recent years is catching up with us and no good options remain. "Because of all the inactivity and the mismanagement for the last eight years, there's not much you can do now. It's like personal choices in your life. If you decide to drink two bottles of scotch and smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, and you do that for eight years and then start to notice the effect that it's having on your body, going to a doctor and saying I'm ready to do something about this, it just may be too late," said Nash. |
| Target America |
| Fri, 13 Jun 2014 16:02:20 EST Truth is just as strange as fiction, as the recent U.S. release of five key Taliban figures closely mirrors the plot line of Scott McEwen's new novel, "Target America," which suggests the consequences of such a move could be calamitous within our own borders. McEwen is a prolific author, known best for co-writing the best-selling "American Sniper" alongside famed military sniper and U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. "American Target" is the latest in McEwen's Sniper Elite series. He also co-authored the non-fiction work "Eyes on Target", which chronicles the Benghazi terrorist attack and the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and how he believes the Obama administration poorly served Navy SEALs in both events. In addition to discussing his new book, McEwen offered details about the forthcoming feature film based on "American Sniper" and the pending lawsuit Kyle's widow still faces for Kyle allegedly defaming Jesse Ventura in that book. "American Target" centers on Navy SEAL Gil Shannon and his elite team as they race to stop a nuclear weapon smuggled into the U.S. through our southern border. McEwen says his idea for this novel originated from rel-life events and policies. "We were concerned that there were terrorists being let out of Gitmo even back then, which has come to light pretty heavily in the last few days given the administration's most recent releases. They've been doing this for some time. We were always concerned that this could end up blowing up in all of our faces," said McEwen. "When you let these guys go, if you think that they're rehabilitated, then you live in a dream world in Washington. They're not rehabilitated and I expect that the ones we just let out are going to come back and show us that once again. "Target America" is about preparing our country for that eventuality. In addition to combining a real-world threat and a compelling novel, McEwen says making Americans aware of the courage of our military is also a priority. He specifically cited the examples of ex-SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods in Benghazi, who saved upwards of 30 American lives by battling hundreds of terrorists for hours. He says there many other American heroes of that caliber as well. "That's what these guys do. I know a lot of guys who do that kind of work and that's what I've incorporated into "American Target" is real-life stuff that goes on, real-life bad guys that get hunted and the methods and operations that are used to hunt these bad guys. I think it's important people know that there is another world out there. It's a shadowy world, but it's one where heroes are made every day and there's guys out there putting their lives on the line for us," said McEwen. One of those heroes was Chris Kyle, who stated in "American Sniper" that he recorded 255 kills, 160 of which he says are confirmed. Those number make him the most prolific sniper in U.S. military history. He was tragically killed in 2013 by a fellow veteran Kyle was trying to help work through post-traumatic stress. His story is being made into a major motion picture being directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper. McEwen says Eastwood just finished shooting and the movie could be out as early as the end of the year. McEwen says he thinks there are several reasons why Kyle's story resonates with the American public. "Chris was a patriot and he was a down-home type of guy. He was a great guy, one of my favorite people to go out and have a beer with, just an interesting guy that just happened to be very, very good at what he did and ended up distinguishing himself in battle amongst some really heroic guys and SEAL teams," said McEwen. "At the end of the day was an American patriot. He was a hero and someone people could identify with no matter what walk of society you were from," he said. One unpleasant result of "American Sniper" was the defamation lawsuit filed against Kyle by ex-SEAL and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. In the book, Kyle describes punching out a famous person following an argument in a bar. The book does not name Ventura, but Kyle revealed it was Ventura in a subsequent radio interview. When Kyle was killed, Ventura chose not to drop the lawsuit but instead to sue Kyle's widow, Taya, and his estate. "Unfortunately, Jesse has seen fit to proceed with this, notwithstanding my discussions with him and imploring him to the contrary. he is convinced the events didn't take place s reported, whereas we had multiple SEAL team people have told similar events as to what was in the book," said McEwen. And what is McEwen's reaction to Ventura continuing to pursue the case? "It's disappointment. At the end of the day, suing Taya and the kids and the estate seems to make very little sense to me. Jesse's going to do whatever Jesse's going to do. I have my opinion of it and obviously my opinion is that it's pretty low," said McEwen. "This is the decision he made. I have attempted to get him talked out of that and say this is not the right one, either for himself, or Taya and the kids or or for the military community in general. But I think Jesse kind of listens to his own drummer," he said. McEwen says the case is scheduled to go to trial in the first week of July. |
| Three Martini Lunch 6/13/14 |
| Fri, 13 Jun 2014 14:08:43 EST Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Virginia GOP lawmakers for creating conditions to pass their budget through the senate and stop the Democratic governor from expanding Medicaid. They also cringe as Iran suggests collaborating with the U.S. in stopping Sunni radicals from taking over Iraq. And they react to the news Harrison Ford broke is ankle on the set of the new Star Wars movie. |
| 'Universal, Utter Dismay and Anger' |
| Thu, 12 Jun 2014 16:22:41 EST A decorated Iraq War veteran says he and others who fought there are dismayed and angry that their hard-earned gains appear to be unraveling rapidly and he doubts whether President Obama even cares. In the past several months, radical Islamist militants have been on the march in Iraq, securing the bulk of the western Anbar Province in January and just this week taking control of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. They are now on the march to Baghdad to take control of the country and have declared an end to the border between Syria and Iraq. Iraqis are fleeing Mosul and other cities by the hundreds of thousands. The Islamists are reportedly beheading some of those left behind. The primary actor behind the instability is the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), originally an Al Qaeda affiliate responsible for such heinous atrocities in Syria that even Al Qaeda has publicly distanced itself from the group. The rapid progress of ISIS is particularly difficult to watch for veterans of the the Iraq War. Concerned Veterans for America CEO Pete Hegseth served in and around Samarra as a member of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division during the heat of the insurgency in 2005-2006. He says veterans are deeply frustrated. "Universal, utter dismay and anger from veterans and those who've served to see what's unfolding before our eyes in Iraq. It's one of the greatest foreign policy failures in a long time. To see the progress that we made and then watch it be given away is dismaying. The implications strategically are vast. I mean, we were so close. We were creating the conditions for a stable and strong and freer Iraq, not a perfect one but one that would at least protect America's interests and ensure radicals were not able to find safe harbor there," said Hegseth. According to Hegseth, the Obama administration was handed an increasingly stable situation in Iraq but the president had no interest in finishing the job. "This administration was more obsessed with ending the war than winning it or being successful. As a result, now that we've turned the page and looked away from Iraq, and insurgents have taken advantage of it," said Hegseth, Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki asked the United States to consider air strikes against ISIS as their progress became clear. The reports say the Obama administration refused those requests, concluding that once our troops left Iraq at the end of 2011 the United States was done fighting in Iraq. Hegseth minced few words in response to those reports. "I don't like to make blunt statements like this but I don't think the Obama administration cares. Their only interest in Iraq has been to end the war, turn the page and talk about how they don't support it. At this point, there's no will, there's no appetite, there's no strategic thinking to re-engage in Iraq, even though what's happening right now is a re-establishment of an even more dangerous element than we saw in the Taliban era in Afghanistan. These are folks who want a space from which to form a state and then project jihad, not just regionally but around the world," said Hegseth. The turmoil in Iraq is the latest revelation to bring considerable frustration to our veterans, following on the heels of the Veterans Administration scandal and the controversial exchange of five key Taliban figures for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was in Taliban custody. Hegseth says Concerned Veterans for America is able to have a positive impact reversing the problems at the VA. He says there's not much they can do but watch Taliban figures go free and Iraq fall further and further into the hands of radicals. "When it comes to the Bergdahl swap or watching Iraq fade away, you feel helpless as you watch the things you've invested in that were so critical to America's national security. How you finish things matters regardless of the merits of how they were started. It's a rough time for veterans of those conflicts and I think has given me a better understanding of how Vietnam veterans felt when Saigon fell. Even though Baghdad hasn't fallen, and neither has Kabul, our commitment is waning and the enemy remains on the march. And that's a bad equation," he said. So what policy would Hegseth urge the administration to adopt now in Iraq? "There are very few good options here. I think the best response is to project strength rhetorically about what we will and will not tolerate, and where we can, putting our thumb on the scales to support the good guys. That requires intelligence in Iraq that we don't really have. Immediate support for the regime is important to make sure Baghdad does not fall, and then from there looking at ways we can push back advances the enemy has made," said Hegseth. The U.S. withdrawal in 2011 largely followed the timetable established in the latter days of the George W. Bush administration. The major difference is that the United States and Iraq failed to reach a Status of Forces Agreement to keep a residual American force in the country. Hegseth says that would have made a monumental difference in where Iraq stands right now. "It's less about the force and more about the signal that this is a country that will have continued emphasis and focus from the United States of America and an understanding in the enemies of that state that they were not going to have the ability to challenge the Iraqi military," said Hegseth, who also believes the total U.S. departure exacerbated dysfunction within the Iraqi government and led to the Maliki government seeking to dominate the Sunni population rather than find common ground with it. While Hegseth faults Obama administration policy for the current chaos in Iraq, arguments from elsewhere on the political spectrum suggest none of this would be happening if the U.S. never went into Iraq. They also assert that these same problems would have erupted whenever our residual forces left. Hegseth says that line of reasoning is deeply flawed. "I don't grant that inevitably, down the line, it would descend into civil war. I don't accept that. I just don't. I think Iraq had the seeds for the foundation of representative government, not Jeffersonian, perfect, American-looking government but something where resolution was found through politics and not through the battlefield is possible," said Hegseth. "I think Iraq is somewhere where a stable outcome is more likely to happen than Afghanistan, which is the irony of Iraq being the bad war in everyone's eyes and Afghanistan being the good war. At least Iraq has the seeds of a civil society: an educated populace, infrastructure, a history of central governance. All the things we're seeing crumble before our eyes right now could have been shepherded through American commitment, but instead they're slipping away," said Hegseth. |
| Deciphering The Cantor Collapse |
| Thu, 12 Jun 2014 16:19:55 EST Economics professor Dave Brat stunned House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Tuesday and left pundits, politicians and operatives scrambling for an explanation for the lopsided upset, but veteran conservative activist Richard Viguerie says it's a simple matter of voters being fed up with Washington and the status quo. Viguerie is a lifelong conservative activist going back to the earliest days of the movement and pioneered direct mail in political campaigning. He is now chairman of conservativehq.com and author of "Takeover: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It." On Tuesday, Brat defeated cantor by an 11-point margin, after coming no closer than 13 points in any poll conducted before the primary. Cantor did not take the race lightly. He spent roughly five million dollars trying to portray Brat as a liberal in GOP clothing. Brat spent just $122,000. The stunning results left the punditry scrambling for an explanation that ranged from Cantor's positions on immigration reform to Democrats voting for Brat in the open primary in an effort to embarrass Cantor. Viguerie says the motivation for ousting Cantor is no mystery to him. "They wanted to send a message to Washington. Whether their issue was amnesty for illegal aliens or the out of control spending by the Congress, over-regulation of people's lives, the IRS scandal, the Veterans Administration scandal, etc., voters wanted to send Washington a message: 'We're unhappy with business as usual,'" said Viguerie. "The establishment Republicans have too long been in bed with the Democrats in growing government. This is a huge wake-up call for Republican leaders, not only in Washington but around the country. The voters are tired of crony capitalism and they're sending them a message," he said. But of all the opportunities for conservative voters to send a message to congressional leaders, why was Cantor vulnerable to defeat within his own party? "He voted for TARP and to do away with the sequester. He had many bad votes, but perhaps his number one failing was that he failed to lead. Conservative voters want a lot of things from their politicians but the they want most are fighters. They see strong leadership coming from the Democrats for their agenda, whether it's the president, vice president or (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid. They're out there speaking aggressively in pushing the liberal Democrat agenda," said Viguerie. "Conservatives don't see that we have effective leaders. We have people who are silent. They just don't seem to have a backbone. I think that was the number one failing above everything else from the standpoint of the conservative voters. They didn't see any fight in Eric Cantor," he said. Viguerie is not enthused at the prospect of House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-California) ascending to majority leader in the coming weeks. He preferred Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who Viguerie describes as a "solid, principled conservative." Hensarling says he will not run, meaning the field is essentially cleared for McCarthy to be leader for the rest of the year and the real scramble is to replace McCarthy as whip. House Speaker John Boehner and several of his allies say Cantor's loss does not change Boehner's plans to remain as speaker next year. Viguerie believes otherwise. "I suspect that Boehner will hold on through this year and then step aside before the new Congress comes into office in 2015," he said. "If the Republicans are thinking straight, they will bring a really articulate, aggressive conservative to fill that position. Lincoln told us and the Bible tells us, 'A house divided (against itself) cannot stand'. Right now, the Republican Party is a house divided. If they want to do well in the 2014 election as well as 2016, they've got to unite the Republican Party and reach out to the base of the party and make sure that grassroots, limited government, constitutional conservatives are represented in the Republican leadership. Today, they're not," said Viguerie. But while conservatives hailed the Brat victory in Virginia, they also watched South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham easily avoid a run-off in coasting to a win in his GOP primary Tuesday night. In fact, several longtime incumbents have easily fended off tea party challengers this year. So how does Viguerie explain the primary results across the board? "Ninety-five percent of tea party successes have come in open races. That's how Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and others won. It's very, very difficult to beat an incumbent. In order to beat an incumbent, you must have a really high-quality candidate," said Viguerie. "When running against these really entrenched incumbents, we haven't had really quality candidates. In Dave Brat, we had a first-class candidate. We have a first-class candidate running against an incumbent in Mississippi, Chris McDaniel. I think he's going to win. By these two elections, Virginia and Mississippi, when two quality candidates ran against entrenched incumbents, it will send a message to high-quality conservatives out there, 'Let me take a chance against the king because it's been done before with success,'" he said. |
| Gosar: Impeach Holder for Human Smuggling |
| Wed, 11 Jun 2014 16:27:07 EST A humanitarian crisis is growing quickly in parts of Texas and Arizona, as thousands upon thousands of unaccompanied illegal immigrant teenagers flood across the border and the federal government moves them to various locations for shelter. Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar says this mess is entirely the work of the Obama administration and that Attorney General Eric Holder needs to be impeached for flouting federal law and effectively engaging in human smuggling. Gosar has called for Holder's resignation several times in the past, over issues such as the fatally botched gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious and the Justice Department harassment of Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen. He says the attorney general's latest actions make it imperative that he be removed. "This is the continuing destruction of the rule of law and the constitutional framework which we operate under," said Gosar, who cited as evidence that Holder needs to be removed from office. "USC § 1324 (a)(1)(A) reads 'knowingly, or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to enter or remains in the United State in violation of law, transports or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise in futherance of such violation of the law,'" said Gosar. "I've contended now, and it's been supported by a U.S. federal judge, that the attorney general is in fact violating criminal smuggling laws. Congress has the ability to impugn those people that actually disregard the rule of law. It's time to call him into question to stop the furtherance of the destruction of the rule of law," he said. Gosar says the crisis along the border is the latest impetus for removing Holder from office but he says support for impeachment is increasing and the public outrage is growing about several other issues as well. "People are fed up. We saw the election last night (that defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor). People are scared and they're angry at a government that will not uphold the rule of law. That's what made us special. He is to tell the president, 'Hey, you're overreaching,' whether it be immigration, whether it be prisoner release at Guantanamo, whether it be Fast and Furious, whether it be Benghazi behind the scenes. In all this stuff, the attorney general is required to uphold the rule of law, and if he can't, he needs to get out of the way," said Gosar. "If the House knows a breakdown of the law is occurring,it is their due diligence to file the articles of impeachment, to hold the attorney general accountable and make sure that we find an attorney general that can actually comply with the rule of law," he said. According to the government's own data, the number of teenage illegals coming to America in the first half of 2014 easily dwarfs the total number from 2013 and previous years. Gosar says the massive influx is no coincidence. "The president said that he would not deport anybody, and then the attorney general was complicit in saying that they would not uphold the rule of law in border security. They perpetuated this issue and what we're seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg," said Gosar. "What we're generating is whole new generations of 'dreamers' that are then being taken by plane. At least seven different flights have come from Texas to Arizona. These people have been moved around without food, water, shelter and many have not had any vaccinations," he said. The congressman said his staff recently met with Homeland Security officials about the government's transporting of illegal immigrants from one state to another. He says DHS could not cite any part of federal allowing them to do what they are doing and further states that the federal government gave no advanced notice to him or Arizona state officials that thousands of destitute people would be transported to their state. To further complicate matters, Gosar says most of the illegal immigrants have been coached to tell U.S. Border Patrol agents that they are seeking asylum from Mexican drug cartels or some other nefarious entity, which then compels the border agents not to return them across the border. Gosar admits he does not have any Democrats on board with the idea of impeaching Eric Holder, but that won't stop him from trying to bring it to the floor. In the meantime, a flood of illegal immigrants is pouring across the border and being left in squalid conditions in Texas and Arizona. Gosar says those problems should be addressed decisively. "The first thing we need to do is enforce the immigration law, tell them they will not be accepted and that they will be returned home. We have to highlight the complicit behavior that is being shown by this U.S. district judge that shows that DHS is actually taking illegal immigrants that have crossed the border recently and then connected them with their illegal parents within the states," said Gosar. "These are not limited to Arizona. They've gone to New York and Maryland as well. So we need to highlight this aspect that we need to uphold the rule of law. There's a right way of coming in and there's a wrong way. This is the wrong way and we cannot tolerate it," he said. |
| Seven Reasons to Impeach Obama |
| Tue, 10 Jun 2014 12:26:45 EST Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says President Obama is guilty of numerous high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant his removal from office is proposing seven specific articles of impeachment on which he says the evidence is very clear. McCarthy is best known as the lead prosecutor in the cases against the 1cblind sheikh 1d, Omar Abdel Rahman, and eleven conspirators behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plots against other New York City landmarks. McCarthy is now with the National Review Institute. His new book is 1cFaithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama 19s Impeachment. 1d In the book, he says the case for impeachment is solid, although he does not believe there is enough political will in the country to move forward at this time. Nonetheless, McCarthy offers seven indictments, beginning with "The President's Willful Refusal to Execute the Laws Faithfully and Usurpation of the Legislative Authority of Congress." Within that article, McCarthy cites Obama's illegal and unilateral changing of federal statutes, from several components within Obamacare to scrapping codified welfare work requirements to amending immigration laws to enact policies Congress did not approve. He also alleges Obama failed to execute laws ranging from layoff notifications to the Clean Air Act to nuclear waste and Medicare. McCarthy says there's a simple reason he put these allegations first. "When I was a prosecutor, what you always want to have in the indictment is one count that's pretty much indefensible. I think even the president's most ardent admirers would have to admit that he does not execute the laws faithfully, which is one of the most important duties that he has in the Constitution," said McCarthy. "The president is the only officer in our government who is required by the Constitution to take an oath to faithfully execute the laws and preserve the Constitution. We have a president who is very arbitrary about laws. He enforces some. He doesn't enforce others. He's selective. He rewrites them. He presumes to be able to decree federal benefits. A lot of people may like that on the hard left because it's basically implementing their ideological program. But I think most people, if they're of good faith, have to admit that he's not following the law," said McCarthy. Obama's alleged failure to faithfully enforce immigration laws also appears in the fifth article, specifically referring to the president's unilateral conferring of amnesty upon certain groups of immigrants and fighting states that seek to enforce federal immigration laws on their own. Immigration is also mentioned in another article on defrauding the American people, alleging the administration deliberately misleads the public on its border enforcement record. McCarthy says there is a very good reason for the heavy focus on immigration. "I think it's because it's so blatant. The president has taken the position that he can write the immigration law himself. He's tried to go the constitutional route. He's tried to go to Congress. He hasn't gotten what he's wanted. What he says in those instances is that, 'If Congress won't act, I will.' Constitutionally, it's not that Congress won't act. They've said no. His response to that is to become imperious and try to impose his own program and do it in a way that not only disregarding of the Constitution's separation of powers but also is an insult to the sovereignty of the states," said McCarthy. Other articles of impeachment on McCarthy's list, include "Usurping the Constitutional Authority and Prerogatives of Congress" for not getting congressional authorization for extended military action in Libya and making recess appointments at a time when the Senate was not in recess, and dereliction of duty as commander-in-chief. The latter charge focuses on crippling rules of engagement that McCarthy says makes our troops much more vulnerable and more unlikely to complete their missions. McCarthy also sees impeachable offenses on this front in the recent prisoner swap that allowed five key Taliban figures to go free from Guantanamo in exchange for captive U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl. "I'm not impressed by the one that seems to have everybody whipped up in Washington, this 30-day notification requirement. I think that's of dubious constitutionality. I actually think Obama has a pretty good argument on that statute because it really does try to restrict his core constitutional authority as commander-in-chief," said McCarthy. "It seems to be quite beside the point when we have a commander-in-chief who is replenishing the enemy in wartime when the enemy is still on the battlefield conducting offensive, jihadist operations against our guys. That's about as shocking a dereliction of duty as I can imagine," said McCarthy. McCarthy lodges another article of impeachment against Obama for fraud perpetrated against the American people. The allegations under that charge focus on the core promises of Obamacare that Americans could keep their health plans and doctors. They also cite Obama for going into Libya under the premise of averting genocide and always intending to depose Moammar Ghaddafi, blaming the 2012 Benghazi attacks on a video long after the truth was known, facilitating Iran's nuclear program while publicly vowing to stop it and propping up the green energy firm Solyndra with taxpayer dollars in a way that deceived investors. Another article calls for impeachment based on the Justice Department's alleged failure to execute the laws faithfully. That indictment centers on the illegal monitoring of reporters, the Fast and Furious gun-running operation, politicizing the hiring process at the Justice Department and unequally applying civil rights laws. On matters such as Benghazi, the Justice Department's actions and even the IRS scrutiny of conservatives, it is still unclear what Obama knew and if he had an active role in those issues. McCarthy says it doesn't matter. "In the system the framers gave us, it was very important to them that the president be accountable. If you look at the Constitution carefully, you'd find that all the executive power in the government is invested in one person. It is not endowed in this vast array of executive agencies. It is singularly the president who is responsible," said McCarthy. "It's not what Hillary Clinton does or Susan Rice does or Eric Holder or Eric Shinseki or any of the people who have become infamous over the past five -and-a-half years. All those facts are attributable to the president," said McCarthy, who says the founders would have little patience with the Obama administration's frequent explanation that the president did not know or approve of any wrongdoing. The final article accuses Obama of undermining the constitutional rights of the American people, from the IRS harassment of conservatives applying for non-profit status to his refusal to classify the Ft. Hood massacre as an act of terrorism to infringing on religious freedom through the contraception and abortifacient mandate and eroding gun rights through the United Nations. However, McCarthy save some special frustration for Obama's efforts to stifle criticism of Islam in the public square. "From the first days of Obama's presidency in 2009 with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, that's this cabal of 57 Islamic government including the Palestinian Authority, they've been working on a resolution to curtail American free speech rights in deference to sharia blasphemy standards. They have essentially struck a human rights resolution that makes it unlawful to engage in expression that could incite hostility to religion. Of course, there's only one religion we're talking about in this context," he said. "Proving that there is an Obama administration mandate that attacks religious liberty, it's not difficult to prove these things have happened, and I don't even think it's hard to prove these are high crimes and misdemeanors. Are they serious enough? Does the public think this is egregious enough to remove the president from power?" asked McCarthy. |
| Why Impeachment Must Wait |
| Mon, 9 Jun 2014 14:59:12 EST Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says there is abundant legal evidence to impeach and remove President Obama but he says it's an exercise in futility and may actually embolden Obama if Republicans move in that direction with the political will of the nation behind them. McCarthy is best known as the lead prosecutor in the cases against the "blind sheikh", Omar Abdel Rahman, and eleven conspirators behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plots against other New York City landmarks. McCarthy is now with the National Review Institute. His new book is "Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment." In it, he lays out seven separate articles of impeachment against Obama on issues ranging from changing laws and failing to execute them faithfully to dereliction of duty as commander-in-chief to fraud on issues ranging from Obamacare to Benghazi. However, he also argues that now is the wrong time to pursue impeachment. According to McCarthy, the founders included impeachment and removal from office in the Constitution as a protection for the people and the Constitution itself. However, he says the founders also didn't want impeachment to be too easy to accomplish. "They also wanted to make sure, knowing that removing a president is very socially disruptive, that we had a standard for removal that would not allow impeachment to become an exercise in partisan hackery," said McCarthy. He says that's why the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate for a president to be convicted and removed. "That ensures that unless you have a broad consensus among the public, one that cuts across ideological and partisan lines, an attempt to remove the president is probably a non-starter. It's a political remedy. You can have a thousand provable impeachable offenses, but if the public is not of a mind to remove the president from power, then the president won't be impeached in the sense of being removed from power," said McCarthy. McCarthy says even though House impeachment of Obama could be plausible, he believes it's pointless if the Senate votes are not there to remove him. He says the impeachment of Bill Clinton serves as a valuable lesson, not because the case wasn't strong enough but because the public didn't want him removed. "There wasn't a public will to remove the president from power. Unless you have, it cannot only be a mistake to go forward in the sense of not being able to achieve impeachment, you can actually end up encouraging presidential lawlessness," said McCarthy. "Spin it out with what would happen with Obama at this point. If you filed articles of impeachment, you'd have a trial in the Senate. At this point, you'd probably lose that by something like 70-30. That would be spun by the media and the administration as approval of President Obama's methods over the last few years. You'd be setting out trying to correct presidential lawlessness and you'd end up actually encouraging it," said McCarthy. McCarthy believes it is possible to turn public opinion on a matter as weighty as impeachment in a fairly short period of time. He says we saw it happen just 40 years ago. "I think if you asked people if the president's committed impeachable offenses, they'd probably overwhelmingly say yes. If you asked them if they wanted the president removed from power, I think a lot fewer people would say yes. But politics is dynamics and things change. In 1972, (Richard) Nixon won re-election with the largest then-landslide in American electoral history. In 20 months he was gone because he couldn't survive politically once the country became riveted to presidential lawlessness," said McCarthy. Republicans in Congress have other avenues to check the advance of the executive branch, and McCarthy says they simply refuse to stop much of what he considers Obama's illegal activities. "The main tool (the founders) gave Congress to that purpose is the power of the purse. The president's opposition has been supine. They haven't been willing to do anything along those lines. The way you really stop presidential lawlessness, short of impeachment, is you cut off the money the president needs to carry it out. They haven't been willing to do anything like that," said McCarthy. He says the budget showdown last September and October proved most in the GOP aren't willing to fight. "The one time that some of the Republican conservatives in Congress tried to cut off the money from Obamacare, which is an immensely unpopular program. They were castigated, not only by the press but by members of their own party. I think it's become very hard structurally to use the other tools the framers gave us," said McCarthy. He says the GOP suffers from two major problems in budget fights, which make them reluctant to demand their way. "When Republicans oppose the president, they get demagogued as racists and the like, which is really an unfortunate thing that has happened to our politics. The other thing is that the government's become so big that when you start cutting off money, you're always talking about somebody's transfer payments. Republicans never want to be in a position of being portrayed as mean ogres who are taking food from babies' mouths and money out of people's pockets," said McCarthy. |
| The DOJ's New Domestic Threats |
| Fri, 6 Jun 2014 15:33:08 EST The Justice Department is resurrecting a program designed to thwart domestic threats to the United States, and Attorney General Eric Holder says those threats include individuals the government deems anti-government or racially prejudiced. The Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee was created in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing but was scrapped soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks as intelligence and law enforcement officials shifted their focus to threats from outside the country. The committee will be comprised of figures from the FBI, the National Security Division of the Justice Department and the Attorney General's Advisory Committee. In his statement announcing the return of the committee, Holder said he remains concerned about the specter of attacks prompted by Islamic extremists, but he says this committee will be tasked with identifying other threats. "We must also concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice," Holder said. According to reporting from Reuters, The American Civil Liberties Union is pushing back against the DOJ plan, fearing "it could be a sweeping mandate to monitor and collect controversial speech." Conservative groups are alarmed on multiple levels. First, they see themselves once again the target of an administration that disagrees with them philosophically. "It appears there's an attempt to marginalize people who hold views that are sharply different from those of the administration and much of the establishment, said Horace Cooper, co-chairman of the Project 21 National Advisory Board. Project 21 is a network of black conservatives. Cooper says plenty of presidents dealt with critical speech, particularly in opposition to the Vietnam War and even the Iraq War. He says no president ever responded like this. "We didn't arrest them (due to their speech). We didn't try to prevent them from being able to express themselves on campuses and we didn't try to prevent them from trying to enter into the public square," he said. "This administration appears not to appreciate that lesson and says that the groups of people that are not within their particular perspective ought to be considered the very threat...that the real terrorist threat that comes internationally [presents]." Project 21 is a very vocal critic of what it considers administration efforts to cloak liberal policies in the guise of racial equality. Cooper says devoting resources to stop threats based on racial prejudice is a solution in search of a problem. "We're particularly bothered by mixing together so-called domestic insurrectionists and racists. There is simply no anti-black or anti-minority underground movement in America that is threatening in any way the stability of our government or the stability of local governments. There is just nothing like that. That's just a complete and total boogeyman," said Cooper, who believes the Justice Department is fully aware of the reality. "When we see this administration talking as if the real threat is that if you're a young black male, you're going to be shot, you're going to be kidnapped or you're going to be forced to prison without actually having any charges against you, there's simply no evidence to show that," said Cooper. Cooper says Holder could solve this debate by compiling a report showing the real number of racially-motivated murders, kidnappings and bombings. He says that report will never come because he believes the real motivation for this committee and this policy is entirely political. "In our organization's view, this is done, particularly the racial component, to create the false impression to minority communities that it is the Obama administration that is here to help them and another reason why, with all of the economic failings that they have provided to Americans generally and minorities in particular, they should continue to consider giving away their vote to that particular administration," said Cooper. In addition to the political maneuvering he alleges is behind this committee, Cooper is also deeply frustrated that this effort diverts resources from what he considers more severe and realistic threats. "We are still under a threat watch. We still have all of the security measures that we put in place after 2001. The period of 2001-2008 was a period in which we thwarted more than a few. Some of those have been made public. But many of those still have not made public. But what we've seen since the beginning of the Obama administration is that many of these attacks, whether they're increasing or not, are being more effective. They're actually happening," said Cooper. "To shift more resources away from the threat that's real to this theoretical problem is harmful to the safety of Americans and is more about a political agenda than it is in protecting Americans," he said. |
| Coal in the Obama Cross Hairs |
| Thu, 5 Jun 2014 14:52:01 EST President Obama's new regulations on power plant carbon emissions shows he doesn't care about the coal industry, according to a coal country member of Congress, but he says there is a realistic way to stop the measures from ever taking effect that makes this year's midterms elections pivotal in the energy debate. Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new rules that will force fossil fuel-based power plants to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The policy is a central piece of Obama's former "Cap and Trade" agenda that failed to pass a Democratic-run U.S. Senate four years ago. The administration is now advancing the policy through the executive branch. Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith represents coal-rich southwestern Virginia. He says these rules would be devastating for his district and many others in a nation that gets at least 40 percent of it's electricity from coal. Griffith says the president just made it very clear how little he regards the coal industry. "I don't think the administration really cares about the coal industry, and I think they disregard a lot of facts when it comes to how this will impact middle class Americans. They have shown a callous disregard for the folks in central Appalachia, the area that I represent and others," said Griffith. "It just doesn't seem that they care. Their numbers are almost always wrong. They told us when they did another set of regulations relating to coal usage in utilities that we would lose around 10 megawatts of power capacity. We;ve actually lost about 62 by the end of this year. It's going to impact our grid and our grid system," he said. Griffith says there is no current technology to allow coal-based power plants to meet the new standards. He believes the advancement of technology could make it possible in 10-15 years. However, he says that doesn't help anyone right now, because the rules require states to have a plan in place within two years as to how they will reduce their emissions and states cannot rely on technology that does not exist yet. He believes prioritizing the development of cleaner burning of coal is a smarter way for Washington to proceed. "That makes a lot of sense. Pushing these regulations before the science is ready does not make sense. It's illogical and it's going to hurt middle class America," said Griffith. The congressman says the coal industry would feel the initial pain from the rules but a huge percentage of Americans would be negatively impacted. "We will have less electricity available and there's going to be greater costs as companies go to build new facilities to try to meet these new demands on carbon dioxide," said Griffith. "It's going to be very difficult for American families to pay those increased electric bills. It's going to be hard on American industry, so it's going to cost jobs and hurt middle class families," said Griffith. The debate continues to rage over the science behind the administration's push for its climate agenda. Griffith says before we even get into the academic issues, its fairly clear that unilateral action by the United States is guaranteed to accomplish nothing. "You don't even have to get into the fight on the science. What you look at is this: Is the rest of the world going to do the same thing?" asked Griffith. "If the rest of the world doesn't do the same thing, what we're doing is killing jobs in the United States and sending those jobs to the rest of the world. They continue to use coal without even the reasonable regulations we had in effect before this administration took over." "It's a worldwide situation, and if all we're doing is shifting the jobs to Asia, they're going to ship us back dirty air in exchange for the jobs we have lost," said Griffith. So what recourse do opponents have since these rules are being implemented through the executive branch and not through a debate in Congress? A pretty effective one, according to Griffith. He says the midterm election results will be the deciding factor. "Hopefully we'll win elections and take over the Senate. There are some Democrats who agree with us but there are only a few. When we get control of the Senate, we then have the power to set aside regulations with a majority vote of the House and the Senate. That's what we need to do and the American people need to understand that elections have consequences. If they don't want to see jobs lost and electric rates skyrocketing, then we need to change the Senate. To change Washington, we need to change the Senate," said Griffith. The congressman noted that approval from the president is not required to set aside regulations, so majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill could act on their own. |
| Bergdahl's Desertion, Obama's High Crimes and Misdemeanors |
| Wed, 4 Jun 2014 16:08:29 EST Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry"Boykin says Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is clearly a deserter who should never draw a free breath and President Obama is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors for once again ignoring federal law in pursuit of an administration goal. Boykin is also ripping the president for releasing five key Taliban figures in exchange for Bergdahl and slamming the Obama administration for attacking the character of Afghanistan veterans who publicly denounce Bergdahl's actions in Afghanistan. The general says Obama's actions in this episode demonstrate why he is unfit for office. He categorically dismisses Obama's contention that the exchange had to happen to honor America's commitment to leave no Americans behind. Boykin says that clearly wasn't true in Benghazi and that the administration seems to have little regard for a U.S. Marine jailed in Mexico, an American pastor imprisoned in Iran or the Sudanese Christian in custody for her faith along with her two American children. "This was about emptying out Guantanamo. This was a backdoor deal. The reasons for it, the details of it will probably never come out in its entirety, but this is an ugly story," he said. The general is also taking the commander-in-chief to task for once again flouting the law, this time skirting a requirement to give Congress 30 days notice of his intent to free any Guantanamo detainees. Boykin says he understands why Obama would feel constrained by the law and admits that it might not be constitutional. However, as long as it is the law, he says Obama is required to abide by it instead of ignoring statutes he doesn't like, whether on this issue or several others. "It was really bad form for him not to at least call in the chair and ranking member of the intel or armed services committee and tell them what he was about to do with regard to the release of these prisoners," he said. "It's an example of how this president only obeys the laws and follows the policies that he wants to. In our Constitution, it falls under the category of high crimes and misdemeanors, where you just selectively obey certain laws and ignore others," said Boykin. As for Bergdahl, Boykin says he has no doubt the soldier ended up in Taliban custody because he deliberately deserted his unit. "We know for sure that he is a deserter. In fact, the 15-6 investigation that was conducted immediately after his departure from his base concluded that he had deserted and I think all the evidence supports that conclusion, particularly given the fact that he had asked a series of bizarre questions of his teammates. He also left a very revealing message explaining how he was ashamed of being an American and wanted to help the people of Afghanistan. This guy's a deserter," said Boykin. "The fact that (National Security Adviser) Susan Rice went on television and said that served honorably is just another example of why she needs to be removed and replaced, because this is the second time, Benghazi being the first, where she has gone on television and openly lied to the American public. This administration knows he deserted. They knew how people felt about him and she went out there and called his service honorable. If that's the case, then you tell me what the concept of honorable service is for this administration," said Boykin. The term "desertion" has been used far and wide in media reports this week. While no one applauds a soldier abandoning his unit, considerable debate has ensued about how significant of an issue this ought to be. Boykin says it's an extremely serious issue. "Desertion in combat, and I emphasize in combat, which means you are in a combat zone and routinely engaged with the enemy, is punishable by death. That should give you some indication as to how serious this is taken," said Boykin. "When a man walks off and leaves his post in combat, he jeopardizes everybody else" Boykin says in addition to leaving his men shorthanded against the enemy, Bergdahl compromised military intelligence whether he he willingly went along with the Taliban or was interrogated. "You have a tremendous amount of information which would be very useful to the enemy. Whether he was a collaborator or not is yet to be determined. My guess is that he was. Even if he was not a deliberate collaborator, the interrogation techniques of these people is such that he probably provided an awful lot of very useful, valuable information to the enemy," said Boykin. So what should happen to Bergdahl as a result of his desertion? "They should do an Article 32 investigation immediately. It should be ongoing right now. That is a prelude to a court martial. There can be no other option. They must take him to court martial and they must hold him accountable for his actions. If he didn't desert, then the truth will come out," said Boykin, who says Bergdahl's actions are even more severe than desertion. "There are are other soldiers that were endangered and even some we are positive now that were killed in the efforts to find him. As far as I'm concerned, that exacerbates his crime from being a simple desertion to being one that resulted in the deaths of his comrades. I think that has to be considered as we talk about what to do with him. From my perspective, he needs to spend the rest of his life in prison at a minimum," said Boykin. At least one of the other soldiers who served alongside Bergdahl in Afghanistan believes this is a case of desertion at best and treason at worst. Is Boykin willing to go that far? "Absolutely. What else could you call it?" he said. At least a half dozen soldiers who served with Bergdahl are speaking publicly. They all consider him a deserter and not the hero portrayed by the administration. In response, the State Department accuses those veterans of not telling the truth and White House aides tell reporters that their criticism amounts to a swift-boating of Bergdahl, a reference to the criticism Vietnam veterans leveled at John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign. "Do you think if Bergdahl had served honorably that those guys wouldn't be coming out now rejoicing in the fact he had been returned. Use a little common sense and just ask yourself. Would they have had this reaction had he not deserted from his unit? " asked Boykin. Boykin is appalled that Bergdahl's return also came at the cost of five high-level Taliban leaders being held at Guantanamo Bay. The general says he would not even have paid such a price for an honorable soldier being held by the enemy, but he would have quickly gathered intelligence by which to launch a rescue mission. He believes the military knew exactly where Bergdahl was but didn't have any motivation to go get him. "That's what should have happened if this was a man with honorable service. He wasn't. So you have to ask the question, 'Why didn't the military go and try to rescue him?' I'm going to speculate that it's because they were not willing to risk another life for a guy they knew was a traitor," said Boykin. |
| VA Mess Much Worse than Thought |
| Tue, 3 Jun 2014 15:03:21 EST Evidence of dozens of veterans dying as they waited months for appointments and treatment are likely the tip of the iceberg and the real number of deaths could be in the thousands, according to a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who closely follows the issue. Jessie Jane Duff spent 20 years in the Marines, rising to the rank of gunnery sergeant. She is now on the organizing committee at Concerned Veterans for America. While the government is essentially admitting to about 40 deaths in Phoenix due to long waits and dozens more facilities are under investigation, Duff says the real number of veteran deaths due to the VA bureaucracy in recent years is exponentially higher. "Yes, I do estimate it's in the thousands. Let's go to the backlog that they had. Fifty-three veterans died a day just waiting on their benefits in 2011. The VA itself has those numbers. We're talking about egregious mismanagement, a culture of corruption that was allowing all these executives to give the impression that they had 14 days of waiting time, not months and months of waiting time, so they could get bonuses. So I expect it will be several hundred, if not thousands," said Duff. Duff says another reason the numbers are likely to soar is because of systemic bureaucracy that grinds the system to a crawl. "In Albuquerque, New Mexico, veterans were waiting over four months with gangrene, heart disease, brain tumors. I didn't even know you could wait that long with any of those predicaments. In Harlingen, Texas, in 2010, they decided that men had to come back with three screenings that came out positive before they could get in for a colonoscopy. By that time, it was a Stage Four cancer," said Duff, who elaborated further on some of the red tape our veterans are forced to navigate in Albuquerque. "It came out that they had eight cardiologists on staff. But only three would work a day and they would see only two patients per day. I'm not sure if that was two patients per cardiologist or two total. Regardless, the report I read determined that they were seeing in a week what most medical facilities could see in two days," she said. She says a final death count may prove difficult since many vets ultimately gave up on the VA system and sought care in the private sector. Duff says the most troubling aspect of this story is not just incompetent mismanagement but the blatant deceit perpetrated by VA officials around the nation. "What disappoints me the most out of this is that it was deliberate. I used to think it was just mismanagement. I've been reporting on mismanagement for the past year. Now I realize it was all deliberate and it was all in the name of an almighty dollar. I'm so shocked and saddened to know that executives at the highest level were training their employees to hide numbers, training their employees to make it look like veterans were only waiting 14 days," said Duff. "They were not realizing the reality nor did they care about the reality that this was going to result in many of these veterans' deaths. And we're talking often about our Vietnam era and older. Many of those men are not in a position where they can heal quickly and go without medical care for sustained periods of time," she said. "It's tragic that these executives became so removed, so removed from the very veterans they were helping that they never looked in the eyes of these family members or went to one of the funerals or watched the pain and suffering that these men went through," said Duff. Federal spending on veterans' health care is up significantly in the Obama administration and the president vowed last week to fight for as much additional money as needed to fix the system. That approach to the problem leaves Duff incensed. "Oh please. I just want to scream when I hear somebody say, 'Let's slap more money onto it,'" said Duff. "They have a $150 billion budget. They requested $160 billion for the next fiscal year. They've never been denied anything from the Senate or the House as far as their budget goes. Thirty-nine percent is going to medical costs. Thirty-nine (percent) of the $150 billion," said Duff. Duff reports that 52 percent of taxpayers dollars spent at the Phoenix VA went to administrative costs, including the purchase of expensive office furniture. Another six million was spent on a sparsely attended national conference in Orlando, Florida. "They've wasted thousands and thousands and millions of dollars," said Duff. "The money is simply being mismanaged." She is also seething at Senate Democrats for blocking the VA Accountability Act, which easily passed the House and would give the secretary of Veterans' Affairs. However, GOP attempts to approve the plan in the Senate were blocked by Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont). "Sanders has another bill of his own, another $20 billion in a pork-funded bill that he's trying to get through the Senate. He used two false arguments. His first false argument is we need time to review the bill. It's a three-page bill, 27 lines, Bernie. How slow do you need to read?" asked Duff. "The second false argument is that he said this would give a greater opportunity when we change administrations for executives to be fired and that would be unfair. That's another false argument. The Department of Defense has this authority to fire executives. This was in place in several previous administrations. Secretary (Robert) Gates used it during the Walter Reed scandal in 2007. We have heard of no executives being fired when the administrations changed so that is a false and ridiculous argument, said Duff. She says executives would still have the right to appeal their termination, so punitive firings would be very difficult. Duff says the case of Sharon Helman is the perfect example of why reform is needed. Helman deliberately submitted false information on the number of veteran suicides. Instead of being fired, she was promoted to director of the Phoenix VA, site of the initial reports of falsified wait lists for veterans. With all of the promises of reform flowing out of Washington, when will America know real progress is being made? "We have over a quarter-million veterans who are appealing their claims. I want to see where they start getting a very solid ratio of when they grant a claim, it's not being appealed. That tells me you're giving a quality assessment to the person who is making the claim. We're going to see our veteran suicides drop. Right now, 22 vets a day are killing themselves due to mental health issues. Often there is a huge delay of up to three weeks getting in for a mental health exam within the VA. We'll see that drop," said Duff. "We will also see a greater quality in care. I expect that they'll start serving these veterans and find out how long they've been getting care. And I expect the Senate and the House to be monitoring this a hell of a lot closer than they've been. Sadly, they've all gotten letters from veterans complaining about the VA, but it wasn't until Phoenix that we heard them do anything about it," she said. |
| EPA Regs 'Killing Our Economy' |
| Mon, 2 Jun 2014 16:08:37 EST President Obama is moving forward with a central component of his climate change agenda, as the Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that carbon emissions must be reduced by 30 percent at fossil fuel-burning power plants by 2030 in order to fend off the devastating effects of a changing climate. The plan is actually set to take effect next year, but EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says the administration has a "moral obligation to act." The reduction in carbon emissions was a critical component of Obama's 1ccap-and-trade 1d agenda that failed to pass the U.S. Senate in 2010, even with a filibuster-proof Democratic majority. This time, the administration is not involving Congress, a move that has Republicans seething. "That's been par for the course ever since Republicans took the majority in the U.S. House. The president has just ignored Congress and done everything by administrative fiat, in many cases going beyond his legitimate authority. That's really dangerous and not living under the Constitution in significant ways," said Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "I think it's dangerous when you have this dramatic (of) an action plan which can't get legislative support, even in the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate," said Vitter. "It can't get support for good reason. It's costly. It hurts our economy. It hurts consumers. It hurts the poorest and most vulnerable. And what it is achieving? Less than two percent impact on carbon emissions. So as China and India and other countries do nothing in this category, we're killing our economy," he said. So why would greatly reducing carbon emissions at power plants lead to the "killing of our economy?" Vitter says it's pretty simple. "To reduce carbon emissions like that so dramatically, we'd have to get rid of a lot of abundant, cheaper sources of energy right now, starting with coal and many other fossil fuels. Those are the most efficient, the most low-cost forms of energy we have. So we're simply displacing that for higher ways of producing electricity," said Vitter. "So energy costs are going to go up significantly. When you do that, it's a toll on the economy. It's basically a tax on consumers and a tax on the economy, so it's going to slow economic growth even more," he said. Vitter says that 40 percent of the nation's electricity comes from coal, which is expected to take the hardest hit if these regulations take hold. He says the green energy movement cannot begin to replace the lost energy capacity expected from these regulations and adds there's really nothing to replace coal that is even remotely competitive on price. "So we're going to pay much higher prices. A big to to consumers and to families and a big hit to businesses in terms of costs. That means fewer jobs," said Vitter. Vitter says Republicans in Congress, along with some Democrats, will try to stop the implementation of the new EPA rules, which he calls "illegal and unconstitutional". He also expects major lawsuits to be filed against the rules, but the senator says the real leverage belongs with the American people in November. "We're going to have a big national election this fall. Conservatives have an opportunity to take back the U.S. Senate. That would be a significant check and balance against this sort of unbridled power. I think and hope that energy, energy prices, the very slow recovery we have is going to be an important part of that election debate," said Vitter. |
| Killing the Death Tax Once and for All |
| Fri, 23 May 2014 14:56:56 EST Calling it an 1cimmoral 1d burden on families, farms and small businesses, Texas Rep. Kevin Brady is leading the latest House Republican effort to fully repeal the estate tax, which critics deride as the death tax. The estate tax levies penalties of 40 percent on the inheritance of certain estates. The 2001 tax cuts phased it out over 10 years and there was no estate tax in 2010. Over the past three years, Congress engaged in fierce debate over the tax rate and how large an estate must be to meet the threshold for taxation. As part of the 1cFiscal Cliff 1d deal in January 2013, the estate tax was permanently applied to individual estates valued at $5.25 million and assets of couples of more than $10 million. Those rates lead Brady's critics to allege this latest legislation only benefits the very wealthy, but Brady says the facts tell us otherwise. 1cThere's something wrong and immoral about the government swooping in upon your death to take more than a third of the nest egg you've worked a lifetime to build. I think this is the wrong tax at the wrong time and it really lands hard on families and farmers and small businesses, 1d said Brady, who elaborated on why farms and small businesses often end up in the estate tax cross hairs. 1cThey may have land passed down from their family. They may have a building. Equipment can add up very quickly. Technology is very expensive. So you think this is for the wealthy, but for the most part, these are families building up wealth, sometimes for the very first time. In fact, more and more women and minority-owned businesses are getting caught up in the death tax, 1d said Brady. Democrats regularly raise two other arguments. First, they allege Republicans are trying to eliminate another source of revenue at a time America can least afford it. Brady not only contends that's false but insists the opposite is true. 1cIt really hinders entrepreneurial activity. It breaks up family farms and businesses. It's the number one reason businesses aren't passed down to the next generation. By eliminating this, it encourages people to put money and investment toward that business. They don't have to spend money on expensive life insurance and other estate planning and they can invest that back in their business, 1d said Brady. 1cBecause it grows the economy and encourages more investment in these local businesses and family-owned farms, it actually grows the economy without the death tax in place, 1d he said. Republicans routinely refer to the estate tax as a form of double taxation because the government taxed it once as income and wants another bite at the pie after a person dies. Democrats see it differently. They argue that the decedent paid taxes once when the money was earned but the heirs are taxed the second time around. Brady not only disagrees with the Democrats, but he believes the GOP characterization of the tax is too kind. 1cLook at family farms that have had to sell off their property to have to pay this death tax. In part of my community, families are taking out their third death tax loan because their grandfather and their father had loans outstanding. Now they're taking out another one just to keep the family farm and paid taxes on their whole life, 1d said Brady. 1cI don't think they're merely double-taxed. In some cases it's tripled and four times just to keep the business and the family farm that they worked and created. I don't think the government has a claim over this nest egg at all. I think the sooner we end that the better, 1d said Brady. On the other hand, Brady says Democrats not only want to block his bill. He says they are actively trying to change the estate tax laws in the opposite to direction to force more people into even higher rates. 1cDemocrats and the president are going exactly the wrong way. Within weeks of that permanent exemption of the death tax and that permanent rate, the president was calling for fewer people to be exempted. More people would be caught by it and paying higher taxes, which would make us, effectively, the highest death tax in the world. That's why we believe we need to push for ultimate repeal. If we don't, my worry over time is that they're going to continue to wage this war on our family-owned businesses and farms and we simply can't afford to lose it, 1d said Brady. |
| 'This Is A Matter of Life and Death' |
| Fri, 23 May 2014 11:44:56 EST Michigan Rep. Dan Benishek says the legacy of bureaucratic mismanagement at the Veterans Administration runs long and deep, something he says he knows about not only as a member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee but also as a VA surgeon for 20 years. Benishek is in his second House term. He left his medical career and won an open seat in 2010, after Democrat Bart Stupak elected to retire following his role in the passage of the new health care laws. Benishek, who served at a hospital in Iron Mountain, Michigan, says the problems with VA management were obvious a long time ago. 1cI know what that bureaucracy is like. It was very frustrating for me to get stuff done within the system. One of the greatest examples was that the director of the hospital would leave every two years. That happened for 20 years. So a guy comes in. For six months, he doesn't know where the bathroom is. The next year he's there. In the last six months he's worried about his next job. That's just a flaw in the management. There's no real leadership because there's transition at the top. Since I've been in Congress they've changed that, 1d said Benishek. During his career as a surgeon, Benishek split time between the traditional local hospital and the VA facility. While Iron Mountain is considered to have one of the better VA facilities, Benishek says the difference between the two was obvious. 1cThere's no way the VA is as efficient as the private sector. The people that are providing the care, the nurses and doctors, the people that provide the direct patient care are good people. They're working hard and they care for the veterans. The problem is they're just not managed right. They have millions of dollars to spend on new windows but they don't have thousands of dollars to hire another anesthetist, 1d said Benishek. 1cIt's stuff like that that's so frustrating and people making decisions at the upper levels make it difficult for people who are trying to provide the best care they can, 1d he said. Since coming to Washington and serving on the House Veterans' Affairs, Benishek says his frustrations with the VA persist but now it's even higher-ranking bureaucrats causing the grief. 1cNobody's really accountable. I get sick and tired of these bureaucrats and undersecretaries coming before us to say, 'Yeah, yeah, we know there's a problem and we're working on it. Honestly, we're going to have a fix in awhile.' It gets pretty frustrating when veterans are dying and nobody gets punished for it, 1d said Benishek. 1cIn the private sector, if you don't do your job you get fired. In the VA that doesn't happen. We have a hard time finding out who is responsible for the mismanagement in different areas. You ask somebody to come before you on the committee. If there's a problem in the Pennsylvania VA, you ask the people from the Pennsylvania VA to come but the VA doesn't produce them. They produce somebody in the VA three or four levels to try to not let the guy testify about how bad things are, 1d said Benishek. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives approved the VA Accountability Act by a vote of 390-33. The legislation would give greater latitude to the secretary of Veterans Affairs to fire personnel for incompetence or nonperformance. Benishek stresses that the secretary already has that power but it is seldom used. 1cThe problem is that so many people in the VA aren't judged on performance. That's a culture that we have to change. That's a culture that should be in place already. For example, if somebody doesn't do what the inspector general says needs to be fixed, who is that person? Why is the fact that they didn't reply to an inspector general's report put on their promotion record? Why are they still getting bonuses if they don't comply with the inspector general? Why are they getting advancement? Why isn't there punishment for not getting their job done? 1d asked Benishek. 1cThat's the kind of stuff we need to put a stop to and hopefully it really is the will of the administration to do that kind of work. We're prodding them to do more of it, 1d he said. While the House vote was lopsided, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the lower chamber, strongly opposed it. He suggests the bill would leave career civil servants at the mercy of political appointees. 1cAll of us are outraged at the allegations that have been made, but that's not what this legislation is about, 1d Hoyer told Stars and Stripes. 1cThis legislation is about a knee-jerk reaction to a very bad situation painting with a very broad brush. 1d Benishek is stunned at Hoyer's approach. 1cThis lack of scrutiny on the management team is disgusting. This is an emergency. People are dying. This is a matter of life and death. This is not some Department of Agriculture rule that's not being fixed. People are dying every day, 1d said Benishek, noting at least 40 deaths in Phoenix have been linked to a bureaucratic logjam. 1cIsn't anybody outraged? I'm outraged. I guess Mr. Hoyer's not outraged. I'm more concerned about the veteran than the senior members of the staff, 1d he said. Benishek says the House will be pursuing additional legislation to compel reform at the VA. He is also encouraged that the media are paying a great deal of attention to the crisis. The VA Accountability is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate. Florida Republican Marco Rubio tried to get approved on a unanimous consent request. However, Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders (D-Vermont) objected, saying he needed more time to study the two-page bill and that he wants to hold hearings on the issue next month. |
| Organized Labor and the VA Crisis |
| Thu, 22 May 2014 14:38:11 EST The crisis of delayed care through the Veterans Administration is triggering close examination of the federal bureaucracy and the competence of VA management, but some fear the influence of organized labor is also adding to the time veterans must wait for treatment or to have their claims processed. The issue at hand is known as "official time." "Official time is the euphemism for government employees doing the business of their labor union rather than doing the work of the government. Different departments allow different amounts, but even an hour of your time shouldn't be funded by tax dollars if they're doing the work of the union. That's what the union dues are supposed to pay for," said Fred Wszolek of the Workforce Fairness Institute. As early as June 2013, Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) sent a letter to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to express their concern that scores of VA employees working on "official time" were busy doing work for the unions rather than making life easier for veterans as they are paid to do. "Documents from your department list 188 VA employees serving in 100 percent official time capacity during the time period spanning January 1, 2012 through February 2013. During this time of sequestration and tight budgets, it is important to know how so many employees can be spared to serve the interest of outside groups, instead of carrying out jobs that are essential to the health, safety and transition of our nation 19s veterans," wrote the senators. Wszolek believes it's outrageous for taxpayers to be funding union labor for any length of time but he says the problem is most likely worse than the unions will admit. "We're not even sure that they're properly reporting all of the official time that they're taking. They might be putting down that they did three hours of union business but really it was an entire day. So it's tough to tell whether this is having a major effect throughout the major workforce. I would suspect that it is being under-reported and the value of the time that is being given away to the unions is probably dramatically higher than what we know," said Wszolek. Don't expect any of that to change. Wszolek says these workers have very little to fear given their current job security. "Many of these employees are also covered by civil service. So they have two levels of protection. That may be why some of these VA employees were so ambivalent about the whole thing and were providing substandard care. They're almost impossible to fire under civil service rules and then they've got a union going to bat for them as well. So they kind of feel as though they can get away with anything," said Wszolek. So why would the federal government agree to federal employees holding virtually all of the cards? Wszolek says there's no one really advocating for the taxpayers. "The unions often times control the government, so then they're kind of negotiating with themselves. They're negotiating with the people that got them elected, and so obviously they're getting a pretty good deal," he said. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed the VA Management Accountability Act by a vote of 390-33. It would give the secretary of Veterans Affairs more freedom to remove subordinates for incompetence or nonperformance. Wszolek says that's a good step but cannot figure out why it was needed or why Shinseki was urging lawmakers to oppose the bill. "You almost have to scratch your head and think about this but why do we have to pass a special law to allow the senior managers of these departments to fire incompetent employees. Why isn't that the law? Why can't you get rid of anybody when they're doing something so crazy? The idea that the secretary opposes having that authority is mind boggling," said Wszolek. As for the the fate of official time, Wszolek says it's here to stay, at least in the current political environment. "There's zero percent chance as long as Harry Reid is the majority leader in the Senate that we'll ever get rid of official time. His devotion to the unions is absolute. There has to be a change in power in that house of Congress," said Wszolek. "It's a no-brainer. We are borrowing money from foreign countries to pay our bills. It's not like we've got spare money lying around. We should be having every single minute of a government employee's time focused on government's business, not the unions' business," he said. |
| 'Extreme Incompetence' |
| Wed, 21 May 2014 17:33:36 EST A former Pentagon official says the history of the Veterans Administration is littered with stunning examples of waste and incompetence and the latest allegations of delayed care, secret wait lists and multiple sets of books at VA institutions only takes it to a new level. Van Hipp, Jr. served as deputy assistant Secretary of the Army for Reserve Forces and Mobilization in the George H.W. Bush administration during the Gulf War. He is now chairman of American Defense International. He says the VA is a clear example of what Obamacare will look like on its present course but insists it doesn't have to be that way. "The military runs a separate hospital system for the active duty military and their dependents, just like the VA runs a hospital system. The military system is much more efficient. What's sad is I've seen case after case after case where the military would develop medical technologies that they're using in the hospitals and they're using to take care of soldiers and their dependents. They would literally try to give this stuff to the VA and they would turn it down," said Hipp. "I was shocked. They would turn down things that the military was always trying to give the VA so they could go out and reinvent what the military had and charge the taxpayers to build a separate system. I think you're seeing the result of a lot of that right now," said Hipp. The VA is tasked with the care of tens of millions of veterans, and the numbers have risen greatly in recent years as a result of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hipp says that may be a factor but it's only making an existing problem worse. "There's no question they've been overloaded, but you know what? There are things they could have done in management tools and things and technologies they could have put in place to help speed up the whole disability process and they haven't done it. They've had opportunities to prevent these kinds of problems for a long time, " said Hipp, who says poor leadership over the years definitely plays a role. "Extreme incompetence. There are a lot of good people over the years who have been in management there who've tried to do the right thing and they have been hindered by various laws and things (telling them) what they can't do. Somebody needs to go in there and lead," he said. Hipp does give President Obama credit for the recent appointment of former USO Chairman Sloan Gibson to be deputy secretary of Veterans Affairs. "This happened a few months ago, which tells me they knew about this problem before. The new deputy secretary of the VA is a good guy and the kind of person they should be putting in there and should have been putting in there a long time ago," said Hipp. "He's a West Point grad. He's a military man, but he's also been in the private sector. He's been a successful banker. So he brings that unique set of management skills to the VA. That;s the kind of person they need to put more and more in these key management positions." On Wednesday, Obama said he would wait for the inspector general's report before determining exactly what happened at the Phoenix VA and other veteran facilities where secret delays and multiple sets of books were alleged to take place. Hipp says there should be a thorough investigation of this crisis but believes some changes could be made right away. "The fact that there are problems in the VA, this is not news. I'm not surprised this has been going on. This time last year we were talking about the tremendous backlog of the disability claims, that they were taking months and months and months," said Hipp. "I wouldn't wait on the IG report. They need a plan of attack right now." Hipp also believes Congress can play a role in streamlining the massive bureaucracy that is grinding the VA to a near halt. "One of the things I think they've asked for is to give the secretary more authority to fire people and get around some of the problems with employee unions. Give him more authority to fire incompetence on the spot," said Hipp. |
| 'They're Playing Russian Roulette with Our Safety' |
| Mon, 19 May 2014 15:15:49 EST The national immigration debate is being rocked by the new report showing more than 36,000 criminals in the country illegally were released on American soil in just the past year, and the author now says this is the result of a badly flawed system and a growing desire within the Obama administration not to deport illegal immigrants. Jessica Vaughan is director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. In addition to the number of criminals released, her research shows those offenders committed more than 88,000 crimes, many of them after being released from custody. The Obama administration admits that it is looking to decrease deportations, essentially focusing efforts on those deemed to be a threat to public safety while allowing non-violent offenders to stay in the U.S. Many of the 36,000 criminals are under orders to be deported, but were released instead of detained until they were due to be sent out of the country. Vaughan says this sort of lax immigration enforcement puts all of us at risk. "They're really playing Russian roulette with our safety. We do know from other studies that have been done that a very significant share of these people do go on to commit other crimes. In fact, a 2012 study by the House Judiciary Committee found that about 58,000 crimes were committed by illegal aliens who were released instead of processed for deportation," said Vaughan. "That's a gamble and they're betting on our safety, but I would rather them err on the side of caution and keep people in custody, not only to keep us safe but also to make sure these individuals are deported," she said. The track record of the Obama administration on immigration enforcement has a lot of people confused. The administration claims deportations were up considerably in the early years of the Obama presidency in comparison to the final years of the George W. Bush administration. However, the government has recently admitted that illegals simply turned back at the border are now counted as being deported. Previously, only those who went through the system and were formally deported were counted. Vaughan says it's hard to calculate what the real numbers are but the actions of President Obama concern her greatly. "The most important metric that we could look at is the size of the illegal immigrant population. It was dropping from about 2007-2009 and then has gone up a little bit. That's a pretty strong indication things are not getting any better," she said. "The other important figure to look at is the number of interior deportations, which has been dropping steadily for the last couple of years, even though the number of illegal aliens who have been identified, especially the number who have been identified after arrest, so these numbers are very concerning for those who think the first thing we should do when talking about immigration is to enforce the laws we have," said Vaughan. "Clearly they are not being enforced as vigorously as they were in the past and the administration was able to claim this record number of deportations by counting Border Patrol arrests that got turned over to (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) instead of looking at the traditional way which is interior enforcement," said Vaughan. The decreasing focus on interior enforcement may well be the tip of the iceberg in the administration's admitted efforts to limit deportations. In addition to the 36,000 criminals who were processed but released, she says another 68,000 were approached by ICE in 2013 for violating immigration laws but did not ultimately face charges. Vaughan says the Department of Homeland Security is sending clear signs that this will only become more common. "Secretary (Jeh) Johnson is saying that he's going to scale back the Secure Communities Program, which is the program under which all these criminal aliens are identified. So the numbers are only going to go up if what I'm hearing is correct. They're not going to allow ICE agents to accept referrals of criminal aliens from state and local police and sheriffs. So you've got a sheriff with people in custody and they want this criminal removed, and ICE agents are going to have to say, 'No, sorry,'" said Vaughan. Defenders of the Obama administration's goal of reducing deportations claim they are saving taxpayers a great deal of money. They estimate each deportation costs roughly $12,500 and removing young people also eliminates a lifetime of tax revenue from them. Vaughan isn't swayed. She says the government's position is weakened by its own inefficiencies and conflicting priorities. "It is much costlier for the government, and by extension for American taxpayers, because there are two immigration court systems. One is for people who are detained and that moves very quickly. They get their order of deportation much faster. If they are not detained, there is a backlog that is about two years right now. So the more people that they let out to await their hearing, the longer that hearing is going to take," said Vaughan. "That gets especially expensive when people never show up for their hearings and have to be tracked down by ICE. That's very labor intensive," she said. "But I find it ironic that the administration has actually asked Congress to reduce funding for detention for criminals who are in the deportation process. They asked for a 10 percent cut this year. That's why it was especially shocking to find out they are releasing criminals even as they're saying they don't need as much money for detention space," said Vaughan. Vaughan says detaining more criminal illegals until deportation would save a lot of money, but she insists a bigger goal needs to be in mind. "The answer is not to detain and deport every illegal alien in the country. The answer is to have deterrents in place, such as preventing illegal employment, not allowing people who are here illegally to access social welfare systems and have better border enforcement so that fewer people will try to come here illegally and those who are here will realize it's not as good a deal for them to be here. Over time this becomes much less of a problem. The more we can deter illegal immigration, the fewer people we'll have to detain and deport," said Vaughan. |
| Handel: I'm A Conservative with Results Who Can Win |
| Fri, 16 May 2014 16:06:20 EST Former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel says she is a conservative with proven results, while her opponents for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination are three members of Congress who have failed to solve problems and a multimillionaire who may not even be a Republican. The primary for the seven-member field is Tuesday. "I'm an unwavering conservative who has a track record of getting the job done. More than ever, Georgians are looking for someone they can trust to go to Washington and do the job for them," said Handel. "Look at the rest of the field. We've got congressmen who have been there for 10-20 years. They've had every chance to do what they're now talking about and they haven't. And then you have this so-called outsider, David Perdue. We don't know very much about him. He's running for the Republican nomination and hasn't even found it appropriate to vote in a Republican primary. "We need someone like me, who is a solid Republican, a solid conservative my whole life, so we can cut spending, repeal the Obamacare health tax and re-energize this economy by lowering taxes and not raising them like David Perdue has suggested and reducing the burden of regulations on businesses," she said. Handel cites her work as the chairwoman of the Fulton County Commission, the largest county in the state, as an example of the leadership she would bring to the Senate. She says she thwarted attempts by Democrats to close a $100 million deficit through massive property tax increases and instead tackled the red ink through spending cuts. While secretary of state, Handel cut department spending by 20 percent and successfully implemented a voter identification requirement for voters. Rep. Kingston rejects that recap of her career in county government. He says the real story is that Handel increased spending in Fulton County by $46 million during her tenure as chairwoman. Handel rejects Kingston's message and the messenger. "Jack Kingston has a lot of nerve, when he's been in Washington on the Appropriations Committee and sat there keeping the seat warm while this country, through his votes, absorbed debt - 17 trillion dollars in debt," said Handel. "To put it in perspective, Fulton County's budget is ab out a one billion dollar budget per year and we worked really hard to roll things back. When we finished up my term, we had the first truly balanced budget that Fulton County had had in decades." "(Kingston) raised the debt ceiling for our nation multiple times. He voted for millions in things like the Charlie Rangel Center and the Ted Kennedy Center and has the audacity to talk about saving money from his office budget when he helped contribute to a $17 trillion debt," said Handel. She saves her most fierce criticism for Perdue, for accepting millions in stimulus dollars and laying off thousands of textile workers while also allegedly being open to tax hikes in a recent meeting with editors at the Macon Telegraph. Rivals also slam Handel for her time as a vice president at the Susan G. Komen Foundation. She resigned in 2012 after Komen re-committed to giving money to Planned Parenthood after the organization earlier announced it would stop the practice. Other GOP candidates say Handel characterized the initial denial of money to Planned Parenthood as a simple change in funding criteria rather than an abhorrence of Planned Parenthood, which she later cited in her resignation. Handel says the plain fact is that Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms and so Komen dollars seemed wrongly prioritized going to the nation's largest abortion provider. She says Congress is the entity that has much more power to stop the flow of money to Planned Parenthood and has failed to do so. Perdue appears to be leading in the latest polls, with Handel and Rep. Jack Kingston essentially deadlocked for the all-important second place slot that will advance to a July run-off. Congressmen Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey are a few points behind. The winner of the July run-off will face presumptive Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn, daughter of longtime Sen. Sam Nunn. Handel, who is endorsed by Sarah Palin, says she is clearly the best choice for Republicans to put up against Nunn. "We do know what the narrative is going to be that Democrats run in the fall. It's going to be income inequality and war on women. I look at the debate over income inequality and I know first-hand that the way to move someone up the economic ladder is not with minimum wage jobs and raising the minimum wage. We need to build our economy on good, quality, solid-paying jobs, giver working moms the ability to not have to choose between fixing their car and keeping a roof over their heads," said Handel. "And when it come to the war on women, well, I'd like to see Michelle Nunn try to drop that on me," she said. |
| Kingston Sprints to Primary, Swings at Rivals |
| Thu, 15 May 2014 16:09:34 EST Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston says he has a time-tested conservative record that people can count on if he's elected to the U.S. Senate, and warns voters they will have buyer's remorse if they elect either of the other top two contenders in the race. The GOP Senate primary is one of the most competitive in the nation. Seven candidates are jockeying to replace retiring Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss. The latest surveys show businessman David Perdue in front, with Kingston in second and former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel closely behind in third place. Representatives Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey are a few points back of Handel. With no one in position to win a majority of the vote, the top two finishers head to to a July 22 run-off. The Georgia primary is on Tuesday. Kingston has been targeted by his fellow members of Congress as well as Perdue and Handel for being a partner in the growth of government during his 22 years in Washington. Kingston says he has more than two decades of conservative leadership that voters can count on if he's elected to the Senate. The congressman says his 96 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and A+ from the National Rifle Association prove his commitments to conservative principles, in addition to endorsements from Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, Flat Tax author Steve Forbes and Fair Tax architect John Linder. "We want to make sure people know I have honest to goodness conservative credentials that have been tested and tried. On the other hand, David Perdue yesterday came out for a tax increase. That's not a conservative position. He's pretty weak on the Second Amendment. That's well known. He's flip-flopped on Common Core. Those are things people care about in Georgia. We want to make sure people know the difference between my voting record and his rhetoric," said Kingston. In an interview with the editorial board of the Macon Telegraph, Perdue discussed the need to grow revenue in a way that led Kingston and others to accuse Perdue of being open to a tax hike. "Well here 19s the reality: If you go into a business, and I keep coming back to my background, it 19s how I know how to relate is to refer back to it 14 I was never able to turn around a company just by cutting spending, 1d said Perdue. 1cYou had to figure out a way to get revenue growing. 1d Thursday on Herman Cain's radio show, Perdue tried to clarify what he meant. "I 19ve been preaching for over a year that to solve the debt crisis we have to cut federal spending, and we have to grow the economy, 1d Perdue told Cain. 1cThe other day in the editorial-board interview, I said we need to cut taxes so we can grow revenue 11 without tax increases, I might add. 1d Kingston isn't buying it. "Let me tell you what happened. He got out of that room and he got clobbered. he was being an insider, which he is. This is a guy who took stimulus money, sat on the board of a company that took three million dollars in stimulus funds. Now he's going out and telling people the stimulus bill was a bad bill," said Kingston. "He absolutely said he supported revenue increase. He didn't mention growth. He's coming back to that position. I understand why he's doing that, because he walked out of there and his handlers said, 'You got way in front on this thing. You shouldn't have been talking like that. He's already come out for one tax increase on internet sales so it's not that big of a change. This is a guy who likes big government, from stimulus programs to a bailout which he did," said Kingston. The congressman also says Perdue's business career leaves much to be desired, noting Perdue drove a major textile company into bankruptcy and laid off thousands of workers while making out quite well for himself. "He did it in a nine month period of time and took the largest bonus in textile history. As a Republican, how in the world will he get by in November? I can already see the ad, one of the 8,000 people who were fired saying, 'I lost my job. He ended up in a very nice luxurious house with his golden parachute," said Kingston. "David Perdue has never voted in a Republican primary. If he was charged with being a Republican, is there enough evidence to convict him?" asked Kingston. So how would Kingston have answered the question about whether spending cuts or revenue growth is the better strategy for restoring fiscal sanity in Washington? "We do not have a tax problem. We have a spending problem. The way we have got to balance the budget is we have got to cut spending and shrink the size of government. If you do that, obviously the economy is going to grow on its own and I would say the best way get the economy going is to develop energy independence with North American oil, push back on the regulatory overreach, kill Obamacare and replace it with a market-driven, patient-centered health care system, replace welfare with workfare and have a simplified tax code," said Kingston. As proof of his conservative credentials on fiscal matters, Kingston points to his opposition to the recent Ryan-Murray budget deal, debt ceiling increases, TARP and stimulus plans under both Presidents Bush and Obama in addition to Obamacare and the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts. Kingston is also unabashed in his contention that he is a far better choice for the GOP nomination than Karen Handel. "As chairman of the Fulton County Commission, she increased spending $46 million. When she ran for governor, her votes for organizations like Planned Parenthood were very well vetted, which is why people rejected her candidacy. As there's more of a spotlight on those types of votes, people are going to say, 'Not what I'm looking for, not a true conservative,'" said Kingston. |
| Dr. Gingrey's Senate Prescription |
| Wed, 14 May 2014 17:32:26 EST With just days until the hotly contested Republican Senate primary in Georgia, Rep. Phil Gingrey says he will be the voice of blue collar Georgians in Washington and maintains his vow to repeal Obamacare in his first six years in office. The six-term congressman also blasted apparent GOP front-runner David Perdue for being more concerned with his own well being than the condition of people in his state struggling to make ends meet. According to recent polls, Perdue, Rep. Jack Kingston and former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel are in a tight race for the top two spots that will advance to a July run-off. Gingrey and Rep. Paul Broun are a a bit further back. Perdue and Handel take frequent shots at the three members of the House, suggesting they are part of the problem in Washington and do not deserve a promotion to the Senate. Gingrey says he is the perfect balance of someone who spent most of their life in the private sector but has also worked to help people through his public service. "Does congressional experience matter? Clearly it does. I think people can stay too long in Congress but I was a physician for 32 years and I've been a member of the House of Representatives for 11. This is my sixth term. So if you just do the subtraction, it comes out on the side of being a professional physician and not a professional politician," said Gingrey. The congressman says the House has done a lot of good work to improve job creation and preserve freedoms while the Democrats in the Senate do nothing. "We have voted repeatedly to rein in the EPA, to rein in Obamacare, to try to create jobs, to stop Cap and Trade. We do things. We send them to the Senate, which is of course controlled by the Democrats and Harry Reid. They just sit on it and do nothing," he said. "So these two candidates for the Republican nomination for Senate from Georgia who are not in the House of Representatives, who have no experience in that venue, it's so easy for them to criticize and fire shots at us, but the truth is experience definitely helps," said Gingrey. Gingrey exhibits especially little patience for Perdue, the Dollar General CEO who appears to be leading the charge for one of the top two slots next week. The two have sparred on the airwaves as well, with both using crying babies to lampoon each other and some of the other candidates. The congressman also strikes somewhat of a populist tone in comparing himself with Perdue. "He's been all over the world and he touts his business experience and the fact that he has been CEO of several Fortune 500 companies. He is purportedly worth $50 million and he says we just need a new person in Washington," said GIngrey. "I represent those blue collar Republicans, the people that are not really protected by a safety net because of poverty. They're not rich and getting richer like David Perdue. They're just hard working, conservative Georgia Republicans who seem to have been forgotten and no matter how hard they work it's like being on a treadmill and falling further and further behind. That's the kind of people I represent. Ultimately, that's what's going to get me in the run-off, get me the nomination on July 22 and ultimately give me the Senate seat come November," said Gingrey. One of Gingrey's boldest tactics in the campaign was to promise not to run for re-election if he failed to repeal Obamacare in his first term, a vow he says is getting a lot of attention from voters. "As a physician of 32 years, I think people understand that I am one who has worked tirelessly to repeal the most egregious aspects of the bill and of course voted five or six times to repeal the bill lock, stock and barrel. When we take over the Senate, and I think we will, and win the presidency in 2016, then we'll have the whole ball of wax and I'll still have four years on my first term. By golly, if I can't get it done for the people of Georgia in that length of time, then I probably should get out of the way and let somebody else take my place," said Gingrey. Gingrey says his get out the vote operation is in full swing and will be key to advancing to the run-off. He encourages voters to visit his House website to track his voting record over the past 12 years and his campaign website to learn what he would do if elected to the Senate. |
| Broun's Closing Argument |
| Tue, 13 May 2014 15:16:13 EST Georgia Rep. Paul Broun is now trailing in his bid to be the Republican U.S. Senate nominee but he says voters who do their homework will realize he is the most reliable defender of the Constitution in the race and the best choice to defeat likely Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn in November. The seven-way GOP battle is among the most watched primaries in the country. Early voting has already begun but most voters will head to the polls May 20. No candidate is expected to get a majority of the vote, in which case the top two finishers next week will head to a July 22 run-off. Five candidates are considered to have the best odds, with recent polls suggesting businessman David Perdue, former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel and Rep. Jack Kingston bunched at the top. Rep. Broun and Rep. Phil Gingrey are a few points back. Both Perdue and Handel have pounded away at the three members of Congress in the race, suggesting they are all part of the problem in Washington. Broun fiercely resists the label. "It just shows that they don't understand. And if they do understand, they're trying to fool people about how I've been fighting to send power back to the states and to the people as the tenth amendment says it should be. I stand firm on the Constitution," said Broun. "All the problems that we see today, whether it's Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservative and pro-life groups, whether it's the NSA getting your phone records and mine and reading our emails which is totally unconstitutional...the unconstitutional executive orders that presidents of both parties have been doing, out of control spending, this debt that's unsustainable, all of those are symptoms. The disease is an out of control government that's left the powers that it has in the enumerated powers as the Constitution expresses them," said Broun. "What separates me from all the rest of (the candidates) is that I have a record. I'm fighting to send those powers back to the states and to the people and leave money in your pocket and everybody else's," he said. While Broun says he is happy to compare his voting record in Congress against Kingston and Gingrey, Broun says one episode from the current Congress proves he is not a go along to get along guy in Washington. "We had 20 of the most conservative members of the U.S. House that had signed a pledge to each other that we would not vote for John Boehner to be Speaker. John Boehner's a nice guy. He's got a great sun tan and I understand he plays a good game of golf, but I saw him making deals with Barack Obama that I couldn't support, the stimulus package and bailouts and increasing the debt on us, as well as our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. I couldn't support all those things and I knew we needed a different leader," said Broun. While Broun cast his ballot for former Florida Rep. Allen West, Boehner was re-elected. "There were only 12 of us that upheld that pledge to each other. The other eight caved in because of the pressure from the leadership," he said, noting voters can be assured he will stick to his principles. "I have sworn to uphold the Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic. Out of control government and out of control spending are both enemies of the Constitution." Recent stories inside Georgia suggest that voters who identify with the tea party movement there like Broun's positions virtually across the board. However, they fear those same positions and past comments, like calling evolution "a lie straight from the pit of Hell," might make him difficult to elect statewide. However, a recent NBC News/Marist College survey shows only two of the GOP candidates leading Nunn in a hypothetical matchup in November. Perdue leads Nunn by four points while Broun edges her by one. The other top candidates are either tied or trailing. Broun agrees with state and national Republican leaders on one critical fact, that Michelle Nunn needs to lose. "The most unelectable candidate running in this whole race on either side is Michelle Nunn because she is so radically liberal. When Barack Obama said to bomb Syria, she said go for it, which just indicates she's going to be a puppet for Barack Obama. Republicans and Democrats alike did not like that position," said Broun. "There was a fundraiser for her up in New York City and the special guest was Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama told the crowd there that she's eager to see Michelle Nunn in the U.S. Senate so they could continue their health care agenda. Well, Obama's been very clear. They want to go to socialized medicine in a single payer system," said Broun. "Then she went on to say (Nunn needed to be elected) so they could get their gun control agenda through the Senate. Well, Obama's been clear about that too. They don't believe that anybody, except for the police and military, should own a gun," said Broun, who chairs the Second Amendment Task Force in the House of Representatives and has the endorsement of two major gun rights groups. "We must not ever, ever lose our individual right to own a gun. In fact, the second amendment and the first amendment are the guardians of our liberty and the second amendment actually guards the first amendment. So I've got the record. Nobody else in this race does," he said. Broun says the GOP establishment is worried he would lose the general election, but the congressman says the biggest gamble would be electing one of the other candidates who cannot match his conservative credentials. "We've got four major candidates. Four of them are establishment candidates. I'm the only non-establishment candidate running in this race. The establishment candidates like big government. I like limited government. That's the reason I've been described as a tea partier before there was a tea party," said Broun. "I'm the most electable candidate in this race for the simple reason that the only way we'd give the Democrats any chance whatsoever to win is if we were to nominate an establishment, big government candidate. The four of them would fit that bill. Republican conservative voters staying home in November would be the only thing that may give her a chance to win this race. Nominating me is why I will win this race. I just need people to pray for me, people in Georgia to vote for me and people all over the country to contribute to my campaign," said Broun. |
| Don't Rush Into Nigeria |
| Mon, 12 May 2014 16:06:43 EST A former State Department official cautions that a quick U.S. decision to get directly involved in the search for hundreds of girls kidnapped by Islamic radicals could be a big mistake and he also believes the Nigerian government will probably agree to a prisoner swap to free Boko Haram members in exchange for the missing students. Over 300 schoolgirls were abducted from northeastern Nigeria last month. Last week, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau announced his group was responsible for the abductions and that he intended to sell the remaining 276 girls into slavery. The announcement triggered worldwide outrage and discussion of what could be done to rescue the girls. The Nigerian government, which had previously rejected any international assistance, agreed to allow American advisers into the country. While few officials are suggesting America deploy troops in the rescue effort, former State Department official Fred Gedrich cautions that too much direct involvement of any kind may bring more consequences than we bargained for. "I think we've got to be very careful and fully comprehend the situation. What we're dealing with is a complicated situation. Population-wise, Nigeria is the largest country in Africa, with 177 million people . There's 250 ethnic groups. About 50 percent of the population are Muslim and it happens to have a Christian leader now. With a Christian as president I think that creates complications because Islam is marching throughout the country," said Gedrich. The latest message from Boko Haram is a video of many girls in traditional Muslim dress and reciting prayers in traditional Muslim ways. The message also contains an offer to return the girls in exchange for Boko Haram figures being freed by the Nigerian government. "The modus opeandi of the Boko Haram group and the group they're they're tied to (Al Qaeda in the Magreb) is they kidnap for ransom and in this case it would be people. In the case of getting those poor kidnapped girls out of the clutches of that terror group, I think they would be willing to almost do anything," said Gedrich Gedrich is a fierce critic of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying she really doesn't have any major accomplishments to boast about during her tenure. Still, he says Clinton should not be pilloried for refusing to label Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. "If you look at the criteria that's used to judge a foreign organization as a terror group by the State Department, it's whether or not they're a foreign organization. Certainly, Boko Haram qualifies in that regard. Does it engage in terrorist activity? Yes, it does," he said. "The third one is the one that probably held her up and that's whether or not the group is a threat to the U.S. citizens and the security interests of the United States. In that case I think it gives her an out because all three criteria should be met," said Gedrich, who also doesn't fault current Secretary of State John Kerry for applying the terrorist label to Boko Haram in 2013. "He went the other way. We do have an embassy there. It's well-staffed and a case could be made that our diplomats are in danger. That could apply anywhere in Africa and many parts of the world for that matter," he said. Gedrich says much of the evaluation of alleged terrorist organizations happens through the State Department Bureau of Counterterrorism although the secretary of state has the final say in adding or removing groups from the list. Another debate arising from the crisis surrounding the Nigerian girls is the impact of so-called hashtag activism. Millions of people have used the phrase #bringbackourgirls to put pressure on the terrorists to release the hostages and urge the U.S. and other governments to do more to get them freed. Columnist George Will says this is nothing more than "an exercise in self-esteem" that has no real world impact. Gedrich says he is skeptical of the social media trend's usefulness but he says it can't hurt. "I believe anything to get people out of the clutches of kidnappers is a good thing, even if it's something like that. But we've got to be careful it's not a wag the dog effort, something where celebrities and everyone else hops in to make themselves feel good and nothing really positive happens. What Nigeria is facing is a long term problem that is not going to be resolved in the near term," said Gedrich. |
| 'Immigration Gimmicks' |
| Fri, 9 May 2014 15:49:40 EST Immigration reform supporters are pursuing "gimmicks" ranging from granting amnesty through military service to the needless exploitation of children, according to Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian. This week, Attorney General Eric Holder admonished public schools that they must enroll students who are in the U.S. illegally and members of both parties continued their advocacy of the ENLIST Act, which would allow illegal immigrants to earn legal status by serving in the U.S. military. All of this comes as leaders in both parties push to get legislation done in the face of fierce conservative opposition. On Thursday, Holder told school leaders across the country that denying enrollment because students are here illegally is unacceptable and a violation of federal law. His position is consistent with a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Texas law at the time that allowed districts either to deny enrollment to such students or charge their families tuition to cover the costs for their education. Krikorian says the puzzling aspect of Holder's comments is not that he holds that position but that he felt the need to articulate it. "Why he's even making this announcement isn't really clear. I think it's more for political purposes to make them sound proactive to their left flank because there's really no change in the law that he's announcing. This has been the case for 30 years," said Krikorian, who says between these comments by Holder and President Obama's unilateral implementation of much of the DREAM Act, it's clear the administration is using children to create emotional momentum for his immigration agenda. "The DREAM Act was designed merely as an advertising and marketing gimmick so they could say, 'Look at these young people. They've lived here since they were three months old. They're valedictorians. They want to join the military and hunt down America's enemies. Therefore, lets give all 12 million illegal aliens amnesty.' It's really kind of transparent and cynical," said Krikorian. "This announcement by Eric Holder I think is really more of the same. It sends the implicit message that people who don't want to pass (New York Sen.) Chuck Schumer's amnesty bill hate little kids. That's the crude message that they're trying to send," he said. Krikorian says he's actually not opposed to all of the DREAM Act. He says children who came here as babies and toddlers should be given a break, but those who arrived as teenagers should not. However, Krikorian also foresees a day mandates for schools to enroll subsequent children who come illegally should be scrapped. "With the number of illegal immigrants we've allowed to settle here, I actually don't think it would be a good idea to keep illegal alien kids out of school now. I think it is something, though, that once we get to the point of an amnesty, and I think we are going to do that after we fix the enforcement system. As part of that deal going forward for future purposes, then yes, I think localities should be allowed to prohibit illegal immigrants from school," said Krikorian. Meanwhile, the delicate dance of drafting immigration reform legislation in the House proceeds cautiously. While various components are drafted primarily through the Judiciary Committee, a fierce debate is brewing in the Armed Services Committee over the ENLIST Act. Sponsored by California Rep. Jeff Denham, the bill would confer legal immigrant status to any people in the nation illegally who serve in the military. Proponents see the ENLIST Act as a positive incentive for young illegals to make a major contribution to their new country by risking their lives in exchange for legal residence. Krikorian sees a slippery slope. "This bill is also a gimmick like the DREAM Act. There are no illegal aliens in the military. It's illegal to enlist if you're an illegal alien. Occasionally, someone sneaks through but not very often. The legislation would basically create a program allowing illegal aliens to enlist in the military and thereby get amnesty," Krikorian says this bill is mostly hype but does make life tougher for American citizens. "The number of people it would cover is minuscule, a few hundred a year maybe because the military is actually harder to get into than most colleges. There's lots of requirement s and only a very small number of people would actually get accepted," said Krikorian. "Number two, we're shrinking the military overall apart from any immigration aspect. The military is downsizing, so opening up enlistment to illegal aliens means that Americans who want to get into the military will actually be elbowed out and will not be able to join the service because illegal aliens are being allowed to enlist," he said. Furthermore, Krikorian sees the ENLIST Act as a Trojan Horse for much greater amnesty. "The point of the gimmick is to be able to get it to the Senate so that Harry Reid can then add more amnesty stuff to it and bring it back to the House, at which point the House leadership will say, 'You have to vote for this whether you like it or not,'" said Krikorian. Despite that dire review, Krikorian does not believe the ENLIST Act or any other immigration bill will pass the House this year, meaning supporters would have to start from scratch again next year in a new Congress. |
| Infections Abound as Feds Stifle Antibiotic Development |
| Thu, 8 May 2014 15:26:49 EST The World Health Organization recently warned that common infections are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics and putting many more lives in danger, a trend one expert says is attributable in large part to government "chains" squashing incentives for drug makers to develop new antibiotics. In it's latest report, the WHO released data showing that common infections like E. coli and staph, which can turn into the deadly MRSA infection, are far tougher to conquer with traditional antibiotics than in the past. E. coli was resistant to traditional antibiotics in 48 percent of the samples taken in the western hemisphere. The numbers are higher everywhere else in the world and shoot as high as 82 percent in Europe. Staph infections were even harder to kill, with 90 percent of the samples in the Americas surviving antibiotic treatment. The number is 80 percent in Africa and 60 percent in Europe. 1cIt 19s clear that rates are very high of resistance among bacteria causing many of the most common serious infections 13 the ones that we see both occurring in the community as well as in hospitals," said WHO Assistant Director General Keiji Fukuda. "In all regions of the world, we now see that hospitals are reporting untreatable, or nearly untreatable, infections. 1d While experts have cast doubt on the reliability of WHO numbers on various issues in the past, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest Co-Founder Robert Goldberg says this report captures the concern pretty well. He says we get this warning about once a decade as a result of bacteria mutating and more people coming into contact with it. The good news, according to Goldberg, is that this isn't a hard threat to combat, but he says there are unnecessary hurdles blocking an effective response and putting lives in danger. "We need to take the chains off companies that would otherwise develop antibiotics but aren't because it's too expensive or too complicated to do so," said Goldberg, who then elaborated on the federally imposed hurdles facing drug makers. "Every time you produce a new antibiotic, you've got to show that it's better than a placebo or a sugar pill. The problem with that is that in many of these cases these are patients that are dying, so the placebo was basically assuring them death. Companies need to know that they can try these products on people who need them the most and follow them after the fact instead of doing these large randomized studies," said Goldberg. "Secondly, their safety requirements are so much higher for antibiotics than they are for other diseases because the (Food and Drug Administration) says, 'Well, (with) cancer we can take a risk of toxicity because it's a fatal disease but antibiotics are going to be used generally so we've got to be really, really careful," he said. "That has led to companies selling off their antibiotic, anti-infective portfolios to focus on stuff like cancer. The answer is pretty simple. The answer is to lower the unwarranted regulations and give companies incentives to produce antibiotics that can address the next generation of pathogens," said Goldberg. If given the incentive to produce antibiotics again, it would not take pharmaceutical companies long to develop effective treatments for the latest version of these bacteria. Goldberg says the current technology is astounding. "Craig Venter, who sequenced the human genome, now has a company called Synthetic Genomics, where you're able to sequence the genome of the bacteria in record time, in a week, and then develop the prototype pill that would block the [bacteria]. Craig can do that in a matter of weeks, but to get the FDA to approve something that is matched to shut off all the deadly signals of the bacteria takes years to get to market," said Goldberg. "The technology is there to both the natural born mutations and even pathogens that would be developed by terrorists to create a bioweapon," he said. So what needs to happen to relax federal restraints on drug makers? "I think Congress would have to address it. I think they need to pass legislation to expand what is known as the breakthrough pathway. That allows drugs of real health importance to speed through the FDA, much like HIV drugs did in the 1980s. The FDA can do stuff today to change its guidances. I can encourage companies right now to use these breakthrough pathways and could be held accountable for doing so the next time their funding comes up because they're supposed to meet certain performance standards," said Goldberg. "I think one of the performance standards they ought to have to meet is you've got to get a number of these antibiotics out the door for these emerging pathogens and make that a national goal," he said. However, with bacteria becoming increasingly resistant to current antibiotics, Goldberg says the price of government not getting out of the way could be big and could come due rather soon. "I think you'll definitely see an increase in community-acquired pneumonia. You'll see an increase in hospital-borne infections that are the leading cause of death in hospitals. You will also see many exotic bacteria coming over to the United States. The first time a doctor will see it will be in the emergency room," said Goldberg. "You're going to see more and more of that if we don't use the tools and know-how that we have to solve the problem in a lot faster time than we're doing it right now." |
| Obama's Misplaced Priorities |
| Wed, 7 May 2014 16:07:38 EST Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is appalled at reports that at least 40 U.S. veterans died after being included on a secret list to delay them needed medical treatment, and he says disgraceful practices like this could have been stopped long ago if care of our veterans mattered more to President Obama. The comments come days after a veterans hospital in Phoenix was found to be keeping hundreds of veterans on a secret list to have their care delayed. Forty of them died. Three hospital administrators are currently on paid leave as an investigation proceeds. Gohmert is not accusing the Obama administration of playing a role in the creation of any lists to delay care, but he still believes Obama deserves a lot of the blame. "It is clear there is a systemic problem with the Veterans Administration and it didn't just all of a sudden crop up under this president. President Bush started making some inroads and this president has made some efforts. The fact is the buck does stop with the top commander over all of our armed forces and over all executive branch activities," said Gohmert. The congressman says the president makes it very clear which issues matter most to him, and health care for vets doesn't appear to be very high on the list. "If the president wanted to make this as much of a central issue as he has this climate change issue that allows the government to take over more people's property and their rights and their lives, then we'd get the VA fixed very quickly," said Gohmert. "Apparently this climate change that was global freezing back in the 1970s, then global warming and then when it quit warming now it's climate change. That apparently is a much bigger issue to this administration than helping those who laid down their lives and put themselves in danger for the good of the country," he said. Two major veterans organizations, including the American Legion, are calling for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign. Other veterans groups disagree. Gohmert says he reluctantly agrees that it's time for a change. "I think that Gen. Shinseki has tried to do an appropriate job. I know he cares about veterans. But when you have a team that is just performing poorly across the board, except for a few exceptions, then I think it's time to get a new coach. It's time for him to step down and get somebody in who will have the free rein to get the VA running as it should and not just as another Obamacare facility," said Gohmert, who reiterated previous comments suggesting the bureaucratic nightmare unfolding at the VA is a preview of what we can all expect through the new health care laws. "Some in America say we don't have to worry about repealing Obamacare because socialized medicine falls of its own weight. But that's not true. Socialized medicine never falls of its own weight. You see what's happening in the VA is what will happen to any socialized medicine system and it's what will happen with Obamacare, more and more government takeover.The way it avoids going broke is you put people on lists the way the VA does. So it doesn't go broke. You just don't give them the treatment they need if you don't have the funding and the backing," said Gohmert. "Therefore, you have people dying waiting to get the treatment they need or having to live in horrible pain because they can't get a hip replacement or a knee replacement. They have a terrible quality of life because they can't get the help they need. But the system doesn't go broke, it just puts more Americans either at risk of death or at risk of misery while they're living. That's why we need to reform health care but we need to get rid of Obamacare once and for all," said Gohmert. So what is Gohmert's short-term solution for veterans being denied care? He says more choices is a great place to start. "If we got a majority of veterans to say, 'I'd rather just have a card that says I'm a veteran and I can walk into any clinic and any hospital and get the care, then that would probably be the best thing to do for our veterans," said Gohmert. "If there VA clinics or hospitals that are performing above standard, then leave those open for veterans, but I think we need to move toward those who are getting substandard care as veterans," he said. |
| Radical Muslims Vow to Sell Abducted Christian Girls |
| Mon, 5 May 2014 15:21:15 EST The leader of a radical Muslim movement in Nigeria is admitting his group abducted over 300 Nigerian girls and now says he's ready to sell them because he's got plenty of buyers. According to news reports, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau confessed via video to the abductions three weeks ago because the girls were enrolled in western education, which he deems as sinful. However, the nightmare for the girls and their families is only getting worse. In the video, Shekau said the students "will remain slaves with us" but he then vowed to take even more drastic action. "They are slaves and I will sell them because I have the market to sell them," said Shekau in the video. Nigeria currently ranks fourteenth on the World Watch List, an annual ranking of nations most hostile to Christianity. The list is compiled by Open Doors USA, one of the most prominent organizations serving persecuted Christians. Open Doors President and CEO Dr. David Curry says Boko Haram is notorious for ghastly behavior towards Christians, including the burning of many churches and murdering scores of college students, but he says these abductions and the selling of girls into sexual slavery takes their barbarism to a new low. "This is the way they operate but I think it's particularly caught the imagination of the American press because these are innocent girls. They're just at school trying to be educated so they can have a better future. The Islamic group Boko Haram sees this as a threat. They see the education of women as problematic to their theology," said Curry. Curry says given Boko Haram's track record, a happy conclusion to this story is very unlikely. "Unfortunately, I think it's very difficult to envision where they're all going to be returned to their families, but we're certainly hoping and praying that that's the case. As time goes on now, you begin to wonder if they'll be able to bring back these girls who are being scattered around the world," said Curry. According to Curry, Boko Haram is responsible for years of bloodshed, intimidation and instability in Nigeria. "Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist group that operates in the northern part of Nigeria. For the last several months, Open Doors has seen a deterioration of the situation there. Boko Haram has done many attacks against Christian churches and villages, in some cases surrounding the village and shooting and burning throughout the village and killing 100-200 people. Now we have these girls kidnapped and sold for $12.50," said Curry. "So it's a group that seeks to set up a regime that forces there faith upon others and Christians are seen in that context as a hostile group so they've been attacked. And it's education. Open Doors and other groups promoting women having access to education and the freedom to have careers and so forth. They see this as a real threat to their theology and so they're attacking these Christian schools. It's very scary," said Curry. While Boko Haram is responsible for inflicting murder and terror in Nigeria, Curry says the current leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan has been very weak in dealing with this threat and the western nations haven't been much better. "The political leadership has been ineffectual to this point. They don't seem to have the resources or the will to protect Christian churches, schools and some of these outlying villages where Christians gather together for safety. The western governments have been ineffectual as well. Even though there have been extreme attacks in northern Nigeria for some time now, the American government and others are just now starting to speak up and consider some plan to support the Nigerian government," said Curry. "So you have some ineffectual political leadership on either side. Christians need to make sure that this is a topic that stays front of mind in the awareness of the American public because it's so crucial. The situation is so brutal and so desperate," said Curry. Curry says his organization is doing everything it can to support the Christian believers under siege in Nigeria. He also explained how Americans can help. "Open Doors is very active within Nigeria to support the church, to help rebuild some of these churches that have been attacked and burned down, to try to support these education programs where we're helping to educate women and girls in these areas. So we're right there," said Curry. "We'd just encourage Christians to support work in these areas and be prayerful for the safety of these girls and these ministries that are operating in northern Nigeria." |
| WH Benghazi Defense 'Laughable' |
| Thu, 1 May 2014 14:15:31 EST For the second straight day, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denied a recently released email was proof of the administration's attempt to spin the deadly Benghazi terrorist attacks as the result of a spontaneous protest, an explanation that a key member of the House committee investigating the attacks dismissed as "laughable". The email from White House official Ben Rhodes came to light as part of a Freedom of Information request from the watchdog group Judicial Watch. In it, Rhodes urges then-Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice to attribute the attack to spontaneous street protests in many Arab cities over an internet video that was critical of Islam and Mohammed. Ambassador Chris Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith were killed in the attack at the consulate. Ex-Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died hours later at the CIA Annex in Benghazi. Carney rejects the notion that the email is evidence of any sort of cover-up for the administration's failure to protect the consulate in Benghazi or take action to assist Americans under fire during the seven-hour assault. "This document was not about Benghazi," said Carney, who asserts the references to the protests in the email were about major demonstrations Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia the same day that the protesters said were in response to the video. "(Rice) relied for her answers on Benghazi on the document prepared by the CIA, as did members of Congress," said Carney. Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and its national security subcommittee. He isn't buying Carney's explanation. "That's laughable, actually laughable, and it's sad. We constantly look back at the emails then between Cairo and Libya and they pointed out there was a document that showed people hardly even knew about the video," said Gosar. "This is laughable if it wouldn't be so tragic, that the White House and Jay Carney actually hold to this narrative. It's deplorable." Gosar says the significance of the Rhodes email takes on further credence in light of the administration's actions in the wake of the attacks in September 2012. "I think it's very significant. It gets even worse. You see the perpetration almost two weeks after Benghazi with the president's speech at the United Nations, in which he addresses this very video," said Gosar. "This actually tries to establish the president with a better narrative going into the election." If in fact the administration's emphasis on the video was fabricated, Gosar says it's certainly not a unique occurrence. "This shows an intentional pattern. We see the lies in Obamacare. We see the lies in Benghazi. We see the lies in regards to the IRS. There's got to be accountability in this administration. Somebody's got to take a fall," said Gosar. Despite the current White House efforts to minimize the significance of the email, Gosar believes this reignites the commitment of Republicans to get to the truth and puts pressure on the White House to be more forthcoming. "This puts the onus back onto the White House to come clean and get the documents out here. It also puts the onus on the attorney general of the United States to do his due diligence to make sure that the people who were involved in this have the ability to speak clearly to the oversight committee and the committees of reference. That is absolutely part of the problem," he said. "In my district and throughout the state of Arizona, this constantly comes up because it's one of the few times that we watched men die and did nothing," said Gosar. While the White House might be on its heels at the moment, Gosar admits there are two factors working against the committee's efforts to get more answers. He says first major hurdle is a Democratic Party completely disinterested in the truth. "They're toeing the party line. I think what they need to do it put their justice hats on, blindfold themselves and listen to the facts. The facts ring loud and clear. The biggest thing we're entitled to is to let the facts come forward and let them fall where they may," said Gosar. The other great frustration for Gosar and other Republicans is what they characterize as the slow drip of paperwork being provided by the administration, which they say is evidenced by the Rhodes email coming forth in a legal request by a private organization and not made available to the committee in the first place. The congressman there's plenty of information yet to be gathered. "There's a lot more. When you look at the tons of paperwork that is required by the federal government's own admission, there's a lot more out there and we need to get that. Once again, we've got to get back to the rule of law and make sure that we have the documents that we, in our Constitution, are entitled to have for oversight of the executive branch," said Gosar, who adds it is the job of the attorney general to make sure the committee has all of the documents it has requested. But while the effort to discover all the facts on Benghazi has been challenging, Gosar says the pursuit of the truth will not stop. "It's now taken us 20 months to get information. Senator (Ted) Cruz made the comment we know less now than we knew before because we lack the due diligence of this administration to give us the information as it occurred. We need to get to the bottom of these answers," said Gosar. |
| DeMint's Olive Branch |
| Wed, 30 Apr 2014 15:29:27 EST Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint says the conservative battle against the establishment mentality of both parties still rages, but he says engaging in the battle of idea instead of rhetorical bomb-throwing is the smart way to get America on the path to recovery as soon as possible. The former South Carolina senator also offered passionate comments about recent comments from prominent GOP figures on issues ranging from health care to immigration to marriage. DeMint and Heritage Action were among the most vocal conservatives calling for government funding to be contingent upon the defunding of Obamacare last year. That pressure triggered several House votes calling for defunding or repealing or delaying certain aspects of the law. When those efforts died in the Senate, many Democrats, media outlets and voters blamed the GOP for the partial government shutdown. Buoyed by the ensuing public relations nightmare of the Obamacare rollout, Republicans quickly maneuvered to craft a a continuing resolution that rolled some of the spending restraints imposed by sequestration while promising deficit reduction. Heritage Action and other conservative groups urged Republicans to vote against the bill, causing House Speaker John Boehner to denounce their tactics. "They're using our members and they're using the American people for their own goals. This is ridiculous. Listen, if you're for more deficit reduction, you're for this agreement," said Boehner in December. DeMint stands by the Heritage opposition to the bill, which passed easily, saying recent history shows those projected cuts may never happen. "The bill that supposedly reduced the deficit actually boosts spending up in the next two years with the promise of sometime in the future reducing spending again. Of course that's what the sequester did. It supposedly was going to reduce spending, but they didn't want to reduce spending now. They keep promising it in the future," said DeMint. "If I hadn't been seeing the same thing happen for 15 years while I was in the House and Senate, then I would say let's give them the benefit of the doubt. But there is no doubt in my mind. They're not going to stop spending unless the people of this country force them to. This debt is going to hurt us, it's going to hurt future generations. Unfortunately, the people who are voting for the political figures who support this debt are the ones paying for it and that's the young millennials, who are probably the most ripped off generation in history," said DeMint, who says he's not looking to pick any political fights but to promote policies rooted in freedom and limited government. "We're not Republican or Democrat at Heritage. We're just focusing on the right ideas and we're trying to get the country to move toward ideas such as decentralization and more competition between the states. If we can start the parade in that direction, I think the politics will follow. So we're not going to spend so much time criticizing or beating Republicans over the head. I think if they see the country moving in the right direction, hopefully both parties might follow," said DeMint. Like any election year, Republicans of all stripes are hoping for unity heading into the fall campaign season. One major pillar of that unity was assumed to be lockstep opposition to Obamacare and a renewed promise to repeal it. However, in just the past week, House Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul both indicated that the recent open enrollment of many Americans on the federal and state exchanges means full repeal is probably not doable. Both McMorris Rodgers and Paul reiterated their intense opposition to most of the law and vowed to work for massive reforms within its existing structure. DeMint says that's not good enough and believes the party can unite around a strategy that still includes repeal. "We cannot have socialized medicine in this country. It hurts too many people. It's already hurting people. It's going to hurt our whole health care system," he said. "You're never going to throw people off a plan they're on like this president is doing, but it would be relatively easy at this point to pass repeal, to give states flexibility, to allow the subsidies on the plans people are already on to phase out over a period of years or be replaced with something at the state level. There a lot of things we can to do to repeal and replace this with something that actually improves our health care system rather than destroys it." McMorris Rodgers is not only taking heat from the right over her Obamacare comments but for also predicting an immigration reform bill would reach the House floor by August. It's an issue that bitterly divides the right and DeMint cannot understand why this push is happening now. "Why would a party that believes in limited government be looking at amnesty as a priority at a time when we need to fix our tax code. We need to figure out how to reduce spending. We need to fix Social Security and Medicare so they're there for future generations," said DeMint. "Those are the big issues, yet the president is talking about how to manage what businesses pay their employees, fabricating wars on women and other things. Yet, we've got Republicans who are caving to corporate pressure on things like the (Export-Import) Bank, a big corporate welfare boondoggle. The whole amnesty bill is something doing corporate America's bidding," he said. "That's what frustrates us about politics and I don't think America is interested in that any longer. I think you're going to see a sea change in this election. We want to be a part of helping people understand what the right policies are right now where our country is. It's certainly not what they're talking about in either set of leadership in Washington right now," said DeMint. Another major point of debate inside the Republican Party is over the proper stance on the definition of marriage. The national party platform still defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and a majority of Americans who identify as Republicans agree. But with national polls trending towards acceptance of same-sex marriage, millennials overwhelmingly supporting that position, at least one state party changing its platform and a string of court decisions overturning traditional marriage laws, many in the party believe it's time to change course. DeMint says it's important for conservatives and all Americans to understand the unique role traditional marriage plays in a stable society, but adds that he doesn't want Washington mandating anything on the issue. "The best environment to raise children is when there's a mom and dad in the home and all the statistics show that. So this is not about people's rights or marriage equality. This is about the best environment to raise children. The federal government has never regulated marriage before or defined it. It's something that's come from civil society, our churches and states have regulated marriage in order to protect it. And that's where we need to leave it," said DeMint. "I would hope every state would recognize the importance of traditional marriage. But if not, let the states decide and let states that want to protect the millennia-old definition of marriage (do that). No one in Washington should be deciding that for everybody in the country," said DeMint. |
| Is America Past the Tipping Point? |
| Tue, 29 Apr 2014 15:53:04 EST With the national debt continuing to soar, bloated government getting further entrenched and the nuclear American family in decline, America's brightest days might seem to be behind her. But Heritage Foundation President and CEO Jim DeMint says our nation can rise stronger than ever simply by following the proven course that triggered greatness in the first place. DeMint served in both the U.S. House and Senate before resigning in 2013 and taking the helm at Heritage. In his new book, "Falling in Love with America Again,"quot; DeMint says he decided to apply his efforts to the private sector because making real change happen within the government proved to be very difficult. With a national debt well north of $17 trillion, federal government gathering more power and families seemingly facing more challenges than ever, DeMint says it's a fair question as to whether America can right the ship. "An intellectual analysis of where we are would say we probably passed the tipping point. Technically, it's going to be very difficult to turn around. That's my head analysis. My heart analysis is that I know the spirit of freedom still runs deep within the hearts of millions and millions of Americans. I also know that this country has been blessed by God, it's in His hands and that spiritual revival is still very possible in our country," said DeMint. "We've got a better chance of turning our country around than our founders did, winning a war of independence against Britain. The odds have been against us before. We can turn it around but only if people understand what's wrong," he said. "If they continue to think, 'Well, the Democrats aren't doing it right in Washington, now lets try the Republicans' version of national education or national health care,' it doesn't matter who's in charge. The country is too big to manage and it was never intended to manage all the things it's doing in Washington," said DeMint. In his book, DeMint highlights limited government approaches to issues ranging from health care to education to energy. The common thread among his proposals is the value of approaching issues as "small platoons" rather than in top-down ways through a growing federal government. "Whether you're looking at businesses, organizations or the government itself, the real innovations and solutions tend to come from the ground up. America was built that way. We were built from the ground up. We were a very decentralized country from the very beginning. The whole point of the Constitution was to keep us that way, with a very limited federal government and a vibrant, competitive system between the states," said DeMint. DeMint contends that as America moves away from those principle, we lose a big part of our identity. He says engaging in small platoons, as families, churches or other community groups is a proven path to success and is still the key to making America what we want it to be. "As we become more like centrally-planned European countries, America is losing its uniqueness and we are losing a lot of the things that made us great and prosperous in the first place," said DeMint. "But most of the book is about little platoons still at work all over the country, creating better schools, developing our energy on private lands, even figuring out how to insure themselves without insurance companies for health care. These examples of success are all around us. The federal government continues to try to replace them, to punish them and to create incentives to do things the wrong way, in spite of all the evidence that what's working in America is still coming from the ground up," said DeMint. Another critical component to a stable, growing and thriving society in DeMint's eyes is strong families. He says big government programs have been a disaster for the American family. "Unfortunately, the government, in its attempt to help the poor, have actually created more poverty and broken up families. By doing that, they create inter-generational poverty and many other social pathologies of drug use, high school dropouts and incarceration. A lot of that comes straight from broken families," said DeMint. DeMint knows first-hand that single-parent homes are not always avoidable, but he says the federal government is actively undermining the traditional family structure. "I grew up in a home with a single mom, but we don't need to arrange our charitable welfare programs in a way that means a mother can get help if she doesn't have a husband in the home. So (government programs) discourage marriage and family formation. We seem to be doing everything we can at the federal level to discredit the traditional family, which all the statistics show you if a child grows up in a home with a mom and dad, they have the best chance of succeeding and very little chance of ever living in poverty despite where they started," said Demint. The 2014 midterm elections could be pivotal towards steering America in the right direction, according to DeMint. However, he says many states with conservative leaders are already proving that good policies at the state level are making life better for all citizens, especially the less fortunate. "Look at what (Gov. Bobby) Jindal's doing in Louisiana (on education). Look at what they've done in Florida with more choices. And look at the fact the children who benefit the most are often poor minority children, the ones they said that choice would hurt," he said. DeMint says when liberal policies run unchallenged we get crises like Detroit, but limited government approaches lead to well-run governments and economic success, such as in North Dakota's energy production and the effort of Texas leaders to keep regulations few and taxes low. "The answers are all around us and we don't have to win all the battles in Washington. We just have to move the battles out of Washington and let the states compete. Once we do that, I think you're going to see America return very quickly," said DeMint. |
| 'John Kerry Has Lost His Mind' |
| Mon, 28 Apr 2014 15:48:52 EST Middle East talks collapsed in recent days, after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas publicly reunited with the terrorist group Hamas and triggered Israel's exit from further negotiations. Critics of U.S. policy are also furious at Secretary of State John Kerry for suggesting that Israel's failure to embrace a two-state solution with the Palestinians could leave the only Middle East democracy branded as "an apartheid state". The Daily Beast reports Kerry made the comments in a closed door meeting with "influential world leaders." The term immediately takes listeners to the decades-long policy of racial separation and inequality in South Africa. The understood implication in Kerry's comments is that Palestinians living in disputed territories controlled by Israel would suffer from prejudice, persecution and inequality if a two-state solution is not achieved. Dr. Mike Evans is a Middle East expert and a longtime personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He says the U.S. and the Palestinians are demanding that Israel made concessions in the full knowledge that the Palestinians want to exterminate them. "What this is about is terror strategy. It works like this. 'Israel, you give us what we want or we kill you. We'll kill you.' Therefore, (Abbas is) going back to full-blown terror. They've done it many times before and they're doing it again," said Evans. "So what does John Kerry do? Instead of condemning them, he goes after Israel. 'Israel, what's wrong with you? Geez, just because they want to kill you and on the week of the Holocaust Memorial they want to blow you up,'" he said. "John Kerry needs to apologize to the state of Israel. Here's a democracy that Arabs live in very happily, better than anywhere in the Muslim world, because they won't embrace a terror state and people want to destroy them. John Kerry now calls them an apartheid state. He needs to go back to school. He doesn't even know the meaning of the word apartheid. That's nuts. Israel has never been an apartheid state. It's not an apartheid state, and you sure don't chastise the state of Israel because they don't want to get into bed with terrorists," said Evans, who says Kerry's philosophy suggests evil should never be confronted. "If you're going to go with that logic, you might as well apologize to Osama bin Laden's family. What did you kill him for? What are you some kind of apartheid state? The guy just wanted something. Couldn't you negotiate with him?" mused Evans. "John Kerry has lost his mind. He has damaged American foreign policy worldwide with one swift stroke of his tongue. It's unbelievable that he would be so shameful to say what he said," said Evans, who says the damage done by Kerry's comments extend far beyond the Middle East. "He sent a signal to all the bad actors. He sent it to Putin in Russia. He sent it to Iran. He sent it to North Korea. He sent it to Syria and Al Qaeda. 'We're afraid. We're weak. Come after us. It's insane, It's completely outrageous,'" said Evans. According to Evans, the Obama administration is aggravated that Netanyahu sees the Middle East impasse in black and white terms and not in the nuanced shades of gray that Obama, Kerry and other liberal academics prefer. He also wonders how Israel can be expected to trust anyone affiliated with Hamas, which denies the Nazi Holocaust but openly calls for a Jewish holocaust in Israel. Evans also rejects Abbas as any sort of moderate, saying the Palestinian leader has decades-long ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization and even played a financial role behind the terrorist attacks against Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Germany. So with Middle East talks breaking down and the U.S. and others placing the lion's share of the blame for that upon Israel, what can we expect in the near future? "Terror with a big 'T'. Al Qaeda is embedded in Hamas, so now what did they just get? They just got a free ticket to Bethlehem and Jericho. They just got a free ticket to Ramallah. So Al Qaeda is going to start circling Israel big time. You're going to have an acceleration of terror," said Evans. "Abbas has just played the terror card. And Kerry just played the (Neville) Chamberlain card. He basically told Hamas, 'Oh, I understand. I feel your pain.' He sided with terror against the state of Israel. So it's going to accelerate terror. It's going to accelerate it against Jews globally. It's going to accelerate against the state of Israel," said Evans. "Thank you, John Kerry. Wonderful job you did going over there and kissing up to those terrorists. Once they pull out their swords and their guns, then you side with them against the only democracy in the Middle East. Wonderful. Lovely," he said. |
| Kibbe's Libertarian Manifesto |
| Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:52:18 EST Americans are ready to kick a big, intrusive government to the curb, but they're waiting for a credible alternative to the two-party approach that got us into this mess, according to FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe. Kibbe is author of the new book, "Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto." He admits that reversing the tide of big government will be a massive task even if the right people get into office. He is also wading into the divisive conservative debates over America's role in the world and whether elected conservative leaders ought to be championing traditional family values. In his book, Kibbe says the fundamental principles of limited government should boil down to six principles. In addition to not hurting people and seizing their property, he extols the values of personal responsibility and and hard work, while encouraging everyone to mind their own business and "fight the power" of government when it exceeds its constitutional boundaries. Kibbe also prescribes a 12-step solution to restoring liberty to the people, with ideas ranging from the government not spending more than it takes in and scrapping the income tax to personal choice in education and health care to placing much greater limits on the government's ability to invade our privacy. Despite the growth of government both long-term and in recent years, Kibbe is optimistic that enough Americans are fed up with Washington that real change is possible. However, he says it will take a unique confluence of events to make it happen, and while he is no fan of the Republican Party, Kibbe thinks it still needs to be part of the answer. "Ronald Reagan said in 1975 that the heart and soul of conservatism is libertarian. The next year, remember, he primaried a sitting Republican president (Gerald Ford). Everyone predicted he would destroy the party. In fact, the opposite happened. He kind of cleaned out the barn and restored a certain sense of standing for something within the GOP," said Kibbe. "I think that has to happen again today and I think there a lot of independents and Democrats with buyer's remorse. And there's a lot of small 'L' libertarians that would vote against the big government party of the Democrats if they found a home. "Some political entrepreneur needs to offer that up, but I think we're going to have to beat the Republicans before we beat the Democrats," said Kibbe. But Kibbe admits rolling back big government will take a long, committed effort. First, he says the unnecessary complexity of the federal bureaucracy is great for entrenched politicians and special interests and bad for the average citizen. "You see this with Obamacare. You see it with the IRS and the very complex campaign finance rules that Lois Lerner used to target mom and pop tea partiers. It wasn't equally applied and in this world of complexity, all of us are probably breaking some small piece of the federal register that we don't even know. We don't even know that the rule exists. And that shifts power away from us to them. It also happens to benefit all of the interests that come to Washington looking for a special deal. Incumbent firms love to lobby for more complexity in finance regulations and in the ability of new firms to enter the marketplace," said Kibbe. Kibbe warns that because of the deliberate complexity of the federal bureaucracy, reversing the tide will require a long and sustained effort, regardless of who wins elections. But he says approaching reform with simplicity is definitely the way to go. "On the spending side, agree to how much we're going to spend and then put everything on the table. On the regulatory side, I think it makes sense on really bad ideas like Obamacare and Sarbanes-Oxley (financial regulatory reforms), a lot of these failed, super-complicated regulatory regimes, pull it out by the roots. Agree what you're trying to accomplish and then set out something that's simple," said Kibbe. "There are simple solutions to health care that give patients more control that would actually create competition for scarce dollars. We don't have to write a 7,000-page bill. We could do it with some simple changes to the tax code, but that takes away Washington's power and that's why it doesn't happen," said Kibbe. Before confronting the federal leviathan, however, there are some major points of division on the right, both among conservatives and between conservatives and libertarians. The biggest sticking points center on America's role in the world and whether the right ought to be champions of traditional values like the right to life and traditional marriage and the nuclear family. On the international stage, Kibbe believes strong leadership on a limited number of issues essential to American security is preferable to how U.S. foreign policy has been conducted lately. "I think Barack Obama's a great example of what you don't do because he's combined a lack of leadership with a weakening of our economy and a running up of our debt," said Kibbe. "I'm with Reagan on this. I lean libertarian. I think we should be careful about getting involved in things like Syrian civil wars because it doesn't make sense and the practical outcomes matter a lot. We don't have a good track record there. But if we don't have the money and we don't have an economy that exports freedom and actually produces energy...we're not going to be anyone's world leader. You can talk a good game but I think the fundamentals are more important," said Kibbe. "Everybody took Ronald Reagan seriously and it wasn't because he was rolling the tanks. It's because he represented a country that said what it believed and actually was strong in the face of Soviet oppression," he said. Social conservatives may have the biggest disagreement with Kibbe, who believes that morality issues should be decided in families, communities and private institutions like churches in synagogues. He believes government shouldn't be in the business of advocating anything when it comes to moral issues like the definition of marriage. He also contends the Faith Based Initiatives of President George W. Bush quickly devolved into a scrum for federal handouts, handouts that are now going to to very progressive organizations under the Obama administration. "When you give Washington the authority to intervene in the really important things that you believe, expect that they might do exactly the opposite of what you want them to. Wouldn't it be better to pursue freedom to allow you to raise your kids the way that you think is right instead of imposing Common Core from the top down. Wouldn't it be better to not have Washington, D.C. opine on my marriage. I personally found it offensive that I had to get the government's permission to get married 27 years ago. I think people are waking up to this. These guys can't even balance the budget. Do we really think they can define marriage in a better way than we could for ourselves?" asked Kibbe. |
| Obama's Keystone Waiting Game |
| Mon, 21 Apr 2014 16:12:50 EST The Obama administration is again delaying a decision on whether to approve the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, a move Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry says is nothing more than a gift to the environmental lobby that could force Canada to abandon the U.S. as a partner on this critical project. "The hardcore greens came out a couple months ago, after the final environmental impact study was ruled as a final study by the State Department. They held a press conference saying, 'We will boycott the 2014 elections if the president signs this.' The president knows. His brain is telling him that it has to be signed. There's just no good reason to deny the permit except for the political pressures that are on him from his far left," said Terry, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "So (the administration) found another creative, meaningless way to just delay signing that permit until after the elections," he said. If this is just a political calculation, the environmental lobby appears to carry more weight inside the White House than Democratic lawmakers from right-leaning states and even multiple labor unions anxious to get to work on the pipeline. At least 11 Democrats in the U.S. Senate have publicly urged Obama to green-light the pipeline and unions like the Laborers International Union of America (LIUNA). Terry says there is enough support in the Senate to break a filibuster and maybe even override an Obama veto of the pipeline. He says the fight inside organized labor is a bit more complex. "It's the trade unions that will go to work at good middle class wages, but those are the ones that the president's throwing under the bus, a bus probably driven by a Teamster who would actually benefit from this project. The reality is the major political unions today, like the SEIU and the government employees, they're standing with the green organizations opposing this pipeline," said Terry. Terry also noted Democratic super donor Tom Steyer has promised to raise $100 million for Democrats to make climate change a major issue this year, but only if Keystone doesn't happen. Despite more than five years of evaluation and final environmental approval by Obama's own State Department, the administration says it needs more time before rendering a final decision. One reason it says is to carefully consider a large number of public comments solicited on the issue. It also claims the route of the pipeline is still up in the air after a federal judge in Nebraska rejected it. "That is an invalid excuse. There's just no basis to delay the pipeline because of that. First of all, that decision is so faulty that it was immediately stayed by law. Secondly, go ahead and start construction of the pipeline in Montana and South Dakota before they resolve these issues," said Terry. "The court case would not interfere with the construction of the pipeline. So it's really a faux reason. You have to fall back on what I think it is and it's all politics," said Terry, who says outside of the political money at stake Obama is stuck between his personal aversion to such energy products and the inability to come up with a good reason to reject it. And the congressman is doubtful that Obama will ever make a decision on the pipeline. "I don't know how to figure this president out, especially on issues like this. I think in his heart he would like to veto it or not sign it but he also knows that there really isn't a good reason to kill it and that he should sign it. When all their environmental studies, all of them, came out and said that it would actually reduce carbon emissions by using a pipeline instead of hauling it on rail or trucks. I would think that the environmentalists would want it, but they won't and I don't think the president wants to sign it either," said Terry. While the clock ticks on the Obama administration, it's also ticking on Canada, where the government and energy producer TransCanada have made it clear they'll ship the oil to China if the U.S. doesn't want it. "I had a conversation just a few weeks ago with the ambassador from Canada. He said they're already going forward with the pipeline to the east and the right-of-way is already all reserved now for a pipeline from Alberta to the west coast and there's probably going to be two to the west coast (for shipping to China). So Canada is already implementing Plan B as we speak. The issue is whether or not the United States is ever going to adopt the Keystone XL so that it goes to our refineries and creates jobs and prosperity along the route," said Terry. |
| Are Feds About to Bail Out Detroit? |
| Thu, 17 Apr 2014 16:34:20 EST U.S. taxpayers may soon be on the hook for $100 million in the effort to resurrect the bankrupt city of Detroit, and Louisiana Sen. David Vitter says such a move wastes valuable resources and relieves city and state officials from having to make the tough decisions needed to restore solvency to the Motor City. The Detroit Free Press reported this week that state and federal officials are in talks to give the city $100 million in federal money to help jump start blight removal efforts and ease the pain on pension recipients stung by the recent bankruptcy declaration. "Detroit has been grossly mismanaged for years and that was a choice by Detroit citizens through their elected officials. For all other federal taxpayers to now pay for it or partially pay for it to the tune of $100 million I think is just wrong," said Vitter, who expanded on his assertion that generations of Detroit leaders and the people who repeatedly put them into office dug this massive financial hole. "In Detroit and a lot of other jurisdictions, there's been this conspiracy for years. Public unions elected left-leaning elected officials and those elected officials push very expensive public pensions and other benefits for those unions. That's what's been building for years and years in Detroit, in Illinois, in other very left-leaning jurisdictions, particularly those dominated by public unions. That's a big deal and a big part of what got Detroit into trouble," said Vitter. More than a year ago, Vitter tried to stifle any federal financial rescues such as this through his State Bailout Prevention Act. "I introduced this bill because I saw this coming. I knew that with Detroit, Illinois, perhaps others, there would be attempts for the federal taxpayer to have to bail out these mismanaged jurisdictions. So this simply said that no federal authority, including the Treasury, including the Fed can have an authority to bail out these entities in bankruptcy," said Vitter. "Certainly that doesn't prevent other funds that would ordinarily go to these jurisdictions from continuing. But (there would be) no funds specifically to bail out these mismanaged jurisdictions." Advancing the legislation in a U.S. Senate controlled by Democrats is a challenge. Vitter's one attempt to enact the bill was defeated when he called for unanimous consent for its adoption. While Vitter claims wide support for the plan, he says Michigan Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, both Democrats, formally objected and killed the resolution. "I'm looking for other opportunities to move it forward but, unfortunately in Harry Reid's Senate, Reid and other Democratic leaders are probably going to go along with this bailout idea," said Vitter, noting his concerns the $100 million might not even come up for congressional authorization. "I'm concerned that they're trying to do this administratively. I don't think the Obama administration has the authority to do that, but that certainly hasn't stopped them in similar cases in the past," said Vitter. The senator also applauds Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder for being one of the few leaders who doesn't have his hand out to Washington. Vitter says approving the $100 million could easily begin a slippery slope for more taxpayer dollars flowing into Detroit and actually hamper efforts to get the city on solid financial ground. "I agree with the thought that if it started there, it wouldn't end there and I think it may very well mushroom from there," said Vitter. "The more they're bailed out by others, the less they're going to make necessary tough choices. It's as simple as that. So this is actually discouraging. They're making those tough decisions and getting management of the city on track. I was going to say back on track but it hasn't been on track for generations," said Vitter. In addition to his fears that Detroit could be a bottomless pit for federal bailout dollars, he fears setting such a precedent in Detroit could trigger a long line of cash-strapped states and cities to line up in Washington expecting similar aid. "Absolutely. Detroit's not the end of it. Illinois could be in line. California could be in line. So to set this sort of precedent is really dangerous," said Vitter. |
| Vets Vow to Sink 'Barricade' Burwell |
| Wed, 16 Apr 2014 16:05:02 EST President Obama is asking the U.S. Senate to confirm Sylvia Mathews Murwell as the next leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, but at least one veterans organization is vowing to do everything it can to block her path to the president's cabinet. Burwell is currently directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). During October's partial government shutdown, Burwell made the call for the National Park Service to shutter it's public attractions, including open air memorials in Washington such as the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial. That decision made the World War II Memorial a flash point of controversy during the shutdown, as elderly veterans coming to the nation's capital on Honor Flights were turned away by barricades. Members of Congress and veterans groups soon began removing the barricades to allow veterans access to their memorials. Eventually, the government allowed World War II veterans into their memorial, but the general public was left out. The Vietnam and Korean memorials were closed to everyone. "The only reason they reversed themselves (on the World War II Memorial) is because there was a public outcry," said Special Operations Speaks Political Director Larry Ward, whose group was actively involved in the Million Vet March demanding the memorials be re-opened. "The fact that there were flights coming in with 90-year-old men who served our country and saved the world, the Greatest Generation, were coming in to see the World War II Memorial, probably for the last time that they could in their lives, and they were turned away for political spite. It's one of the most reprehensible acts any commander-in-chief or any bureau head like, Sylvia 'Barricade' Burwell, has ever done in the history of this country." Ward says the whole episode shows the depths to which the Obama administration would sink to win a political debate, and whether Burwell or President Obama is ultimately to blame doesn't really matter. "The blame at the time went to the president, and rightly so. (The orders) probably came from on high. The fact of the matter is she was in charge of making the call. It might have been her idea. We do know that the barricades went up minutes after the government shut down so it was planned and it was reprehensible and idiotic. Let's call it for what it is," said Ward. "There was nothing to be gained by shutting down open-air memorials. The government spent more money shutting them down and guarding them than they would have if they had just left them open and let our veterans go to their memorials," said Ward. According to Ward, whether Burwell ordered the memorial shut on her own volition or was simply following orders, she is unfit for higher office either way. "She either was a lot of malcontent, has a lot of evil inside her or she's just an Obamabot. Either way, we don't want that person representing the nation's health care. We need somebody who can stand on their own and make decisions that affect the entire country's health and well being, not someone who is going to either have political payback for spite or for whatever reasons that they put these barricades up or just follow orders as the king on high declares," said Ward. While the exact strategy is being worked out, Ward says Special Operations Speaks is planning an aggressive opposition to the Burwell nomination. "Absolutely, and you'll hear this first," said Ward. "We're planning on hosting a human barricade in front of the Senate at the time of her confirmation hearings." Ward adds that military veterans are very reticent to get active in politics but the members of Special Operations Speaks feel they have no choice. "They've gotten political with this administration because of the reprehensible behavior they have towards our military and our veterans. If need be, we'll rip down barricades every single day and throw them at the White House the way we did at the Million Vet March," said Ward. |
| Time for the Fair Tax? |
| Tue, 15 Apr 2014 16:19:28 EST The federal tax code is a complex, unintelligible mess and America needs to embrace the simplicity of a national consumption tax known as the Fair Tax, according to Georgia Rep. Tom Price, who is just one of many conservatives touting the idea as Americans rush to meet today's federal income tax deadline. "PROBLEM: folks sacrificing precious time, money and peace of mind on a broken complex tax code. SOLUTION: the #FairTax," tweeted Price on Tuesday. Fellow Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston also tweeted support for the Fair Tax and the abolishing of the IRS. Price says the first thing Americans need to recognize is that our current tax system is a disaster. "Our current system actually punishes the things that we say that we want as a society. We say we want hard work. We say we want success. We say we want entrepreneurs, risk taking, investment and all those kinds of things. yet our tax system punishes every single one of them. So many of us believe that we need think more fundamentally and more creatively about it and come up with a tax system that doesn't just massage what we currently have but puts in place a system that actually rewards those things," said Price. Fair Tax supporters call for the income tax and payroll taxes to be eliminated and replaced with a national sales or consumption tax in a move that would be revenue neutral and clear out all the confusion and bureaucracy from the system. "The IRS goes away. All the taxes related to income at both the business and the individual level go away and we would have a national retail sales tax that would replace that," said Price. "It would bring in the same amount of money, but what it would do is reinvigorate the economy and get the economy rolling in a big, big way because it would encourage jobs to come back from overseas. It would encourage investment, encourage savings, encourage entrepreneurship, encourage hard work and reward success in big, big ways." Based on current consumption and levels and national revenue figures, the Fair Tax would be roughly in the 20-23 percent range. Price says that may seem steep but it's actually a good deal when you take out income taxes and consider one other important fact. "Each and every one of us pays right now about a 23 percent tax in every single good or service that we purchase, but you don't know about it. It's embedded in the system. For example, businesses add into the price of their product an amount that's about equal to 23 percent of the cost of the product to cover their taxes. Businesses don't pay taxes. The consumers that use the businesses do," said Price, who says once those business taxes go away, the retail prices will go down and we would pay about the same as we do now once the Fair Tax was applied. Price says one caveat to installing a Fair Tax is not just the scrapping of the federal income tax but to pass a new constitutional amendment forbidding an income tax. He says otherwise the Fair Tax could become a nightmare. "What we don't want is both a consumption tax and an income tax. That's the worst of both world's. So when you hear people talking about a Value Added Tax (VAT), that's a consumption tax as well but it is in addition to income tax. That would be a terrible prospect, because then you give the federal government even more money to expand the bureaucracy and create an ever-larger federal government," said Price. The most common Democratic complaint about the Fair Tax is that the rich and poor would pay the exact same percentage in taxes for the same items. Price says that worry is unfounded. "The way the current bill solves that is to provide everybody with what's called a prebate, so the amount of monies that are felt to be needed for essential services like food, clothing and shelter, one would get a prebate to cover the cost of the Fair Tax on those items. Everybody gets it, so that those at the lower end of the economic spectrum are actually benefited to a greater degree under the Fair Tax than they currently are," said Price. In late February, House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp introduced his version of tax reform that includes fewer tax brackets and an attempted simplification of the system through closing loopholes. Price says it's a step in the right direction towards more of a flat tax system but doesn't go far enough. There is a House bill calling for the adoption of the Fair Tax, HR 25, but Price says there's not nearly enough backing, even among Republican leaders and members, to advance the resolution right now. |
| Putin Pushes the Envelope |
| Mon, 14 Apr 2014 15:58:03 EST Vladimir Putin wants all of Ukraine and the big question is whether he even be satisfied with that, according to former Reagan administration Pentagon official Frank Gaffney. Gaffney, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy under President Reagan, is now president of the Center for Security Policy. He says Putin is probing to see just how far he can go and is getting virtually no resistance from the United States. Tension in Ukraine are on the rise again, with increasing reports of pro-Russian militants seizing police stations and other government buildings in eastern Ukraine, a region known to be sympathetic to Moscow. Experts fear the Russians are stoking an artificial movement in that part of the country designed to trigger additional independence votes and eventual assimilation by Russia. Gaffney says Putin's strategy goes far beyond a little regional nibbling. "The question is does he really want more than the whole thing of Ukraine. The think the answer to that is probably yes. I think he will insist upon, at the very minimum, that all of Ukraine once again is subject to Russian dominion, as it was under the previous President Yanukovych. Whether his appetite extends beyond that to Trans-Dniester (Moldova) or to Latvia and Estonia or perhaps other former Soviet republics [that] have Russian populations is anybody's guess," said Gaffney. "But I think that the heavy betting should be on he's going to continue to go for as much as he can because he senses no real opposition from either the administration here in Washington or from the Europeans," he said. The Obama administration says the president will likely speak to Putin soon about the latest instigation of unrest in Ukraine. "I can assure you that Russia's further provocations and transgressions will come with a cost," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. Gaffney says that kind of response will yield little to nothing. "This isn't the first time that that's been said, by the president, by Secretary of State John Kerry, let alone by the White House press spokesman. I think it's been completely discounted by Vladmir Putin because he knows our capacity to impose greater costs is considerably limited by both the condition of our own military, our economy, not least our leadership, and because we've failed to take any appreciable steps to date ," said Gaffney. "The extent of our support for Ukraine to this point has been to provide meals ready to eat to a country ready to be eaten. This is hardly a disincentive to Vladimir Putin and I think he's behaving accordingly," said Gaffney. The Obama administration is also responding to news that a Russian warplane recently buzzed an American Navy ship in the region, with Carney calling it "provocative and unprofessional." "This is the kind of thing that can lead to conflagrations because one suddenly one finds that the response is mandatory and no longer elective. I'm worried that the president's failure, as is so often the case, and this is what the lessons of history teach us, things get worse the longer you defer acting on them," said Gaffney. Gaffney further asserts that the brewing tension with the Russians is another facet of the larger battle for freedom in the world. "I believe the war we're in is best thought of as the war for the free world and whether the assaults against the free world by the Islamists or by the Chinese or by the Russians or by Hugo Chavez and his successors or anybody else, to think that it doesn't matter to U.S. security when other parts of the free world or aspirants to being part of it are lopped off at the hands of thugs who have very bad intentions toward us as well is the worst sort of shortsightedness. I shows an ignorance of the hard lessons of history that should cause all of us to realize that we are poorly led and it is exposing us to great dangers," said Gaffney. |
| Peeling Back the Layers of the IRS Scandal |
| Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:34:01 EST Former IRS official Lois Lerner may soon be facing a contempt of Congress citation and even criminal prosecution for her role in directing unlawful scrutiny towards conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status, but the biggest bombshell of the week is the revelation that Lerner 19s office shared sensitive tax information with the top Democrat on the committee investigating the scandal. However, the president of the grassroots organization at the center of this alleged collusion says even this development is only one step in discovering just how high this goes in the Obama administration. This week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee revealed an email chain showing the IRS passed along confidential information from True the Vote to the office of Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. Cummings then launched his own investigation of the group through his position on the committee, even though the committee cannot lawfully investigate a private organization. True the Vote President Catherine Englebrecht says this episode is further proof of how corrupt our government is becoming. 1cIt 19s like the wild wild west up there in D.C. Anything goes. It 19s open season on any group that is considered to be ideologically opposed to the politics of the administration. The rules don 19t matter. The ends justify the means in their minds, 1d said Englebrecht. Englebrecht says it is difficult to pinpoint when Cummings launched his scrutiny into her group, but the first contact she received from him came in September 2012. 1cIt was so bizarre. When this all started, it was in the throes of the final weeks before the 2012 election when True the Vote was at its peak of operations, helping to train citizens and getting them ready to serve inside of the polls for the elections, 1d said Englebrecht. 1dOut of nowhere, we go this letter from Elijah Cummings. He asserted that we were engaging in criminal activity and that he was going to open an investigation and he was subpoenaing all of our documents. These letters came to us on the letterhead of the Committee for House Oversight and Government Reform. His was the only signature on it, but the letter itself carried with it what felt to be a pretty weighty backing. 1d True the Vote is dedicated to making sure that only those who should be voting are casting ballots in an election. The group is actively working to get states to update their voter rolls and purge the names of people who died or moved. It also advocates for voters to be required to present a photo ID, an idea vigorously opposed by the Obama administration and other Democrats who liken the requirement to Jim Crow era restrictions on voting. Given True the Vote 19s ambitious work leading up to a very close presidential election, Englebrecht does not believe the timing of the letter was coincidental. 1cI do think they are concerned about any organization that is going to try and take a hard look at the legitimacy of elections and legitimacy of process. Eighty-plus percent of Americans favor photo voter identification, but the administration is going state by state and suing states that are trying to implement these very common sense measures to make sure that elections are free and fair for everyone, regardless of political party affiliation, 1d said Englebrecht. 1cIt begs the question why. Why is there such a push against bringing a process that meets with standards of others. We 19re the only industrialized country in the world that doesn 19t use photo voter identification as its standard and it makes you wonder why, 1d she said. Englebrecht says the latest discoveries go a long way to explain why congressional Democrats quickly shifted from outrage over the IRS scandal to outrage that Republicans still want answers. 1cElijah Cummings, months and months and months ago, went on television and said, 18Case closed. There 19s nothing to see here, people. Keep moving. 19 Our own president came out and said there 19s not a smidgen of truth to any of this. It 19s a sad day, but it 19s where you are that you can 19t believe the hype, 1d said Englebrecht. 1dThey will say and do anything to obfuscate, to put out a smokescreen to keep people from recognizing what really is happening. 1d Englebrecht is pleased with the House actions of the past week that will likely lead to a contempt of Congress citation against Lois Lerner and possibly a federal prosecution, but she quickly cautions that this scandal still goes much higher than anyone implicated thus far. 1cIt 19s a step in the right direction but it 19s only a step. I think that we 19ve got to look at the actions of Elijah Cummings and the actions of Lois Lerner, actions taken by two people in a much bigger organized effort. I think we 19ve got to keep the push on no matter how deep and ugly this rabbit hole is. We have got to be steeled enough and firm enough in our resolve to follow it wherever it leads. I think it is going to lead to the highest offices in the land, 1d said Englebrecht. The government did more than launch investigations and saddle Englebrecht with paperwork. She says federal agencies began showing up to inspect her private manufacturing business with great regularity. 1cOver the course of the last three years, we 19ve been visited by a whole alphabet soup of agencies, from the FBI to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, OSHA. There 19s a Texas branch of the EPA, an environmental group that came out and visited and certainly the IRS. So we 19ve had our fair share of agency interest, 1d said Englebrecht. She admits each government agency had a plausible reason for its visit and her company fully complied with all of the inspections. However, Englebrecht says once again the timing of all this cannot be an accident. 1cNothing changed in our business. We 19d been in business to that point for 16 years and had never seen any government agency take an interest in us. Then I filed for non-profit exemption. All of sudden, over a period of three years, we have now, at last count, 25 either audits or investigations or inquiries from five different government agencies, 1d said Englebrecht. 1dAt some point you have to ask yourself what is the statistical probability that none of this is connected? I just don 19t think you can make the case. Now we are seeing, in fact, that we know at least the executive branch and the legislative branch were colluding to single us out. 1d Despite the frustration suffered through her business and her political activism, Englebrecht says this saga can serve as an alarming wake-up call to people who cannot believe our own government would treat a law-abiding citizen this way. 1cBecause of the good nature of Americans, it 19s our natural inclination to not even be able to wrap our heads around the thought that citizens might be being targeted. That stands in direct contrast to everything this country represents. I 19m here to tell you it is happening. It is happening and we 19ve got to keep pushing for the truth, 1d she said. 1dThere are a lot of layers to peel back. Elijah Cummings is only a very small supporting character to a much bigger production. 1d |
| Targeting True the Vote |
| Thu, 10 Apr 2014 16:05:12 EST The House Oversight and Government Reform voted to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress Thursday, but Lerner's alleged collusion with the top Democrat on the committee to harass conservative grassroots organizations appears to be an even bigger revelation of possible illegal activity. The majority staff of the committee released emails indicating that Lerner shared confidential tax information of of at least one right-leaning organization with the staff of Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the panel. The group in question is True the Vote, an organization dedicated to ensuring fair elections through updating voter rolls, mandatory photo identification at the polls and other measures. True the Vote attorney Cleta Mitchell says the committee discovered through Lerner's emails that she was not only targeting conservative groups but violating the law in sharing information with Cummings staffers. "What they found was that she was indeed actively involved in targeting and directing targeting toward specific organizations. The one yesterday that the Ways & Means Committee revealed specific information about was the American Crossroads organization founded by Karl Rove. Whether you agree or disagree with what Karl Rove's organization has done, I certainly don't think that any body thinks it's a good idea for the head of the IRS exempt organizations unit to be conspiring to figure out how to deprive the organization of its right to fair consideration and not be pulled out of the pack and subjected to specialized scrutiny from people who disagree with what the organization is doing," said Mitchell. Mitchell then detailed how True the Vote was mistreated by Lerner and Cummings. "The House Oversight Committee found that Elijah Cummings and his staff were communicating with Lois Lerner and her subordinates to target my client. This is after Elijah Cummings said he had absolutely done nothing of the sort. Well, yes he did do that," said Mitchell. "Elijah Cummings' staff told Lois Lerner and her staff that (Cummings staffers) had opened an investigation into True the Vote. Well, let's think about that for a minute. They have no authority to investigate True the Vote. The jurisdiction of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is federal agencies. It isn't private organizations that have really had no interaction with the federal government other than to file for exempt status," said Mitchell. "Representative Cummings then proceeded to send three separate exhaustive, burdensome, intrusive, oppressive letters to True the Vote demanding all kinds of information which, curiously enough, mirrored the questions that the IRS had propounded to True the Vote a few months earlier," said Mitchell. "The only problem with that is that set of questions and True the Vote's responses are not public documents. They should have had no access to those documents. We don't know if the IRS turned those over to the Cummings staff or not but it does seem sort of odd that they would be asking the identical questions." On February 6, Mitchell filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics (ICE) on behalf of True the Vote over the improper sharing of confidential tax information. Mitchell says the latest revelations are triggering a supplemental request for ICE to question Cummings and his staff members about their actions with respect to the recently uncovered emails. Mitchell says there is no paper trail at this point that takes this investigation into the White House, but Mitchell says President Obama clearly inspired the mistreatment of conservative groups with his public comments. "Let's not forget where this IRS scandal began. People say, 'Oh, you're looking for a smoking gun and there's no smoking gun.' Yeah, there's a smoking gun. There are about a dozen smoking guns. They're just laying all over the streets of Washington, D.C. You had the President of the United States going around the country giving speeches attacking private citizens groups and demanding that something be done about them. And why should something be dome about them? Because they disagree with him," said Mitchell. "Then you had 31 House members and nine senators, all Democrats, writing to the IRS and demanding the IRS 'do something' to crack down on these conservative groups," she said. Mitchell believes Democrats put a lot of pressure on the IRS to treat grassroots organizations unfairly, but she said IRS officials had the chance to follow the law but instead went along with a political agenda. "They should have said, 'We are not allowed by law to play partisan and party politics. We can't take sides. We're not political appointees. We're career employees. We are prohibited from engaging in political activity. We're going to do our jobs and follow our procedures and we're not going to do the bidding of the Democratic Party.' But that isn't what they did. They did just the opposite. And I think that's the thing that should take everybody's breath away," said Mitchell. In addition to the contempt citation issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday urged the Justice Department to launch a full investigation and prosecution of Lerner. Mitchell says it will be interesting to see if the DOJ takes any of this seriously. "They handed it to the investigators on a silver platter. Presumably, the DOJ investigators had access to Lois Lerner's emails since day one. Have they done anything with any of this?" said Mitchell. "So far Eric Holder has been the most political attorney general, probably in the history of the United States and sees his job not a the chief law enforcement officer but as the chief consigliere for the Obama administration's philosophical agenda," said Mitchell. |
| 'We Need More Fight' |
| Wed, 9 Apr 2014 15:59:12 EST One of Wisconsin's most conservative state lawmakers is running for Congress against an incumbent Republican, saying it's time for the GOP to act more urgently to reduce government dependency and speak up more loudly for the principles they believe in. State Sen. Glenn Grothman is a staunch ally of Gov. Scott Walker, most notably in the 2011 efforts to have union members contribute more to their own benefit plans and have the state reform the collective bargaining process. The debate triggered huge protests at the State Capitol in Madison and even prompted the Democratic state senators to leave the state in an effort to stop the legislation. The bills ultimately passed and survived a court challenge. Democrats and liberal activists then launched recall efforts against Gov. Walker and several GOP state senators, including Grothman. Walker, Grothman and most Republicans won their recall races, although a small number of GOP members were voted out of office. Now, Grothman is challenging sitting Republican Rep. Tom Petri, who was first elected in 1978 and is running for a 19th term in the House. Grothman says it's time time for Republicans to have a much greater sense of urgency in Washington if the U.S. wants to avoid the financial abyss. "Like a lot of people, I've been dissatisfied with what's going on in Washington and I feel the Republicans haven't been doing an articulate enough job of explaining to the public what has to be done. Not just the huge deficit, which is going to put our children and grandchildren deeply in debt forever, but I'm particularly concerned about the culture of dependency," said Grothman. "The number of people on food stamps, the number of people on low-income housing, the number of people on disability just keeps spiraling out of control. Quite frankly, it was spiraling out of control when Republicans were in charge. Our country is going to be sunk permanently if that becomes the conventional lifestyle in America," he said. Grothman says he also wants to the federal government butt out of many transportation decisions and other local and state issues and he believes Rep. Petri has not been vocal enough in standing up for the people of Wisconsin and for local leaders. "Congressman Petri is a moderate. He's perceived to be for more government spending. He's certainly an advocate for more government involvement in education, and that's a little bit disappointing as well," said Grothman, noting Petri's support for "No Child Left Behind" during the early months of the George W. Bush administration. Petri holds a lifetime rating of 77 out of 100 from the American Conservative Union. Club for Growth puts him at 73. Heritage Action gives the lowest rating at 64. Votes that hurt Petri in the scores during 2013 include support for the Farm Bill and the Ryan-Murray budget deal. He also voted against a conservative plan that promised to balance the budget within four years. In an earlier Congress, he also backed the Cash for Clunkers program. However, the congressman has also cast many votes opposing the Obama agenda in recent years on issues ranging from the stimulus to Obamacare to cap and trade and lifting the ban on gays serving in the military. Petri also opposed the Dodd-Frank financial sector regulatory legislation, the 2008 Wall Street bailout known as TARP and the DREAM Act. He voted in favor of lifting offshore drilling restrictions and for removing federal funds for Planned Parenthood. Asked specifically about Petri's opposition to the stimulus and Obamacare, Grothman says that was good but not enough. "Well, he voted with the other Republicans on those but l think we need a little more fight in the Republican Party. When I get around the district, I do sense dissatisfaction there. I'm going to have to rely on that because Congressman Petri has about a million dollars in the bank. So when I start as a challenger with nothing and he's got a million dollars, I'm obviously the underdog and it's going to be an uphill climb," said Grothman. Grothman was first elected to the Wisconsin State Senate in 2005 and now serves as the assistant majority leader. He says anyone who has followed his service in Madison will know exactly how he would approach his job in Washington if he is elected to Congress, "I've had a long track record of probably being the most outspoken conservative in the Republican State Senate and maybe the whole legislature," said Grothman, who says the national GOP could take a lesson on political determination from how Wisconsin Republicans acted in the face of fierce political and media opposition during the debates over organized labor benefits and collective bargaining. "In Madison, our legislators did draw a line in the sand and they weren't afraid to do it. We took Wisconsin from being a state deeply in debt to a state that's running surpluses and cutting taxes. If we're going to turn around Washington, we need the same sort of courage and outspoken plain talking that we had in Madison," said Grothman, who says he would embrace the label of a tea party candidate in the race. The Republican primary is set for August 12. In addition to his money advantage, Petri has faced few competitive challengers. His 62 percent of the vote in 2012 was his tightest race in 20 years and only twice has he won by less than 10 points. Grothman recognizes the challenges but says money isn't the only factor in this campaign. "We're just going to have to rely on the grassroots. To a certain extent, you can make up for a lack of money with a lot of volunteers, going door-to-door (and) letters to the editor. But obviously I'm going to have to rely on the people who have encouraged me to run to follow up with some checks as well," said Grothman. 2010 was a banner year for conservatives in Wisconsin. In addition to Walker's win, Republicans won control of both chambers of the legislature and businessman Ron Johnson easily defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Russ Feingold. Grothman believes the 2014 election results will look very similar. "I think it's going to be another year like 2010. Due to Barack Obama and Obamacare, I think the public is very dissatisfied with the Democrats and I think Democrats are kind of dispirited with their own candidates," said Grothman. |
| The Roadmap to Conservative Control |
| Tue, 8 Apr 2014 15:54:48 EST Longtime conservative activist Richard Viguerie says despite a century of conservatives mostly being in the backseat of the Republican Party, they can regain control of the party and the key levers of power in the next two election cycles if they take advantage of the opportunity. A key tactic in that plan could well be the conservative embrace of Libertarians, including a slot on the national ticket for Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. Viguerie is the pioneer of direct mail political marketing and still runs his American Target Advertising firm. He is also chairman of ConservativeHQ.com and author of the new book, "Takeover: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It." In his book, Viguerie believes the GOP is ripe for big pickups this year and possibly in 2016, but he says the only way to take advantage of the opportunity is by having the right candidates on the ballot. "I paraphrase James Carville from 1992, who said over and over and over to Democrats, 'It's the economy, stupid. It's the economy, stupid.' So my paraphrase of that to conservatives, particularly, tea party conservatives, is 'It's the primaries, stupid. It's the primaries,'" he said. "We can see that a wave is building out there that is going to sweep a lot of Democrats out of office and it could be a wave of tsunami proportions. But if all that happens is when this wave sweeps Democrats out in this election, if it just brings in more big government Republicans ... we will have wasted the opportunity of a lifetime," said Viguerie, who noted candidates can still file in many federal, state and local races around the country. But while Viguerie says conservatives can accomplish their goals in short order, they need to approach the situation in the right way in order to succeed. Viguerie claims winning voters to your side essentially requires the same process as any good marketing campaign. His firm follows an approach known as Viguerie's Four Horsemen, which highlights the marketing tenets of position, differentiation, benefits and brand. "The position is nothing more than a hole in the marketplace. What hole in the marketplace can you occupy? Differentiation is what you do publicly to differentiate yourself from everybody else out there. The third is benefit. What benefit do you bring to the voters if they vote for you. Brand is a culmination of the first three. It's what makes you singular, what makes you unique," said Viguerie. But for any marketing message to be effective, it has to be delivered effectively. Viguerie admits that in the wake of Ronald Reagan, conservatives have struggled to find people who can articulate their vision well. "It's been a mystery as to why for the last 50 years that I've been involved in politics at the national level, why conservatives have had such few leaders. We've had some spokesmen but very leaders other than Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and a few others. For whatever reason, things are changing now in recent years, in large extent due to the arrival of the tea party. I think our future rests heavily on the shoulders of the tea party," said Viguerie. Viguerie believes Republicans cannot win national elections against Democrats only on the traditional Republican base issues of the economy, national defense and social conservatism. He says tea party activists can take the movement to the "next level" and attract more voters than the party has in the past. Within that movement, Viguerie sees Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee as very effective spokesmen for conservatism. He believes Governors Rick Perry, Scott Walker and Mike Pence have the same ability to explain that vision from the state level. But what message actually unifies conservatives? With different factions of the GOP at odds over the U.S. role in the world, others debating whether defending traditional marriage is still a winning issue and all sorts of economic visions being suggested, what exactly brings them all together? Viguerie says it's time to welcome Libertarians to the fight. "Recently the Libertarians have been growing in strength and we see that represented best politically by Ron Paul and now his son, Rand Paul. I think it's time for conservatives to reach out to Libertarians and see if we can't reach some common ground," he said. That common ground, according to Viguerie, may well be a plum spot on the 2016 GOP ticket for Sen. Paul. "I think that it's entirely possible that Rand Paul will be on the Republican ticket, either as president or vice president in 2016. If you bring the three legs of the Reagan coalition together, plus the tea party and then are able to combine it with the LIbertarians, you've got almost an unbeatable coalition for the 2016 election," said Viguerie. |
| The Fight for the GOP Soul |
| Tue, 8 Apr 2014 14:28:32 EST Limited government conservatives have battled big government Republicans for control of the party for more than a century, and after losing most of the internal battles conservatives need to control the party and win elections soon if the nation is to be saved. That's the contention laid out by conservative icon Richard Viguerie in his new book, "Takeover: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It." Viguerie changed the political marketing landscape forever by pioneering direct mail for political purposes. He is now the chairman of ConservativeHQ.com. Viguerie minces few words in his book or in his analysis. When asked to explain the difference between conservatives and the GOP establishment, Viguerie's answer landed nowhere near conventional wisdom. He claims that despite the posturing and rhetoric we see from Republican Party leaders, there's actually a wider gulf between the GOP leadership and grassroots conservatives than between the establishment Republicans and Democrats. "There's not a great deal of difference between an establishment Republican, a big government Republican, and a Democrat. They both believe in growing government. Democrats believe in growing government faster than the establishment Republicans. People like John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, George Bush, Karl Rove all have been significantly involved in significantly growing government," said Viguerie. "The principled, limited government, constitutional conservatives believe in reducing significantly the size of government." Viguerie asserts the ongoing battle for control of the GOP started in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt challenged Republican President William Howard Taft and split the vote in a way that allowed progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the White House with less than 42 percent of the vote. "Conservatives have been battling that wing of the party ever since but they haven't known that they have done it and you're likely to lose any war you don't know you're engaged in," said Viguerie. According to Viguerie, other Republicans of that era, such as William Howard Taft and later Calvin Coolidge, were limited government conservatives, but he says Theodore Roosevelt altered the GOP outlook on the role of government permanently. "The establishment of the Republican Party bought into the progressive ideas of growing government, spending more, taxing more, regulating more. They would talk a different game to the grassroots, but as they governed, they governed in cooperation with the Democrats to grow government," said Viguerie. "For the last 100-plus years, the Republican establishment is much more comfortable with growing government than they are keeping government the size it is much less reducing it." While Viguerie is passionate about his cause, he freely admits that conservatives have mostly lost the battle for the GOP over the past century. He says with the exceptions of Ronald Reagan's two landslide wins, the 1994 Republican Revolution and the 2010 tea party uprising, the establishment has dominated the Republican Party. And he says the results are devastating. "We're about to lose our country. We have massive debt. We're engaged in one no-win war after the other. America is more divided and without strong leadership than anytime in our country's history. We're in very perilous times because we've not had good constitutional leaders for a long time," he said. Viguerie accuses Republican leaders of lacking backbone for tough fights against Democrats and for simply coming to accept the growth of government. He also believes too many are making the wrong decisions in a futile attempt to be liked by the press. "They certainly want to please the mainstream media. The mainstream media is advocating bigger government and the reduction of liberty and freedom. The effect has been growing government of any number of reasons, but we can say for certain they do not believe in increasing liberty for the citizens of this country," said Viguerie. Despite that gloomy assessment of politics past and present, Viguerie says he he very bullish on conservatives rising soon and rescuing the U.S. from its present course. "A lot of conservatives are discouraged now but they should not be. I think within three years conservatives can take over the Republican Party and govern America. I was there after (Arizona Sen. Barry) Goldwater's loss in 1964 and after (President Richard) Nixon's resignation in 1974, when it was darkness for conservatives of a biblical proportion," said Viguerie. "We have assets that we didn't have back in those days. we didn't have talk radio, the internet, cable television. We didn't have people like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and others leading us out there like Scott Walker and Mike Pence. This is a very exciting time for us. I'm very excited about the future," he said. |
| Supremes Stay Out of Religious Freedom Case |
| Mon, 7 Apr 2014 15:22:40 EST The U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to hear the appeal of a New Mexico photographer sued by a homosexual couple after she refused to take pictures at their commitment ceremony because of her religious convictions. The case centered on Elaine and Jonathan Huguenin and their business, Elane Photgraphy. In 2006, they refused to work at the commitment ceremony of Vanessa Willock and Misti Collinsworth. The lesbian couple was able to find another photographer but still filed a discrimination grievance against Elane Photography with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission. The Huguenins lost at every level of the court fight, and Monday that defeat became final. Attorney Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represented Elane Photography in the case. He says the court's decision not to hear the case is disappointing but he sees a silver lining. "This is not the same thing as the court summarily affirming the decision below. All that means is that the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case. They did mull this over for three extra times at their conference, which is encouraging in a slight way that it means the justices took this case seriously, gave it a lot of extra consideration but decided, ultimately, not to hear the case," said Lorence. "There will be other cases coming through the pipeline. Alliance Defending Freedom already has some in the pipeline, the cake baker in Colorado, the florist in Washington state," said Lorence." This does not set a nationwide precedent. And whether people can be forced to create expression that they don't agree with or be punished by the government, that is still a general constitutional principle that ADF will be enforcing and arguing in courts around the land." The court never offers an explanation for refusing to hear a case and Lorence says he cannot be certain why his clients won't get a hearing at the highest court in the land. However, he says the court's history suggests it's waiting for the issue to get bigger before wading into this aspect of the debate over the proper definition of marriage. "They do have a general habit of waiting for an issue to percolate in the lower courts and not necessarily take the first one but take the third or the fourth one or something like that," said Lorence. "Those who support redefining marriage to include same-sex couples may take the wrong signal from this and be emboldened to punish more employers or professionals or small business owners or graduate students or others for their views that marriage is only for one man and one woman." Lorence admits court decisions all across America have trended in favor of same-sex marriage and similar causes in recent months. He says regardless of how the nation may be trending on the larger issue of marriage, the rights of his clients and others to hold their beliefs should be an issue all Americans respect. "I and many other Americans believe that the best public policy and social values to promote and maximize human flourishing is to define marriage as one man and one woman. Obviously, there is a growing number of people that disagree with that. But what I hope we all as American can agree on is that people should not be censored or punished or held up to public humiliation for having a view that is not supported by this new ascending orthodoxy," said Lorence, who also fears a very slippery slope in the wake of the frustrations endured by his clients and other business leaders who express support for traditional marriage. "Americans need to stand up and just say, 'This has gone too far, that we can have reasonable debates without demonizing and ostracizing the losers of the debate or people that are on a side that the courts and others are not supporting right now,'" said Lorence. "I had a case in Maine, where a social worker spoke out in a political campaign in support of marriage. He had complaints filed that he should lose his professional license as a social worker because of his position on marriage. I think the imagination of those zealots on the other side knows no boundaries and they will be pushing this to ostracize and marginalize people as much as possible," he said. "The Mozilla CEO case is another example of it, even though it wasn't (a legal case). We see increasing effort to hound people out of public life and put them into exile on the outskirts of society. As Americans we need to be standing up and saying, 'This is not what our first amendment allows people to do,'" said Lorence. So what happens for Elane Photography now that its loss in the lower courts officially stands? Lorence says Elaine and Jonathan Huguenin are still trying to figure that out. "They are just every day Americans who were living their lives and making decisions to the best of their ability to make money and also to protect their conscience. This case has obviously shoved them into the limelight. How they go about their business now they are assessing. Obviously they're going to be a target for others who want to humiliate them or make them take pictures that they don't want to because of this court order," said Lorence. "They're just assessing right now what next steps they should do and grieving over the fact that the Supreme Court unfortunately step in to vindicate their first amendment rights," he said. |
| Sanctioned for Backing the Unborn, Traditional Marriage? |
| Fri, 4 Apr 2014 15:50:41 EST A Russian lawmaker known for her outspoken support for traditional marriage and the unborn is among the officials listed in new U.S. sanctions against individuals for their alleged contribution to Russia's unlawful grab of Ukrainian territory. Weeks ago, President Obama announced sanctioned aimed at several individuals for their alleged roles in facilitating Russia's actions. But Yelena Mizulina's seems out of place on the list. Mizulina is chairwoman of the Russian Duma's Committee on Family, Women and Children's Affairs. She was also the lead sponsor of legislation banning Americans from adopting Russian orphans, fearing the children could suffer harm if adopted by homosexual partners. In the documents outlining the sanctions, the allegations against Mizulina simply cite "her status as a State Duma Deputy." "Yelena Mizulina, as far as I know, has nothing to do with the controversy over the Crimea. She did sponsor a bill to make it easier for residents of the Crimea to have Russian citizenship. That was before the Crimea was incorporated into Russia. Other than that, (she had) absolutely nothing to do with the Crimea," said Don Feder, communications director for the World Congress of Families, which promotes traditional values around the globe. "This is payback. This is payback for Russian restrictions on abortion. It's payback for the child protection law. It's payback for all the pro-family initiatives that the Russian people have undertaken in the last few years," said Feder. Feder says this story is another alarming example of who is calling the shots for the Obama administration. "This administration is clearly controlled by the gay lobby. Whatever organized homosexuals want, the administration gives them. It was about a year or year-and-a-half ago that Obama announced that promoting gay rights abroad would be a major U.S. foreign policy initiative. You have to shake your head in wonder," he said. "In fact, U.S. ambassadors have been ordered to march in gay pride parades all over the world, wherever they're held." It's a major shift in emphasis for Obama, who only embraced gay marriage publicly two years ago. Feder says it was a pragmatic move by the administration and not the result of any deep soul-searching. "I think a lot of it has to do with funding. Remember that when Obama ran for president in 2008, he said while he was sympathetic to gay rights, he believed that marriage was between a man and a woman. Then at the beginning of 2012, at the beginning of his re-election campaign, suddenly he decided that he was in favor of gay marriage. What changed?" said Feder. "Obviously nothing, it was expediency. He was told by certain gay donors if he didn't begin supporting gay marriage, they would withhold their donations. On that basis, Obama decided to have this very convenient change of heart. I think that supporting homosexual marriage...has always been Obama's position. I think he adopted the one man-one woman (position) in 2008 as a matter of expediency. So part of it is Obama's natural philosophical inclination on social issues and part of it is expediency," said Feder. According to Feder, the impact of the sanctions will be minimal. He says they will restrict Mizulina's travel but will not impact her legislative work at all. In addition, he says any intended message sent through these sanctions will fall on deaf ears with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I think Putin feels the sanctions are a joke. It gives [Obama] an opportunity to say to the people who are pressuring him t do more, 'Look, I have this list of people that I've applied sanctions to,'" said Feder. "It's sort of like his famous red line. He'll say, 'I've drawn a red line and if Syria crosses the red line there are going to be serious consequences.' So Syria crosses the red line and the serious consequences are Obama drawing another red line. I don't think Putin takes any of it seriously. In fact, I don't think he takes our president seriously," said Feder. But what about Mizulina's impact on Americans' efforts to adopt Russian orphans? Many Americans on all sides of the gay marriage and gay adoption debates were frustrated by Russia putting a halt to them, even for traditionally married couples. Feder wholeheartedly endorses Mizulina's actions. "I think her position is absolutely right. The Russians are very traditional people. They have a strong religious orientation. They haven't gotten caught up in the whole politically correct thing that has captured so many people in this country, that homosexuality is essentially the same as heterosexuality, that it's genetically determined and what's called discrimination against gays is the same as discrimination against a racial minority," said Feder. "The Russian people don't feel that way. They don't want to see Russian children placed with homosexuals. Frankly, I don't blame them," he said. |
| No Guns = More Killing on Base |
| Thu, 3 Apr 2014 15:49:46 EST Wednesday's deadly shooting at Ft. Hood leaves several grieving families, a community deeply wounded for the second time in recent years and Washington once again debating whether military personnel ought to be able to carry guns while on base. However, opposition from the Obama administration and disinterest from a Congress bracing for midterm elections mean nothing is likely to change soon. After last September's murders at the Washington Navy Yard, Texas Rep. Steve Stockman introduced the Safe Military Bases Act. He says Wednesday's killings are just further proof the men and women tasked with defending our nation should be able to arm themselves on the job. "They're trained. They're experienced, and we trust them to fend off evildoers and other people trying to attack our nation. This would reinstate that right to carry a weapon," said Stockman about his legislation. "For 20 years, they lost that right. Since those 20 years have ensued, we've had killings on the base. I can assure you, in Texas, had this individual [gone] out in a public area and tried to do that, there would have been many Texans which would have returned fire." Service members had that freedom until a 1992 Department of Defense rules change. It was initiated in the George H.W. Bush administration and took effect in the early weeks of the Clinton administration. "The comments I'm hearing from people that supported that was primarily that (the soldiers) are young people and they shouldn't have guns on base. The ironic thing is since we have the ban in place, we've had more deaths because people see it as a soft target and they want to make a statement because Ft. Hood is one of the largest bases in the nation. It's a soft target and easy to shoot because everybody's disarmed," said Stockman. Stockman says he is finding more members interested in co-sponsoring his legislation following Wednesday's killings, but he confesses getting the Obama administration on board will be virtually impossible. "This administration is always for more gun control. I don't think there's a situation in which he [thinks] that more gun control is bad. Obama, I think, clearly articulates that nobody would have a weapon. The only people who would have weapons is the IRS agents and people like that," said Stockman. Following the 2009 Ft. Hood shootings, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he did not favor lifting the ban on arming soldiers while on base. "I believe that we have our military police and others that are armed and I believe that's appropriate. I think I believe that allows us the level of protection necessary," said Odierno under questioning from South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who strongly suggested he wanted to reverse the ban. Stockman says Odierno's response is a political statement and may not even reflect his true feelings, much less the members of our military. The congressman says even he didn't fully understand that until fellow Texas Rep. Pete Olson, a U.S. Navy veteran, briefed him on why presidential appointees in the military take public positions that may come as a surprise. "I brought this very issue up to him. He said, 'Steve, he works for the commander-in-chief. He's not going to contradict what the commander-in-chief says. He's being a good soldier and restating the policy.' I think if you listen to him in that clip, he really is very much demure in what he's saying. It's not an emphatic statement. It's more almost factual as opposed to his own opinion," said Stockman. But the congressman also points out that the Obama administration is not the only hurdle. He says election year politics also make this an issue many members don't want to touch. "I think in this mode of Congress, in which we're now turning to elections, I don't think that will become a paramount issue. But I think as time goes on and more people are injured, this is going to seem more like a rational thought. They try to demonize it as irrational but it actually is very rational," said Stockman, just moments after the House of Representatives held a moment of silence on Thursday. "When we walked out of the building just now. I just voted. There were three people there with fully automatic weapons that could kill a lot of people. If we as congressmen expect to be protected, I would think that we should allow our soldiers no less but to allow them to protect themselves," said Stockman. While political leaders in Washington may be hesitant to take up the issue, Stockman says the service members that he speaks with are very clear on what they want. "Most of them say to me, 'Please don't use my name. I don't want to get in trouble, but...' and then they go on to say, 'This is crazy. Please let us have the right to defend ourselves. I think that the ones that were lost yesterday, I wish they had the right to protect themselves," said Stockman. |
| 'The Endgame Here Is Social Reorganization' |
| Wed, 2 Apr 2014 16:38:39 EST While the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of the contraception mandate within the new health care law, the real goal of the provision seems to have very little to do with providing affordable birth control. After combing through Obama administration documents in the Federal Register, National Center for Public Policy Research Chairwoman Amy Ridenour says the administration's official justification for the policy is very different than the reasons often stated publicly. "While the president went out in the East Room and gave a speech saying that the purpose of the HHS mandate is to help lower income women afford birth control, in the HHS documents themselves, they talk about something else entirely and that is that the purpose of the mandate is to reduce economic and social disparities between men and women.," said Ridenour. "This is an official legal document. They do not talk about the need to help lower income people afford birth control. They do not say things like birth control may only be nine dollars a month but if you make nine dollars an hour that's a lot of money. No, what they talk about over and over and over again is gender disparity. It sounds like a women's studies class," said Ridenour. "What they emphasize is that, in their view, women make less money than men and women get promoted less money than men. Again, that's their view, and they see the HHS mandate as a way to change that," she said. Ridenour says the proof of the mandate as a wedge issue between the genders can be seen in the fact that women's contraception services are fully covered, from contraceptives to abortion-inducing drugs to sterilization methods such as tubal ligation. However, the mandate provides no coverage whatsoever for men when it comes to condoms or even vasectomies. She also says the low-income argument falls apart in light of what the mandate does and doesn't do. "A billionaire woman would be covered and a very, very poor man would not be covered. Income has absolutely nothing to do with this. Gender and, frankly, feminism has everything to do with it," said Ridenour. While the official documents in the Federal Register focus only on the mandate, Ridenour says she has a pretty good idea of what the administration's end game in addressing "gender disparity." "What I think we're seeing here is the feminist agenda that has been taught in public universities and private universities for decades now, which has the bizarre theory that the United States and other western cultures are patriarchal, that they are oppressive to women. (They think) that the family is oppressive to women, that if you are a woman in a family and you think you are happily married and you think you are happy being a mom, you aren't actually, you just don't realize that you are being oppressed," said Ridenour. "The endgame here is the social reorganization of society. The end game is to change the way we think about how we live. It is to change western culture. That's the big end game," she said. "Now a secondary and not insignificant end game is the balkanization of society, men vs. women, so then a certain political party or certain political interests can approach women and say, 'Look, we're your champions. You are oppressed. There's a war on women. We are your rescuers and their goal of course is to get votes," said Ridenour. So what will be the next wedge issue? Ridenour suggests the administration will once again be leading from behind. "My guess is that wherever the women's studies courses choose to go in the future is where they will happily follow," she said. Ridenour encourages Americans to alert their members of Congress to the official reasons the administration is giving for the mandate in the Federal Register. She says this is one more major reason the mandate should be scrapped. "There's a lot of reasons in my opinion to be opposed to the HHS mandate. The federal government doesn't have this authority. It is unconstitutional. It violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it's unfair to people of conscience whether it's religious conscience or otherwise. Also, it's unfair to workers because it's forcing them to take a certain percentage of their pay in birth control whether they want it or not. Frankly, most people would just as soon have cash," said Ridenour. "That said, we need to keep in mind that this is a basic inequity. It is ridiculous for the federal government to impose a mandate that helps one gender against another. And that's honest to goodness what it is. We should not be dividing Americans against other Americans, certainly not dividing spouses among spouses. It's not the function of government to divide us and that message has to get to Washington," she said. |
| 'Totally and Absolutely Wrong' |
| Wed, 2 Apr 2014 14:58:13 EST In a new report, he United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns the catastrophic risks posed by man-made climate change not only threatens us with ecological disaster but will soon be an even greater factor is the proliferation of diseases, economic chaos and even wars. However, scientists who believe the most threatening hot air is coming from the IPCC and not human activity, say the report raises climate change hysteria to a new level. Participants in the latest report and other figures sounding the alarm on climate change say we're very close to the point where devastating events will be unavoidable. "We're now in an era where climate change isn't some kind of future hypothetical," said the overall lead author of the report, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in California to the Associated Press. "We live in an area where impacts from climate change are already widespread and consequential." Other contributors to the IPCC report told the Associated Press that humanity is nothing but "sitting ducks" as horrible environmental conditions build around the globe. They also blamed fossil fuel consumption for widening the gap between rich and poor and suggested that more extreme weather conditions, such as droughts, will lead to armed conflict over the dwindling amount of vital resources. The urgent language is getting the desired response at the White House, where officials are urging immediate action, but skeptical climate scientists see a movement resorting to extreme rhetoric and predictions to obscure the IPCC's track record of failure. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been wrong on every single prediction they've made since 1990," said Dr. Tim Ball, a former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg and author of "The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science". "In science, what you do is if your predictions are wrong, you go back and re-examine your science. They haven't done that. They've simply shifted the goalposts so it went from 'global warming' to 'climate change.' They've also increased the personal attacks, even to the point where Secretary of State John Kerry publicly accused scientists like myself or John Christie and Roy Spencer, who have won awards from NASA for their science, accused them of being flat-earthers," said Ball. "The other thing you do is you up the ante. You say, 'Oh no, it's far worse than we thought.' and of course that's what they're doing. If you look at the record, even Warren Buffett said there's been no increase in insurance claims because of severe weather in all the insurance companies that he holds," said Ball. The latest IPCC report reiterates previous UN conclusions that the earth is on pace to be six to seven degrees warmer by the end of the century and insists the world commit to a global temperature hike of only two degrees. Ball finds that mindset presumptuous and lacking any scientific foundation. "They can set any goal they want if you know that's not your objective. Their objective is to introduce legislation to reduce CO2, to cut down industrialized nations, to reduce the development and to blame the developed nations for it," said Ball. Making imminent predictions of global disaster carries inherent risk for the credibility of the IPCC, since the world will soon see whether these dire events take place. Ball says a sympathetic media are largely responsible for these scientists not being called on their lousy track record of predictions, but he says lack of public concern and dwindling research dollars from governments around the world are forcing climate change activists to make even more outrageous claims. "None of the polls show global warming or climate change as a concern for citizens. The other thing that's happening is that governments are very quietly...pulling the funding from the bureaucracies that are pushing this stuff. That's what they're afraid of, that all this money going to the UN and going to their research and their claims is going to disappear. So that's why they're shaking the tree a whole lot harder," said Ball. Ball says the United States is a major exception to the growing list of nations that are pulling back funding for climate change research. Instead, he says the Obama administration is fully committed to reducing carbon emissions and other aspects of the green agenda. "They've ignored all the evidence up to now. When we look at what's going on with the EPA, what they're doing is using the environment and climate change and (now) water as a political club and a political vehicle and they're doing it through the bureaucracies," said Ball. Ball is also encouraged that the British government is publicly acknowledging that the earth's temperature has remained constant since 1997, evidence that he says the IPCC tries to dismiss but is simply further proof that the UN is peddling bad science. "They're calling it a pause. They say 'It's a pause but the warming will return.' It's nonsense. The science is wrong, totally and absolutely wrong," said Ball. |
| Denton's Cultural Crusade |
| Tue, 1 Apr 2014 15:24:42 EST Much of the coverage of Jeremiah Denton's recent death rightly focused on his incredible courage in the midst of the barbaric treatment inflicted by his North Vietnamese captors for nearly eight years. In addition to his deep frustration at how the United States let victory turn into defeat in Vietnam, Denton was shocked when he returned home after his years in captivity and observed how immoral the culture had become. "After what I've been through, all my life devoted to serving this country and serving God to the degree that I haven't been sinful, propels me and makes it no other choice for me but to continue to talk about the culture. I couldn't stay in the Navy and talk about culture. I had to resign and form the Coalition for Decency," said Denton. The primary reason for Denton's successful 1980 U.S. Senate bid was his desire to help America restore it's moral foundations and reclaim the founding principles of our nation. "I went there because I saw Ronald Reagan on the rise and I thought he was going to be the reversal of the counter-cultural trend that had begun around the time of Vietnam. And he was. We regained security and defense supremacy in the world and he was able to go over and say, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down [this] wall,' and he did," said Denton. In a 2009 interview conducted while Denton was promoting the release of his update autobiography, "When Hell Was in Session," he passionately argued that a our society can only remain great by adhering to its moral underpinnings. "We were formed as one nation under God. Every one of the founding fathers believed that. Every one of the colonial governors believed that. The people who wrote the Constitution and Declaration believed that," said Denton. "Our Declaration of Independence defined what our government is going to be based upon. And we say today, 'Oh, the last thing that's important in all these policies is ideological discussions. Well, that's baloney!" said Denton. "Even conservatives are beginning to yield to that. Ideology is the key to your outlook on the world, the criteria for judging right and wrong. We've lost realization of that fundamental fact. "Now the government it denying the fact that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. He is the only One who can give us rights. He created us. He gave us those rights. It's not a government. It's not a dictator. It's not an emperor. It's not a congress or parliament that can do that. They can't use rights that interfere with the parameters which went with God's rights. They are constrained by the 10 Commandments, which are just another way of Jesus' statement of you've got to love your neighbor as you love yourself," said Denton. Denton says the destructive behaviors encouraged by our society fly in the face of America's core principles. "We're having free sex, by which the kids are being told, 'Go get it, man. It's there. It's a joy. Don't listen to your parents or your preachers. Use contraceptives. It's simple. You'd have a lot of fun. And then if that fails, all you've got to do is go and have an abortion,'" said Denton, who blasted Planned Parenthood and others for even young girls to get abortions without their parents' knowledge or consent. "That is leading to disastrous marriages. It's leading to a disrespect for children. It's not women's rights. What about the kid's rights? He's a human being in that womb. He can feel, and to tear it to shreds and then to have the same jerk saying, 'Oh, you can't give a guy a waterboarding,' even if you know he just killed a thousand Americans and he knows about future plans to kill a thousand more. That's insane! It's like the world is upside down," said Denton. The 2009 interview was conducted just prior to Thanksgiving. When asked what he was thankful for, Denton's love for America was obvious. "The most grateful Americans are immigrants, particularly those who were in an exodus from a communist or a dictatorial, imperialist country. As soon as we look at what they had and what they fled, we see how blessed we are. This country is not perfect, but it's the best country in terms of what it has afforded its citizens and what it has done for the rest of this world," said Denton. "Some of these politicians are not doing right now. They're voting themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in pensions when I get $6,000 for my Senate work. That's all new. It's an acceleration, a cosmic explosion of greed and of me-ism. "You've got to come off that. No nation which has ever let its government be God has survived. They've all gone within 200 years," said Denton. "When you have plenty, you starting getting lax about realizing how you got it or how your forebearers got it. You start splurging on self-gratification, it's all over unless we rebound and we can rebound. "Our country is worth preserving. We should love her. We should be willing to defend her. We should be trying to return to what its founding values were, which is the reason we got as far as we have," said Denton. |
| 'When Hell Was In Session' |
| Mon, 31 Mar 2014 15:38:45 EST On March 28, United States Navy Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton (Ret). died of heart failure at the age of 89. In late 2009, Denton released an updated version of his autobiography, "When Hell Was In Session", which detailed his nearly eight years of imprisonment, torture, solitary confinement and other atrocities suffered at the hands of the North Vietnamese in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. In a wide ranging interview, Denton, who also served as a U.S. senator from Alabama, talked about the barbaric treatment he suffered, how an anti-war Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam for purely political reasons and his disdain for the commanders-in-chief both then and now. In July 1965, Denton's A-6A Intruder was shot down over North Vietnam. While he expected his Communist captors to be tough customers, he was shocked at the extent of their brutality. "I was aware that I was the captive of a totalitarian, communist, atheistic government and the brutality of the Russian communists," said Denton. So I expected that we would have some rough treatment but there had been no torture. When I was shot down, I was the thirteenth captive they got out of the air and I became the senior officer. After I was shot down, I didn't even get to communicate with anybody for weeks." Denton soon joined his fellow prisoners in communicating through tapping Morse Code into the wall with a nail, a practice that carried severe punishment if they were caught. "Then pretty soon they started torturing for confessions, biographies or to get you to make a propaganda statement in their favor. Every time you were caught communicating, you were tortured. That went on from October '65 'til October '69, when they changed the treatment thinking they were going to be tried with war crimes trials. With Nixon in, they thought he was going to be more aggressive about ending the war and that they might best change the treatment, which they did," said Denton. While strong leadership and fierce patriotism played roles in Denton's enduring of the torture and his refusal to become a propaganda tool of a communist regime, Denton says his greatest strength clearly came from God. "The greatest and the ultimate strength can come through God's intervention, His answers to your beseeching Him for help. That happens with ladies having babies with difficulty in the delivery, people in the hospital with cancer, people injured in automobile wrecks. Anybody about to die, no matter what he lived or what he thought before then, if he's got five minutes or five seconds to recollect what's confronting now, he will say, 'God, help me,'" said Denton. Denton and his fellow prisoners were not released until 1973, following the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. Denton says he was shocked to learn we hadn't won the war when he was released. But to his final days, he insists the U.S. had it won until liberals in Congress abandoned South Vietnam out of a political calculation. "We had won the war at that point. The armistice struck and signed by Vietnam and the United States entailed the freedom being granted to the South Vietnamese and our country coming through to give them the aid to develop some resources, particularly in the Mekong Valley and along that river," said Denton. "I thought things were great when I came back home. Then I found out a couple years later that Congress abrogated that unilaterally and passed legislation saying that we could not, in any event at all, send any more military aid to [South] Vietnam," said Denton. "I know from personal experience and personal conferences with them that when we finished the bombings and the blockades...that we destroyed their capability to wage war. We destroyed all of their logistic bases, all of their (surface-to-air missile) sites, all of their airplanes, all of their warehouses with ammunition, a lot of their troops. They had a conference with me just before I came home, begging me not to let prisoners exaggerate so that Nixon wouldn't come through on his promise to them," said Denton. "But Congress, anti-war and influenced by the media and the academics, the elite liberals, were able to defeat Nixon. If we'd won that war, they were anti-war all the way through. They thought Nixon would be re-elected and they'd be villains. So that was what was tied up in that," he said. Denton says America and the world endured a painful lesson through the U.S. abruptly ending support for South Vietnam. And he believes it's an episode that continues to make us vulnerable today. "We still suffer from not comprehending the overall picture with respect to our national security. We are in worse shape now, in my opinion, in terms of the percentage of certainty we have about the fact that we're nationally secure than we've had in our history, since about Washington's time," said Denton in that 2009 interview. "Yet, President Obama, while campaigning and in office, says that he's going to cut appropriations for armed services by 25 percent. President Obama is an intelligent man. He could be earnest. He could be honest with himself, but he doesn't know diddly squat. He knows even less than President Johnson did when he came into office about war and peace and what it takes to maintain it," said Denton, noting that Lyndon Johnson's defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, only had the experience of running Ford Motor Company before coming to the Pentagon. "Some of the czars and advisers that President Obama has hired are even more dubious in terms of what their backgrounds are," said Denton. "The jury is still out on whether we can survive if we have a president that unaware and not willing to listen to those who are more aware and knowledgeable." |
| 'I Still Won't Enforce the Law' |
| Thu, 27 Mar 2014 14:34:57 EST The vast majority of Colorado sheriffs are refusing to enforce new gun control laws they consider unenforceable, saying they refuse to treat every citizen like a felon and won't change their plans even if a federal judge rules against them. Fifty-five of Colorado's 62 sheriffs are in agreement on refusing to enforce the law. Weld County Sheriff John Cooke says the new rules on magazine capacity and other issues make it impossible for authorities to make arrests even if they wanted to. "They've turned law-abiding citizens into criminals. They banned magazines that hold more than 15 rounds and what they've said is that any magazine that can be readily converted to hold more than 15 rounds is illegal. Well, that's 99.999 percent of all magazines. They have a base plate and a spring that you can remove to repair or clean. If you can do that, then that magazine is illegal to possess after January 1 and you can't buy any. How do we enforce that?," said Cooke. "There's a grandfather clause in the law that says if you own a magazine before July 1, 2013, that's more than 15 rounds, you're allowed to keep it. How are my deputies going to know bought that magazine before or after July 1? So we're not putting any resources into it or making it a priority," he said. Given how easy it is to work around the 15-round magazine limit, does Cooke believe lawmakers are looking for a de facto ban on magazines or that they just have no idea what they're talking about? "They don't understand how it works because the legislator that introduced this bill, she didn't come to the sheriffs and say, 'Explain to me what a magazine is' because she didn't even know. Then after the bill gets passed she was confronted on how a magazine could be converted and she said, 'Oh, people will just have to live with it,'" said Cooke. He says gun control advocates at the federal level are not any more knowledgeable, and cited Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette as a prime example. "At a debate that we had here last year, she was talking about how these 30-round magazines, once people are done shooting, they're no good anymore because you just throw them away. She has no clue about what a gun is or a magazine is and yet she's trying to outlaw them federally," said Cooke. The enforcement battle is now headed to federal court thanks to a suit filed by the sheriffs on behalf of law enforcement and the public. "Most law enforcement agencies in this state don't really understand how to enforce this and the people don't know how to comply with this. So we actually filed a lawsuit. Fifty-five out of the 62 elected sheriffs filed a lawsuit in federal district court against these laws because we're saying it violates people's due process. If somebody doesn't know that they're violating the law, how can they be held accountable? And that's a violation of due process," said Cooke. The sheriff says his attorney is confident of a win in court, but Cooke insists he isn't planning to change anything if the verdict goes against him. "Even the federal courts can't make me enforce the laws. So if we lose and the judge says, 'No, these laws are constitutional,' I still set the priorities and the resources for my agency. There's no law in the state of Colorado that says I have to enforce the law, so I still won't enforce them because in my belief and my opinion, it's not my job to turn law-abiding gun owners into criminals," said Cooke. From Columbine to the Aurora movie theater shooting, Colorado has seen more than its share of tragedies, but Cooke says gun control groups are learning the wrong lessons. "They're addressing the wrong issue. It's the gun that's being used, but that's an inanimate object. The problem is not the guns, it's the hearts of man and that's where the issue is," said Cooke, who advocated a collaborative approach to making sure the mentally ill don't get access to guns. Sheriff Cooke also rejects the argument that gun use is best left to law enforcement professionals like him. "An armed society is a polite society. if you ask a majority of cops on the street, they'll you the way to reduce the number of victims of these mass shootings is to have a well-armed public that can shot back and kill these people and neutralize them before they kill too many," he said. Cooke says an armed society was a great help to him and other sheriffs who invoked posse comitatus just months ago to maintain order while officials dealt with devastating floods. "We had a lot of floods and fires this year and the sheriffs said we need an armed populous to help guard their communities and their neighbors. They could be a benefit to us to stop looting and to stop any riots or that sort of thing," said Cooke. |
| Green Energy vs. Human Lives |
| Thu, 27 Mar 2014 13:39:20 EST Pro-life activists are horrified by reports of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies being burned to provide green energy in Great Britain, but point out that lax standards in the United States don't really prevent the same thing from happening here. Reports out of Britain went viral this week, following the revelation that more than 15,000 aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated by some 27 different National Health Service trusts. Some facilities burned them as rubbish and others did so as part of a 'waste-to-energy' program that generates power for heat. Americans United for Life attorney Jeanneane Maxon says the discoveries are revolting and reveal some disturbing facts about our culture. "It is just appalling to see where society has come to that we have disregarded human life, so that even after children are born and you have the bodies of these dead babies, which is tragic in and of themselves, that they would be disposed of in such a callous manner. It really hearkens back to the images that you you think of in the Nazi holocaust," said Maxon. Maxon called the practice 'barbaric' and said she's surprised this happened in Great Britain, which has more restrictive laws on abortion than the U.S. In fact, Maxon says the United States is one of only four nations worldwide that allow abortion throughout a pregnancy. The others are Canada, China and North Korea. "So if a country that has more progressive laws regarding life on their books can do this, what is at stake for our country? What will we continue to see unless we as Americans speak up and say that life is valuableand precious and it deserves more than being disregarded and used by others for things even such as energy. It's really just appalling," said Maxon, who shudders at the idea of energy policy being championed above the preservation of human life. "Isn't that just a horrifying example of misplaced priorities in our society that we would value conserving energy over the lives of children. You often hear the phrase that any country's most valuable resource is it's children. I believe that, and wow, aren't priorities just so out of whack," said Maxon. "When you have devalued children in the womb to be some type of sub-class, to where we don't give them the same rights we give any other children even though they are living children, this is the natural reality of where you're going to come to. It really speaks to the condition our society has come to when you devalue life from conception," said Maxon. So could the horrors uncovered in Britain play out here as well? Maxon says a lack of clear regulations for abortion providers leads her to believe the bodies of aborted babies can and do meet despicable treatment here as well. "There are no regulations that really discuss and deal with how to dispose of bodies properly. There's only five states in the United States that currently have regulations of abortion clinics in the same manner that you would see of any other ambulatory surgical center. You're going to be better protected going in for a knee surgery than you are for a surgical abortion," said Maxon. She says the methods some abortion providers use for disposing of babies' bodies are just as alarming as what was revealed in Britain. "Many abortion clinics have incinerators so babies would be burned after they are aborted. There are examples of where babies have been born alive and then killed or of course burned. In the case of the late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell up in Philadelphia, who was convicted of murder of three children born alive, he was cutting off body parts and storing them and flushing them down toilets to the degree where they had to call in plumbers to unplug their plumbing because it was full of aborted baby body parts. So there are horrifying example in our country of how the bodies of these little babies are mistreated and disregarded," said Maxon. Despite the horrific examples mentioned, Maxon is proud of the pro-life movement for its relentless fight for the rights of the unborn. "I'm really proud of pro-life America that has warned the greater community and the countries in the world that this is the slippery slope that we go down when it happens and it's just tragic that we're seeing these predictions come true. But, I do have faith that the voice of pro-life Americans will shine through and people will start to stand up and say that this is too far and that it's a reflection of the natural reality of where you come to when you devalue life to that degree," sad Maxon. |
| 'Rules Mean Nothing to This Administration' |
| Wed, 26 Mar 2014 16:56:49 EST Just days after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Congress there would be no extension of the Obamacare enrollment deadline, the administration is offering an additional two weeks to anyone who begins the enrollment process by the end of the month. "This is really one of the most audacious changes so far because several committees in Congress have been looking at all these delays and all these changes. Secretary Sebelius was asked point blank, 'Will you extend the deadline past the March 31 enrollment date?' And she said, 'No, we will not,'" said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner. "In a separate hearing she said, 'We don't believe we have legal authority to do that.' But that's what they've done anyway. So they're basically going before Congress that people have until March 31. Clearly, they're not getting the enrollment they wanted. Therefore, they're going to ask people, 'Well, did you try to enroll? Did you have any trouble? If so, then we'll extend the deadline for you. Rules mean nothing to this administration," said Turner. After initially stating that seven million sign-ups were needed, the administration has lowered the target goal to six million and stated that over five million have signed up. However, neither Sebelius nor any other administration official will confirm how many Americans have actually paid their first month's premium. Sebelius says she doesn't know because private insurance firms have that data. Turner isn't buying it. "I don't believe that she doesn't know. She hides behind the fact that they don't have any way of knowing that. Part of it is because the website is still not built as far as being able to allow people to pay. But I think if they knew and that were a big number, we would hear about it," said Turner, who says House Republicans are now going directly to the insurance companies to determine how many enrollees have actually paid their premiums. So will a short extension of the enrollment deadline to mid-April give the administration enough time to attract the number of people they need to meet their target? "I don't think it's going to make that big of a difference because most of the people who are uninsured, which is the whole reason we passed this all, are saying, 'I don't want this insurance. It's too expensive, high deductibles, it's too much of a hassle.' So they're not going to be insured and I think that's going to be a big problem for them," said Turner, who says the administration also refuses to disclose how many people are enrolling for the first time and how many are enrolling because they lost their existing coverage due to Obamacare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid postulated on Wednesday that many people are failing to sign up due to their lack of internet savvy. 1cThere are some people who are not like my grandchildren who can handle everything so easily on the Internet, and these people need a little extra time," said Reid. "We have a lot of people just like this through no fault of the Internet, but because people are not educated on how to use the Internet. 1d "That's not quite as bad as calling the American people liars when they say that they've been harmed by Obamacare, but it shows how completely out of touch Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is with the real world and what real people are dealing with in trying to figure out how to deal with these exchanges," said Turner. Turner noted there are many other avenues by which people could sign up than through healthcare.gov but Americans just don't like the product. |
| Employers Should Have to Pay for Abortions? |
| Tue, 25 Mar 2014 16:06:49 EST The Supreme Court may be more inclined to defend the religious freedom of employers against the government's contraception mandate after Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told justices that business owners would have no freedom to reject mandates to cover abortions. Justices and lawyers also sparred over whether businesses actually have religious freedom and whether striking down the mandate makes women second-class citizens. The notable abortion exchange between Verrilli and Justice Anthony Kennedy came during oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, two cases linked by the companies' owners objecting to the Department of Health and Human Services requirement that businesses fully cover the contraception costs for their employees. That mandate includes coverage of abortafacient drugs, also known as the "morning after pill." Family Research Council Senior Fellow for Legal Studies Cathy Ruse was in the gallery during oral arguments and said that was the most remarkable moment in the court session today. "This was actually the most exciting part of the oral argument this morning, when Justice Kennedy asked the government's lawyer, 'So under your argument, corporations could be forced to pay for abortions, that there would be no religious claim against that on the part of the corporation. Is that right?' And the government's attorney said yes," said Ruse. "You could hear a pin drop and I think that stunned Justice Kennedy. Since he's always the swing vote, you want to stun him in a way that pushes him over to your side of the column," she said. Before the arguments reached that stage, a robust debate took place over whether businesses actually have religious freedom or whether those are only enjoyed by individuals. Ruse says she believes the majority of justices are sympathetic to the companies and their owners on that question. "Chief Justice Roberts raised the point that corporations can actually file racial discrimination claims. So he said if a corporation can have a race why can't it have a religious claim? The government's attorney didn't really have an answer for that," said Ruse. "I think a majority of justices believe that families who incorporate do not have to give up their religious freedom rights when they incorporate to do business," she said. The more liberal justices made two arguments in defense of the mandate. First, they contend that striking down the mandate would allow employers to weed out any medical provision they want, leading to health care chaos as every company would have their own plans. Hobby Lobby attorney Paul Clement rejected that fear, noting that every case filed under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act has to go to court and not every claim will survive. Second, Verrilli and the liberal justices posited women would essentially be second-class citizens if employers could single out contraception coverage for removal from their health plans. "Paul Clement's reaction was brilliant so I'd like to adopt it as my own. If in fact the government has a compelling interest in providing free abortion-inducing drugs to all women in America. That's their goal and that's what they're doing with this. There are other ways to accomplish that goal without religious companies who have a religious objection to that," said Ruse. "For instance, the government could simply provide insurance for these abortafacient drugs themselves. The government could do it through Title X clinics or another way. The government could provide subsidies or fund the providers of these items so that the women could get them for free from the provider, so he pointed out several ways the government could accomplish their goals without having to dragoon religious family-based companies into doing something that violates their religion," said Ruse. While Ruse is "cautiously optimistic" about the court's ruling, she does fear the liberal wing of the court will try to cobble together a majority that would just tell religious employers to drop their health coverage altogether and let their employees navigate the heath care exchanges. A decision is expected in June. |
| 'Our Constitution Needs More Defenders' |
| Mon, 24 Mar 2014 15:58:06 EST Former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Shak Hill is bracing for two uphill fights in his quest to win a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia, but says the Constitution needs more defenders and he is ready to fight for it. Hill served nine years in the Air Force and rose to the rank of captain. He served as flight commander for the Presidential Wing at Andrews Air Force Base. He now runs a business, is father to six biological children and has also provided a home for dozens of foster children. He was an early entry into the 2014 race to challenge incumbent Democrat Mark Warner. As if that weren't enough of a political challenge, Hill was recently joined in the GOP field by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, a candidate with huge advantages in networking, name recognition and fundraising potential. Hill says his reasons for staying in the race are the same ones for entering in the first place. "When I was an officer in the military, just like many other military members I raised my right hand and I promised to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies. I'm 49-years-old right now and I see that our Constitution needs more defenders now than at any time in my life. Whether it's the NSA or the IRS or other scandals (like) Benghazi, we're having a constitutional crisis right now," said Hill. "I want the American dream for my family. I want it for the foster children I've been a parent to. I want it for your children and just our prosperity. We're losing it and I knew I needed to do something about it. Running for the United States Senate and unseating Mark Warner and firing Harry Reid is exactly why I'm joining in the fight and why I'm going to win in Virginia," said Hill. So what issues would he pursue most passionately if elected? "We've got to get back our Fourth Amendment rights. That's a personal rights issue. We are having too much authority ceded to the federal government, as far as going to the NSA and as far as the IRS having the opportunity to look into our medical records. I mean can you imagine someday if an IRS agent knocks on your door and says, 'Ma'am, Sir, show me proof of your medical insurance. That's where we're heading and this is an abomination," said Hill. Hill is one of four Republicans vying for the nomination, which will be decided in a state party convention in June. Hill is endorsed by retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin and by the pro-Second Amendment Gun Owners of America. Gillespie, however, is endorsed by a long list of prominent Republicans, including former U.S. Senator and Gov. George Allen and State Sen. Mark Obenshain, who very narrowly lost last year's statewide race for Virginia attorney general. Hill says he is not daunted because he knows he is the better candidate for the party and the commonwealth and he believes voters will ultimately respond to his message rather than one from the GOP establishment. "They do not want a quintessential, twenty year-plus, inside-the-beltway lobbyist. They want somebody who's got real world experience, somebody who's defended our Constitution, worn the uniform that keeps and makes our country free,"said Hill. "What I'm finding as I go around the state, they are rejecting the notion that he is the nominee to be coronated. If you want a very good lobbyist, I would probably hire Ed Gillespie or his firm, but he's mortally flawed as a candidate," he said. According to Hill, state and national Democrats are already assembling an ad campaign that will highlight Gillespie's lobbying record, including his work years ago for disgraced energy giant Enron and also for collecting some two million dollars in fees while representing the families of those killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. "So instead of talking about Mark Warner's votes to use taxpayer dollars for sex selection abortions, instead of talking about Mark Warner's vote to give us Obamacare and pushing cap and trade, we're going to be talking about Ed Gillespie," said Hill. "We need to have somebody that can make Mark Warner run on Mark Warner's record. That's me. If we do that, we win." Most voters are aware of Warner's votes on health care and cap and trade, but why is Hill focusing on sex selection abortions? He says Democrats are sure to play the "War on Women" card again in 2014 and he believes the best counter is to aggressively point out what he sees as extreme positions that Sen. Warner holds on abortion. "Let's push Mark Warner where he's most vulnerable. Mark Warner has a war on girls and it's killing them. He's doing that because of his extreme position on abortion. Not only is he in favor of allowing gender selection abortions but he's in favor of allowing the gruesome late-term abortion up to and including the day of natural delivery. That is extreme," said Hill. |
| The End of Employer-Based Health Plans? |
| Fri, 21 Mar 2014 16:22:42 EST One of President Obama's key advisers in drafting the healthcare legislation that is now law says Obamacare will eventually spell the end of employer-based health plans. Experts from both sides of the aisle aren't upset by the idea of removing employers from the health care equation, however both sides are also skeptical that Obamacare will have the effect Emanuel predicts. Emanuel is quoted in The New York Times saying that a few blue chip companies will be the tip of the movement but that many other firms will quickly follow suit. In an early March piece for The New Republic, Emanuel explained how the change will happen. "For the next few years insurance companies will both continue to provide services to employers and, increasingly, compete against each other in the health insurance exchanges. In that role they will put together networks of physicians and hospitals and other services and set a premium. But because of health care reform, new actors will force insurance companies to evolve or become extinct," wrote Emanuel. "The accountable care organizations (ACOs) and hospital systems will begin competing directly in the exchanges and for exclusive contracts with employers. These new organizations are delivery systems with networks of physicians and hospitals that provide comprehensive care." he wrote. Before experts even consider whether this would be a good idea, they're largely in agreement that Emanuel is wildly optimistic about how this will play out. "What's he sprinkling on his breakfast cereal and where can I get some?" asked David Hogberg, health care policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. "It basically hinges on two things. Number one, the Obamacare exchanges becoming very popular and very effective. At this point, I don't see any of that in the future. The second is the Cadillac tax on high-end employer-based health plans coming into effect in 2018. That itself is a pretty thin reed to hang this on. That's going to effect big employers and a lot of union plans," said Hogberg. "I suppose there's no such thing as an unstoppable political coalition but big employers and unions together, that would come about as close as you can get," he said. Emanuel also argues that employers are looking to get out of their health care role anyway, and this would be the perfect avenue. That also has Hogberg scratching his head. "Why didn't they do that before Obamacare. Before Obamacare they didn't have to pay a $2,000 fine. What keeps companies in employer-based plans is that employees demand it. It's part of the compensation package and the reason employees demand it is that there's this huge tax break for it. As long as it's tax-free and employees demand it, it doesn't matter so much what companies want to do," said Hogberg. "I really don't see much in Dr. Emanuel's argument that is at all convincing," said Hogberg. |
| I'll Be Watching You |
| Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:39:30 EST As the depth of the NSA's surveillance on the American people is revealed and now Congress and the CIA are fighting over surveillance on the work of lawmakers, the Capitol Steps roll out their parody of an already creepy 1980s classic in "I'll Be Watching You". Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton. |
| The Solution to Poverty |
| Thu, 20 Mar 2014 15:57:23 EST The powerful combination of free markets, honest government and biblical ethics are the critical components to growing economies and climbing out of poverty, according to a new book that also declares government-centered solutions a guaranteed ticket to failure. The United States spends many billions of dollars in foreign aid every year in an effort to help third world nations escape the grips of rampant poverty. Our country has waged a domestic "War on Poverty" for more than 50 years. Supporters say the results are far better than had we done nothing and many critics suggest these efforts are extremely expensive failures. Hardly anyone claims they are effectively reversing poverty at home or abroad. In their new book, "The Poverty of Nations," theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem and economist Barry Asmus explain why they believe government programs have largely failed. "The solution to poverty has never come through foreign aid or domestic aid. The solutions to poverty come when people and nations are enabled to produce their own prosperity. The question is not equality. The question is, 'Is there opportunity? Is there freedom in the workplace? Is there economic freedom? Is there governmental freedom from excessive regulations so that people who are at the lower end of the income bracket can progress and hope to progress toward higher income?'" said Grudem, a research professor of theology and biblical studies at Phoenix Seminary. "There are no examples in history where a country has risen out of poverty, without a free market economic system. We go through the history of the world and all the economic systems that have been tried, from hunting and gathering and subsistence farming into slavery and feudalism and mercantilism, and of course more recently socialism, communism (and) high government control," said Grudem. "Those have all failed to produce prosperity. The only way that nations have come from poverty to prosperity throughout all history is through a free market economic system," he said. According to Grudem and Asmus, their book is designed a prescription for nations rather than individuals to emerge from poverty. They contend there are three critical components. The first is an embrace of the free markets. "The essence of it is you have the freedom to own property. You have freedom to buy and sell. You have freedom to produce and enter the marketplace. That is what leads to economic freedom.," said Grudem, who notes the Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom consistently shows the nation's with the most freedom in the marketplace are the most prosperous. The second critical component on their list is a strong, ethical government, where there is strong respect for the rule of law and government officials serve for the good of the people rather than themselves, their families and their political allies. The final key factor is biblical ethics, whereby individuals engaging in these free markets conduct themselves with integrity. "Values and beliefs in a culture are what determine the direction it goes in terms of government and economics," said Grudem. "We found that moral teachings, things like not stealing and telling the truth, viewing your work as a calling from God, to whom you are accountable. Those things lead to economic prosperity," he said. "Those biblically-based moral values have really influence economies on positive ways throughout economic history as well." So while nations need to set the stage for individuals to prosper, individuals need to conduct themselves above reproach. Grudem also says intact families are a huge step towards escaping poverty. "The greatest single determinant of poverty is a single-parent family. We should do what we can to help single-parent families, but when government encourages rather than discourages single-parent families it's harmful to families and harmful to the economy," said Grudem. Grudem says the sub-Saharan African nation of Botswana is a shining example of how these factors come together to generate prosperity. "They had the benefit of having a leader. They had a hereditary king but then became elected as president of Botswana. He has wise policies that were instituted and we think that was affected by the Christian training that he had in the schools that he went through," said Grudem, who says the nation is not only well ahead of most other African nations but is on the brink of being classified among the wealthier nations of the world. Overall, Grudem says the world is a mixed bag in terms of embracing these principles or moving away from them, although he thinks the trend is moving in the right direction. While much of Latin America is embracing government-controlled economies, he notes Great Britain, Germany, the Scandinavian nations, Chile and South Korea are sterling examples of nations where greater freedom means greater prosperity, and in some cases leaving socialist policies. And what about the U.S.? "People immediately begin to say, 'What about the things we're doing in the United States? Aren't we having more government regulation, higher taxation, disincentives to productivity, disincentives to work? Aren't we having moral breakdown in the way that people think of honesty and truthfulness, not breaking contracts and obedience to the rule of law?' said Grudem. "There are many things our country is doing that are actually hindering our economic growth and of course that results in a stagnant economy essentially," he said. |
| Weak Obama Has Putin on the March |
| Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:22:57 EST The lack of any significant deterrent to Russia's annexation of Crimea makes more territorial grabs far more likely and is made possible by repeated demonstrations of U.S. weakness throughout the Obama administration. On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed Crimea as part of Russia despite most western nations declaring Sunday's referendum illegitimate. In announcing the annexation of Crimea, Putin also declared Russia has no more territorial ambitions, a statement that experts say should send a chill down our spine. "When you hear someone who has just gobbled up a piece of real estate say they're not going to do it again, the first thing you better look at is where they're likely to go next," said Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy in the Reagan administration. "As with Adolf Hitler, who promised after he gobbled up the Sudetenland that he would not take all of Czechoslovakia and did and then proceeded to move rapaciously through the rest of Europe, my feeling is we're likely to see a similar kind of agenda playing out with Vladimir Putin," said Gaffney. Gaffney says eastern Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia and Lithuania are all extremely vulnerable to Russian annexation. "Nobody knows for sure but what I think is likely is that we're going to see more of this if there isn't any appreciable cost to Putin. At the moment, such cost as the United States and its European allies have been willing even to discuss, let alone to impose, are clearly inadequate to the task," said Gaffney. On Monday, President Obama announced he was tightening sanctions on a handful of key Russian individuals and that the U.S. would be in close consultation with our European allies. Gaffney says Obama's response is "cosmetic" and barely got the attention of Putin and other key officials. However, he believes there is a successful blueprint from the Reagan years. "If we were serious about this, what we should be doing, recognizing that what we're up against now is a guy with the ambition of constituting maybe the Soviet Union 2.0 minus the communist ideology. Maybe it's just the Russian empire. Whatever it is, it's something very much akin to what we've seen in the past. When we dealt effectively with it in the past under Ronald Reagan, we not only contained this kind of behavior, we rolled it back. I think that's the plan that needs to be adopted now," said Gaffney. So how much different is our standing with Russia than just five years ago at the close of the George W. Bush presidency? How has Obama's "reset button" and gestures like scrapping plans for a missile shield in eastern Europe hurt our ability to deter aberrant behavior by Russia? And how would Putin calculate differently if this was early 2009? Gaffney sees one major difference that emboldens Putin. "For one thing, we would not have essentially eviscerated the United States military. We would not have seen the sequence of steps that have been perceived by our enemies. I call it the Obama doctrine, emboldening our foes,undermining our friends and diminishing our country. The combination of hollowing out our armed forces and demonstrating this kind of behavior has created what (former Defense Secretary) Don Rumsfeld I think quite accurately has described as a phenomenon of weakness that is provocative," said Gaffney. "I think if you were to go back to 2009 and you had not seen these sort of steps, we might have been in a position to check this kind of aggression or deter it in the first place, which we are sadly not able to do today," said Gaffney. But now that we're in our current position, what does Gaffney expect from Obama if Putin seeks to acquire more territory? "My guess is from what we have witnessed to date, both in this immediate crisis and over the previous five years of this presidency is that he will basically say never mind about those red lines. He will find a way to accommodate himself to the new reality, only in this case that reality is going to continue to become uglier by the day," said Gaffney. |
| Unpopular Obama Key to GOP Senate Majority |
| Mon, 17 Mar 2014 16:15:40 EST The perfect storm of an unpopular president and a Senate map showing Democrats playing defense in the most competitive states suggests Republicans may be on the verge of reclaiming the majority in the upper chamber for the first time in eight years. According to the latest Crystal Ball summary from the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, Democrats hold the ten Senate seats most likely to switch parties in 2014. Democrats currently hold 55 seats to the GOP's 45. Republicans need a net gain of six seats to wrest control from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Crystal Ball suggests four seats are significantly tilting towards the Republicans. The one lock is in South Dakota, where Democrat Tim Johnson is retiring. Former GOP governor Mike Rounds is expected to win the seat easily. Three other Democratic seats are said to be leaning Republican. Democrat Jay Rockefeller is retiring in West Virginia and Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito is considered a solid favorite. Two incumbent Democrats are also said to be in big trouble. New Montana Sen. John Walsh is facing a stiff challenge from freshman Rep. Steve Daines and Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor is bracing for an uphill fight against Rep. Tom Cotton. If Republicans were to win all four of those seats without losing any they currently hold, they would have 49 of the 51 seats they need to regain the majority. The good news for the GOP is the next six seats considered most likely to flip are also held by Democrats. The bad news is that three are considered toss-ups and the other three still lean Democratic. Three incumbents, Kay Hagan (D-North Carolina), Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) are fighting for their political lives in the toss-up races. Open seats in Michigan and Iowa still tilt Democratic, as does Sen. Mark Udall's race in Colorado. Since the most recent projection was issued, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown launched an exploratory committee towards a likely Senate bid against New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. If he runs, the 11 most vulnerable seats would be held by Democrats. So are Republicans poised for a midterm rout or do these projections show the party still has a lot of work to do to get to 51 members in the Senate? "They've got a considerable amount of work to do. One of the important things that Republicans are going to have to focus on is primaries in a number of states. Republicans have nominated some poor Senate candidates over the past couple of cycles, candidates that probably prevented them from winning seats that they otherwise should have won," said Crystal Ball Managing Editor Kyle Kondik. Kondik says key GOP primaries to watch include North Carolina and Iowa as well as the crowded primary for an open GOP-held seat in Georgia. Republicans are clearly hoping to make many of these races a referendum on Obamacare. Kondik says the party may need a little more "oomph" than just that one issue. "It seems like the Affordable Care Act may already be baked into the cake in terms of the president's approval and the standing of these various candidates. In order to get across the finish line Republicans may have to roll out some sort of new legislative initiative or come up with some other issues to hammer upon," said Kondik. Still, he says the political realities suggest the GOP has a real shot at the majority. "It's really good to be the party that doesn't hold the White House in a midterm year. That factor in and of itself plus the fact that President Obama's not particularly popular, those two things together tell us the Republicans should do well. You almost don't need to know anything more than that," said Kondik, who says the Senate map is another asset but not a guarantee of success. "Actually turning those into pickups for Republicans (is no guarantee). There's only one, South Dakota, that I think is really rock solid at this point. The potential is there but there's also the potential that Republicans could just fritter it away," said Kondik. A really big year for the GOP could see several tight races turn into a national wave. Kondik says there are certain indicators to look for late in the campaign if a nationwide surge is in the works. "I would look to see if the president's approval rating is getting worse. I would also look at the generic House poll. It's a poll asked in national surveys as to whether people want a Democrat or a Republican in their local House race," said Kondik, noting that Democrats have a small lead in those polls but that they don't tell the full story. "Generally speaking, the poll has a built-in Democratic bias. When you look at it, you can subtract a few points from the Democratic total and add it to the Republican. If Republicans have even a small lead in that metric, I think it would be an indication there's a big sentiment behind Republicans to control Congress,"he said. In total, 14 of the 16 most vulnerable seats are held by Democrats. The two GOP seats to watch are in Georgia and Kentucky. Kondik believes Republicans are likely to hold both but he says the Georgia seat could largely hinge upon who emerges from a tough Republican primary. In Kentucky, he says Republican leader Mitch McConnell appears to be cruising to the GOP nomination but faces a tough general election campaign against Alison Lundergan Grimes. Kondik says Democrats have a track record of doing well in state legislative races and even in gubernatorial elections. Nonetheless, he expects McConnell to survive for one main reason. "In federal races in a state where President Obama's approval is probably somewhere in the low thirties, it's just really hard to see how a Democrat could win a Senate race in that kind of environment. So even if Mitch McConnell is unpopular, at the end of the day I think it seems likely that a lot of people who may not even like him decide to vote for him because they want to vote for a Republican in their Senate race," said Kondik. |
| Obama Politicizing the Navy SEALs |
| Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:51:43 EST The Obama administration endangered the elite Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden by publicly revealing their role in the mission and the SEAL culture is under assault from a politically correct Pentagon, according to a new book on the SEALs and their role in the war against Islamic extremism. In "Eyes on Target," authors Richard Miniter and Scott McEwen draw on their close relationships with many retired SEALs to understand the culture of this unit and document their heroism in Afghanistan and sacrifices made by two former SEALs in Benghazi. Perhaps the best known unit is SEAL Team Six, the group that successfully targeted and killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011. But the fact we know they carried out the mission may also be the reason many of them are now dead. Instead of leaving the identity of the men a mystery to the world, Vice President Joe Biden publicly identified them just two days after the raid. "Let me briefly acknowledge tonight's distinguished honorees. Adm. Jim Stavridis is a - is the real deal; he can tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Sunday," the book quotes Biden as saying. In early August 2011, a rocket-propelled grenade shot down a Chinook CH-47 code-named Extortion 17. The book reports that thirty-eight men were killed, including 15 members of SEAL Team Six. Miniter contends says Biden's comments let our enemies know who took out their leader and many of those mourning the deaths on that attack personally blame the vice president for the disaster. "This helicopter shoot down, Extortion 17, is the largest loss of life among the Navy SEALs since World War II. The family members, wives, the widows and mothers and fathers of those SEALs think that it's political. In the course of our interviews we discovered a number of SEALs think so too. They think that the shoot down of this helicopter was a revenge plot by Al Qaeda, inspired by Vice President Biden's comment," said Miniter. "The SEALs feel increasingly politicized under the Obama administration. One of the things that we demonstrate is SEALs who have been prosecuted for crimes they didn't commit, found innocent, but sort of forced into retirement. We've seen a record number of retirements from the Navy SEALs. This is something the media is ignoring, but it's an important story because the SEALs, like our other special forces, are the tip of the spear. They're the people who are actually out there killing and capturing terrorists," said Miniter. "Without them we lose the war on terror. Without them, Al Qaeda carries out attacks at America's public schools, its offices and its shopping malls. Politicizing the SEALs is a dangerous game and, unfortunately, it's one of the games President Obama is playing," he said. According to Miniter, the political games extend to the entire military. He says the social experimentation mandated by this administration is dictated by a political agenda that hurts all of the Armed Forces, but especially our elite units. "The Obama administration's political appointees at the Department of Defense really want to make the SEALs and other special forces more like a college campus, with political correctness and speech codes. This is something that drives the SEALs nuts," said Miniter. "One of the reasons why the SEALs are so effective is that enlisted men can challenge their officers. In fact, SEALs have debates before missions, during missions and certainly after missions about what to do next. Those debates are open and honest because nothing is off the table. Any language can be used. Anybody can voice an opinion. It's not simply a top-down operation. Because every man involved in a SEAL operation is thinking and contributing to the thinking of the operation, it's much more likely to succeed and much more likely to adapt," said Miniter, noting this sort of communication can be seen in the book and movie "Lone Survivor." "The political correctness is really poisoning the SEALs and the military. The military should not be a social laboratory for politicians or activists to play out experiments. It's a serious matter. You don't want to distract the lifeguard or people will die," said Miniter. |
| 'I Don't Know How to Log On' |
| Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:17:23 EST With just two weeks remaining before the stated deadline to to enroll in Obamacare, the Capitol Steps remind everyone of the logistical nightmare Americans have encountered over the past six months. Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton. |
| More Benghazi Bombshells |
| Thu, 13 Mar 2014 16:04:23 EST American diplomats in Benghazi made even more urgent pleas for beefed up security than previously thought and officials also refused to consider at least five military scenarios that could have saved the lives of two Americans in the 2012 terrorist attacks, according to a new book chronicling the heroism of Navy SEALs. In "Eyes on Target: Inside Stories from the Brotherhood of the U.S. Navy SEALs," authors Richard Miniter and Scott McEwen point to newly discovered government reports showing Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues desperately requesting additional security and better personnel than the suspect Libyans already on the job. Those intelligence reports came in addition to multiple requests for additional security. "We discovered three intelligence reports that circulated in the months before the attack. Each of those reports show intelligence agencies warning the State Department (and) warning the Defense Department there's an Al Qaeda build-up in Benghazi. One of those reports included photographs of more than 300 Al Qaeda operatives in Martyr's Square. That's downtown Benghazi. That's less than a mile from the diplomatic outpost where the ambassador died," said Miniter. "In those photographs in the intelligence report, they show them waving guns. There's a quote mentioned in this intelligence report in which the leader of Al Qaeda in Benghazi said if the U.S. doesn't leave they were going to kill the U.S. Ambassador. You can't get any clearer than that," said Miniter. "Somewhere in the bowels of the State Department there's a bureaucrat who has got the three intelligence reports and on the other part of his desk he's got the three or four security requests from the ambassador begging for more security guards. After reading those intelligence reports and seeing those pictures, he stamped each one of those denied, denied, denied," he said. The attack in Benghazi came just weeks before the 2012 presidential election and while President Obama's campaign portrayed Al Qaeda as effectively dismantled and the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi as a major victory, wouldn't a quiet increase in security be a less risky decision than leaving a diplomatic post vulnerable to attack? Miniter says it was a political calculation. "They were concerned that if somehow the American public were to learn that there was additional security for the ambassador or the diplomatic staff in Benghazi, it would take away the two winning arguments that they thought they had on foreign policy," said Miniter. "So if they admitted that there was a massive Al Qaeda build-up in Libya, that crosses off their two foreign policy successes and undermines the president's case for re-election. So as crassly political as it was, that appears to be the motivation, according to the Benghazi eyewitnesses. These are participants in the tragedy that we interviewed." While Ambassador Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith were killed within the first 40 minutes of the initial attack, Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty fought on for another seven hours. While the Obama administration contends any military response would have taken 20 hours to mobilize and reach the fighting, "Eyes on Target" offers five different different response scenarios that Miniter and McEwen say would have ended the fighting much sooner and most likely saved the lives of Woods and Doherty. The options ranged from Air Force fighters from Aviano Air Base to Navy fighters in Gaeta, both located in Italy to a drone strike and even a cruise missile strike from the Mediterranean Sea. Miniter says the mere presence of fighter jets would have ended the crisis. "The scenario that seems the best is simply dispatching F-16 Fighters from Italy and having them fly over Benghazi. The loud jet roar overhead would be enough to scatter the attackers. They certainly know that when facing the U.S. Air Force or U.S. Navy in the sky, death comes from above. With more than a hundred attackers, mortars, rocket attacks they would know that they were targets. Without firing a shot they could have been driven off. That's the kind of thing that President Obama, who doesn't like combat, would tend to favor," said. In addition to denying permission for Doherty to go to Benghazi and any other sort of military intervention, "Eyes on Target" details the Obama administration's paralysis in making any decisions on response to the attack. After an early evening briefing from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Obama was out of contact the rest of the night. So should he bear any blame for failing to launch military action or does the responsibility lie with Panetta? "While Americans were fighting and dying in Benghazi, the president was unreachable. According to congressional testimony, Panetta's last conversation with the president was before 6:30 p.m. Washington time. Remember, Glen Doherty and Ty Woods, the two SEALs who fought to save the Americans wouldn't die for almost another seven hours. In that period, the president disappeared. He refused to take calls," said Miniter. Eighteen months later, the Benghazi investigation essentially falls along party lines, with Democrats saying there is no scandal and Republicans are on a fishing expedition and the GOP accusing the administration of leaving Americans on the field of battle and concocting a story around a spontaneous demonstration spurred by an internet video to deflect from the many security warnings. Will the final story on Benghazi simply be a matter of political opinion? Miniter doesn't think so. "Ultimately, I think this is going to be a turning point in the country's assessment of the president. The media are supposed to be referees, but instead they're on the field being players. Too many of the media are simply playing to the White House's agenda. Really, they should be watchdogs, not lapdogs," said Miniter. |
| 'The Revolt Is Underway' |
| Wed, 12 Mar 2014 16:50:25 EST Tens of thousands of Connecticut residents are refusing to register their firearms in defiance of new gun control laws and law enforcement officers in that state and others are simply refusing to enforce the recently imposed restrictions. In December 2012, the nation was horrified by the merciless killings of a classroom of young children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. In response, the Democratic state legislature approved sweeping new gun control laws and Gov. Dan Malloy signed them into law. Several other states followed suit, including New York, Maryland and Colorado. In addition to banning new sales of many types of firearms and larger capacity magazines that were previously legal, the state is also requiring residents who legally purchased those weapons and magazines to register them with the state. For many Connecticut residents, that is a bridge too far and they are refusing to comply with the law. Gun rights groups are standing with them. "The revolt is underway. Tens of thousands of people in Connecticut have intentionally missed the deadline. They are not registering. Some of them actually said they would not when they were at the hearing when the law was being considered in the legislature," said Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt. Pratt says the backlash does not stop there. He says Connecticut state lawmakers from both parties who supported the new gun laws are facing fierce tests at the ballot box. "Almost all of the RINOs in the State Senate that voted for the measure are being opposed in the primary," said Pratt. "Democrats, you might have to face some angry voters in November, but Republicans are looking over their shoulder right now." He also says that Connecticut and other states with new gun control laws will have a tough time enforcing them because of a growing resentment towards the law among police officers. "Two hundred fifty police (in Connecticut) have signed a letter that they are not going to enforce the law. They have no intention of collecting anyone's firearms," said Pratt, who notes that the resistance from law enforcement in Colorado is even stronger. "All but two of the state's county sheriffs have said, 'We're not enforcing the law.' To the surprise, I think, of a lot of legislators, it turns out lawmen are not particularly enamored with gun control. After all, they own guns personally. A lot of them enjoy recreational use of guns, and for them to be put in the position of collecting guns for some liberal ideologue in the legislature, they didn't really sign up for that," said Pratt. Gun Owners of America is urging residents in Connecticut, Colorado and other states to reject new laws requiring the registration of newly illegal weapons. But at a time when many on the right condemn President Obama for alleged selective enforcement of laws, are those same conservatives guilty of a double standard in this situation? Pratt says the Constitution provides the road map in both situations. "Frankly, I don't have a constitutional problem with what the president is doing. We can deal with him and his party using the means provided in the forthcoming elections. If we end up sending a tsunami wave over his party and making his last two years in office totally miserable, that's the way the system permits it to be done," said Pratt. "Same thing in Connecticut. People are saying, 'I'm prepared to go to jail.' Well, if you get so many tens of thousands of people saying that, it becomes difficult to imagine how that (many arrests) can happen, especially if there aren't any police around to arrest them in the beginning," he said. "I think it's an American's right to exercise his conscience. He has to be prepared to take the consequences, just like Martin Luther King. He exercised his conscience. (Rosa) Parks went and sat down right in the front of the bus. Now she was taken off the bus and escorted away and she was put in jail for a bit. She was prepared to take the consequences, but she had decided, 'No more.' The people of Connecticut, I think, are in the same frame of mind," said Pratt. |
| Guns and Medicine |
| Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:19:46 EST A Senate confirmation showdown is looming for President Obama's choice to be U.S. Surgeon General, largely as a result of the nominee's ardent gun control advocacy. Thirty-seven-year-old Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy is lauded for his leadership abilities and for his ability to promote healthy lifestyles in a dynamic manner. He is also the co-founder of Doctors for America, an organization that advocates gun control and urges physicians to ask detailed questions of their patients about gun ownership and usage. Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt says that alone ought to disqualify Dr. Murthy. "His urging that particular policy shows that he does not understand medical ethics. That is a question so far outside of anything to do with medicine. It shows that he is a willing tool of the state, even as German doctors and Soviet doctors would send to the regime information about the people that were in their care. This is an extremely alarming attitude. This guy clearly looks at himself as a government functionary before he considers anything about medicine," said Pratt. So how exactly could a conversation with your doctor about guns in the home lead to an erosion of our Second Amendment rights? Pratt believes once the data exists, those rights are endangered. "Once you've put information in a computer then it's anybody's game. I would say a 14-year-old would be able to obtain that data. The Canadians had a registry for long guns for several years and they found the thing was being hacked, typically by younger people because they're so good at computers. They finally took the registry down," said Pratt. "So if the Canadians have learned that you can't put this kind of sensitive information in some central pot, then hopefully we'll learn from them," he said. The office of Surgeon General provides a platform to speak out on various issues, but Pratt admits Murthy would have no power to compel doctors to discuss firearms with their patients. Still, he says the wrong person in that job can still do damage and the nomination continues what he considers a disturbing trend from this administration. "The only thing he can really do is push money out the door to anti-Second Amendment organizations that would do 'medical research', do studies about how guns are epidemic in our country and things of that sort. That's been done before in years past and has largely been disregarded," said Pratt. "But it's clear they are looking for any way they can find to try to put their finger on the scale and change the debate. It's the same thing they were doing when they intentionally got people murdered in 'Fast and Furious', hoping that would change the gun control debate," he said. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul vows to stop the Murthy nomination over his Second Amendment views. However, Democrats hold a 10-seat majority in the Senate and recently relaxed the rules for approving presidential nominations. However, Pratt says the recent rejection of Debo Adegbile to lead the Justice Department's Civil Right Division shows Democratic senators might not want to stick their necks out too far for President Obama right now. "We've already seen one nominee fail because there are a number of Democrats running in Republicans states this November and they decided they really like their job a whole lot more than just pleasing a lame duck president," said Pratt. |
| Obamacare and Amnesty |
| Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:10:29 EST President Obama is telling immigrant families that those who are here legally are eligible for Obamacare and none of them need to worry because no health care information will end up in the hands of immigration officials. Obama made the statement last week in a forum with prominent Hispanic media outlets, sponsored by the likes of Univision and Telemundo. One of the questions dealt with concerns by legal immigrants that signing up for health care through the new laws would expose the illegal status of family members. "It's true that the undocumented are not eligible. That's how the law was written," said Obama. "None of the information that is provided in order for you to obtain health insurance is in any way transferred to immigration services." Now a longtime Republican member of Congress says this is the latest evidence of why Obama's approach to immigration reform is fatally flawed and provides additional reasons why Obama may not be fit to serve the remainder of his term. California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a fierce opponent of the the immigration reforms being promoted in Congress. He is disgusted, but not surprised, by Obama's statement. "This is consistent with the president's commitment to the law and to the Constitution. We have him over and over again stating that he's going to do what he wants. Whether or not this is consistent with the Constitution isn't even part of his consideration," said Rohrabacher, who says the job of government is to enforce the laws. "We actually hire these people, including the president, in order to enforce the laws that have been created by 'We the People' through the Congress. Obviously, he thinks he can ignore some laws and enforce others. This is the first president that has been so blatant," he said. In addition to alleging Obama is selectively enforcing federal laws, Rohrabacher says failing to crack down on illegal immigrants is adding great sums to our debt, with Obamacare being a prime example. "We clearly have a president who is dedicated to the well-being of people who are here in our country illegally. Instead of watching out for the interests of the American people, we have him watching out for the interests of foreign people who come here illegally. It is not in our interest to have people consuming health, education and limited other dollars...when our own people are struggling to make the payments that are necessary to provide these services for our own people. So this is an outrage," said Rohrabacher. The congressman also says encouraging government agencies not to share vital information is a terrible practice and not long ago led to one of the greatest calamities in American history. "The last time the issue was whether or not people transmit information from one branch of government to another in order to enforce the law, we ended up with 9/11. We ended up with a major catastrophe for our country," said Rohrabacher, referring to the "wall" that prevented information sharing between the FBI and CIA during the 1990s. "Now this isn't going to happen with the fact that some illegals are now consuming government resources that they shouldn't be consuming in terms of limited health care dollars, but it still reflects the type of attitude that is a big minus for our country," he said. In the wake of unilateral Obamacare delays and adjustments in immigration policies in recent years, frustrated Americans often ask why Congress doesn't do something about the president's allegedly selective enforcement of U.S. laws. Rohrabacher says their answer is in the mirror. "The most important thing we can do is mobilize the American people. The American people can't sit back and say, 'Well, Congress has to handle this.' We all have to do it. We have three years to get this guy out. Let me put it this way, he probably has been engaged in these unconstitutional approaches that may make his own ability to stay in office a question," said Rohrabacher. "At the very least, we need to make sure after three years that we get a president who will set us back on the right path and we have a Congress, meaning a Senate and a House, that can stand unified and try to prevent the damage you have from an arrogant president who thinks he can enforce only the laws he agrees with," he said. Last month, House Speaker John Boehner said immigration reform is on indefinite hold in the House because a strong majority of GOP members simply don't trust the president to enforce all aspects of any legislation that gets approved. Rohrabacher says Obama's statement on health care and illegal immigration is a perfect example of that mistrust. "I think this is a major factor in every piece of legislation that will actually be a reform of the system. We can actually put down in black and white in terms of what the new system is going to look like," said Rohrabacher. "But if we're doing that with the knowledge that the President of the United States will pick and choose how exactly he's going to enforce that law or how he will structure his reaction to this new mandate by Congress, then it is a deterrent for us to thinking that we can solve any major problems in the next three years." |
| 'It's Hard to Put Any Lipstick on This Pig' |
| Fri, 7 Mar 2014 16:19:55 EST The U.S. economy added slightly more jobs than expected in February, but the pattern of job creation remains very sluggish and President Obama only has his own policies to blame, according to Heritage Foundation Chief Economist Stephen Moore. On Friday, the Labor Department announced the economy added 175,000 jobs last month, although the overall unemployment rate ticked up to 6.7 percent. The job numbers beat the expectation of 149,000 new jobs and mark the 48th straight month of positive job numbers but the number of people leaving the labor force remains a major concern and experts like Moore say by now the jobs numbers should be much better. "The long-term trend now for five years has been very disappointing job growth. We're at about half the level of job creation that we should be at. The real unemployment rate, when you include people who have given up looking for work or people who are underemployed, is close to eleven percent. Those are really lousy numbers and it's hard to put any lipstick on this pig," said Moore. "We've got an economy that's just not growing fast enough. It's not creating the jobs we need. We need about 250,000-300,000 jobs a month," said Moore, noting that jobs across the pay scale remain scarce. So what is stopping a spurt in hiring? Moore points his finger at Obama administration policies, namely Obamacare and taxes. "Obamacare is clearly a job-killer and it's already having an impact. Of course, the Congressional Budget Office said that we could lose 2.5 million jobs. That is a significant negative for employers and for workers. I think that the tax increase I think the tax increase that we had last year is reducing people's investment in businesses. I think most of the policies in Washington are negative for the economy. If we shifted toward something like a flat tax, it would be huge," said Moore, who elaborated further on why he thinks a flat tax could provide a massive economic push. "We need lower tax rates and we need to get rid of double taxation on savings and investment. We need to become one of the lowest tax rate countries, not the highest tax rate country, especially for our businesses. We're penalizing businesses with our tax code right now. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That is not a policy that is geared toward growth," said Moore. Neither party has approached the flat tax legislatively and Republican bills that pass the House rarely get noticed in the Democratically controlled Senate. Moore says many of the GOP ideas are good, but politics prevent much from getting done. "It's such a poisonous atmosphere right now, where everything the president is for is bad for the economy. Everything the Republicans are for is probably a benefit to the economy for the most part, except that those can't get done. The best situation now would be for Washington to do nothing, because the only things the president would allow to get done are things that are negative for jobs," said Moore. "The Republicans are kind of in the fetal position right now. They don't want to do much of anything. The one thing they do want to do is fight against Obamacare, which is certainly a good thing to repeal or correct its worst feature. That's not enough of an agenda. They have to have a positive solution for growth. They have to be a solutions party," said Moore. "When I hear them just being against what Obama's for, I'm not sure that's enough to win the elections in 2014 because all of this discussion is in the context of major midterm elections," said Moore. Moore says he doesn't see a single component in the new Obama budget blueprint that he believes will foster stronger job growth. As a result, he says America's economy will continue to fall further behind. "We know the formula to do it but we're not following that formula. That's why I would say right now, less out of Washington is the best we can hope for," said Moore. |
| There Is Nothing Like Ukraine |
| Fri, 7 Mar 2014 16:15:01 EST The world's attention is focused on Ukraine and it's not the first time. Ten years ago, another political firestorm unfolded there and Capitol Steps are here to share their classic parody. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport. |
| That'll Be A First for Him |
| Thu, 6 Mar 2014 16:09:31 EST Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told conservative activists on Thursday that if the GOP wins control of the U.S. Senate this year, the party will aggressively pursue and enact conservative policies, but legendary conservative leader Richard Viguerie says the track record suggests something very different. McConnell and 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan were among the first speakers at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington. 1cIf I 19m given the opportunity to lead the United States Senate next year, I won 19t let you down. I will lead with integrity, we will fight tooth and nail for conservative reforms that put this country back on track, we will debate our ideas openly, we will vote without fear, and we will govern with the understanding that the future of this country depends on our success," said McConnell. But Viguerie doesn't believe the promises. "Well, that'll be a first for him because his entire Senate life has been spent growing government, and that's why we have a tea party today, because of the failure of the Republican leaders. When they're in power, they act like Democrats except they grow government a little slower than the Democrats do," said Viguerie. Viguerie says it's possible that McConnell could be a champion for conservative policies, but only if several more tea party Republicans are elected to give the Republicans a majority again. "The opportunity to save America and return America to limited government and constitutional government is in the primaries. If we are fortunate in nominating and electing limited government constitutional conservatives this year, Mitch McConnell will be a far better Senate leader, providing he wins re-election, which is very much in doubt," said Viguerie. For his part, Rep. Ryan told CPAC attendees that he knows there's an ideological rift in the party, but he says that's good so long as conservatives come together in campaigns and policy fights. "You fight it out, you figure out what works, you come together, and you win. It's messy, it's noisy, and it's a little bit uncomfortable, but the center of gravity is shifting," said Ryan. He also stated conservatives cannot insist on 100 percent purity from every Republican on every issue, saying a party poised to win elections "doesn't burn heretics, it wins coverts." Viguerie says comments like those diminish the major divide that's consumed the GOP for over 100 years. "I think he's papering over a serious, serious problem. I've just written a book called "Takeover", which describes that we've been engaged in a 102-year-old civil war inside the Republican Party, which is the most important political battle in America today. It's not between Republicans and Democrats. It's inside the Republican Party and it's a serious disagreement over the role of government," said Viguerie. "Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are on the side of the big government and big government constitutional conservatives have just woke up recently to realize their number one opponent is not Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, but it's the big government Republicans and they're in the way of conservatives governing America," said Viguerie. Paul Ryan is a big government Republican? In 2012, Viguerie hailed Mitt Romney's choice of Ryan as a running mate and a sign conservatives would have a place in Romney's administration if he were to win. Viguerie says he's seen a lot of change in Ryan. "You wouldn't want a better next door neighbor or best friend. He's just a wonderful human being, but he has been in Washington a long time now and it seems like he's signed on to the establishment," said Viguerie. "You don't get selected to leadership positions unless you play ball with the big government types in Washington. So Ryan has been a disappointment to conservatives. "We thought he would run a more aggressive, challenging, hard-hitting campaign in 2012 and he didn't do that. Ever since then he's been going along with the expansion of government," said he said. Viguerie believes conservatives have a good chance to add to their numbers, first in primaries against GOP senators he finds insufficiently conservative in states like Kentucky, South Carolina and Mississippi and in open seats like Nebraska as well as many seats defended by Democrats. |
| More Spending, More Taxes |
| Wed, 5 Mar 2014 16:08:38 EST President Obama's budget is short on specifics, fudging our current economic state and long on higher spending and higher taxes to pay for his political agenda, according to National Taxpayers Union Executive Vice President Pete Sepp. Sepp says Republicans offered more fiscally responsible budget proposals than Obama in recent years but their blueprints were also far from what America needs to deal effectively with huge annual deficits and a massive national debt. On Tuesday, the White House released the president's budget blueprint for Fiscal Year 2015. It carries a price tag of nearly four trillion dollars, billions more in new spending and higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for it. Much of Obama's additional spending would be for infrastructure upgrades and ramping up for universal pre-kindergarten. "Our budget is about choices, it's about our values," said Obama. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan dismissed the plan as nothing more than a campaign brochure. So who is right? "It is hard to call this a serious document if you are indeed serious about reducing the deficit through spending restraint. The message here is more spending and much higher revenues to pay for that spending, along with a lot of other rosy economic assumptions," said Sepp, who listed several of what he considers flawed assumptions in the budget proposal. "The assumptions for inflation, that it will be lower than what the Congressional Budget Office just projected, that entitlement payments will be lower than what the Congressional Budget Office projected and that Gross Domestic Product will be a whole lot higher. The differences here add up to a lot over the 10-year budget window," said Sepp. "It explains why the Congressional Budget Office just last month was projecting a budget deficit of over a trillion dollars ten years from now. The Obama administration is projecting one half that amount," he said. Sepp is also frustrated that the budget plan is lacking important components that make it nearly impossible to project what Obama's blueprint would do. "Even though it is once again late, it is also for the first time incomplete for this administration. There are two key documents in the whole set of budget items that are missing so far. These are the analytical perspectives and the historical tables of the budget. Without those, you can't necessarily understand the assumptions for things like projections of beneficiary populations for the changes in entitlements they're proposing. For an administration that prides itself on transparency, this is just basic managerial negligence," said Sepp. The Obama administration claims the new revenues needed to pay for the proposed spending will come from closing tax loopholes for the rich. Sepp gave us some insight on what officials mean by "rich" and "loopholes". "By loopholes, they mean things like imposing the so-called Buffett Rule on wealthy taxpayers. That's been a staple of Obama's budgets year after year. They want to propose a shift in rules regarding to what's called carried interest income. That has a great deal of controversy over how it would impact risk-taking fund managers and their investors," said Sepp. "They also want to take a serious bite out of the value of itemized deductions, limiting them to what somebody in the 28 percent as opposed to the 39.6 percent tax bracket would take," he said. Sepp says Americans should also remember these tax changes would be on top of the tax hikes that came early last year as part of the deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff. House Republicans are expected to unveil their budget blueprint in the coming weeks. While Sepp is highly critical of Obama's fiscal stewardship and record-setting deficits, he says Republicans do not often propose budgets that would make much of a dent in our losing battle against the debt. "There have been some problems with Republican budgets in the past. If we were to grade them, many might wind up in the B- and even the C range because many of them fail to address the primary drivers of cost growth, which is Social Security and Medicare in the federal budget. They've done some work on voucherization of Medicare and things like premium support. That's encouraging," said Sepp. "But reforming Social Security remains something that neither political party seems to want to touch. Of course, Republicans have not been forthright about the need to restrain military expenditures in the past. That is an important task that both parties have to undertake," he said. |
| Inside the Apple CEO's Climate Change Meltdown |
| Tue, 4 Mar 2014 16:33:08 EST Apple CEO Tim Cook made worldwide headlines last week by blasting a questioner at a company shareholder meeting and insisting that his company will continue investing huge sums of money in green technologies whether it improves the bottom line or not. "If you want me to do things only for (return on investment) reasons, you should get out of this stock," said an angry Cook. Now the man who asked the questions says Cook lashed out at him because it's obvious the company would be losing hundreds of millions of dollars with their green projects if taxpayer-funded subsidies weren't defraying much of the cost and because Cook knows the projects are not going to create profits for Apple or its shareholders. The confrontation took place Friday at Apple's annual shareholder meeting. In the question and answer session, Justin Danhof of the National Center for Public Policy Research confronted Cook about the huge amount of money spent in the company's quest to derive 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources. "I asked him a very basic business question that any investor or any shareholder of Apple would want to know. When you engage in environmentalism...is there a reasonable return on investment? Are you spending more than you're saving? Cook first answered by saying, 'I think that it makes economic sense, but even if it didn't, we would still spend to our heart's content all of your shareholder money on battling this terrible concept of CO2 emissions,'" said Danhof. Danhof then asked Cook what the company policy would be if the federal government were not footing the bill for much of their green energy programs through taxpayer-funded subsidies. That's when Cook made headlines. "That's where he went off the rails. Cook refused to answer the question and he looked directly at me and said, 'I don't care what you think. We're going to continue to cure blindness.' What does one have to do with the other? Obviously, Cooke was deflecting the issue because, while the company may be engaging in a lot of environmental efforts, the answer is they're engaging so where they can make a profit off the American taxpayer. We're the ones, John and Jane Q. Taxpayer, that are subsidizing all these solar plants that Apple is putting up in North Carolina and Arizona and California and elsewhere. That's the real heart of it," said Danhof. That's when Cook loudly scolded Danhof and suggested that he and anyone else not supportive of Apple's green energy efforts were free to sell their shares. "I've been attending shareholder meetings for the last five or six years, dozens of them, and I've never had a CEO react and act the way that Tim Cook did at Friday's Apple shareholder meeting," said Danhof. Cook is widely known for his calm demeanor, so what triggered his passionate response rather than a simple explanation that Apple's priorities were not the same as Danhof's? "The company wants to tell it's progressive investors who care about this chimera battle of reducing CO2 emissions that they're the leading company in the world to do so. In reality, they're only doing so because they're ripping off taxpayers. So I caught him this dualism, this hypocrisy and he was really stuck at that point," said Danhof. "So he attacked his own investors. He really came untoward. I was embarrassed for him," said Danoff. While Danoff says he can sympathize with Cook being exposed in front of shareholders, he has fewer warm words for former Vice President Al Gore and his response to the exchange. "I would have been embarassed for Al Gore if Al Gore could still be embarrassed at this point, because he stood up like a three-year-old child and loudly clapped and cheered in my face when Cook gave that reaction. Al Gore is beyond contempt at this point so I won't even be embarrassed for him," said Danoff. Danhof says the hypocrisy of Apple is evident in multiple ways, both in its activities at these green energy facilities and in its everyday products. He cited a massive geothermal plant in Maiden, North Carolina, built largely through taxpayer funds. It will eventually power Apple's local operations, but while those facilities are built, Apple is selling its excess energy back to the taxpayers of North Carolina who helped pay for the construction through their tax dollars in the first place. He says the cost of Apple's green energy projects is easily in the hundreds of millions and possibly even billions of dollars. In addition, Danhof says Apple's own conduct shows it's not nearly as environmentally conscious as it would have us believe. "You may want to actually take a deeper look into what Cook's response really means. If Apple was sustainable, they wouldn't glue their batteries into their iPhones so when your battery dies you need a new iPhone. If your battery dies on any other phone, you just get a new battery. On an iPhone, you've got to chuck it away and buy a whole brand new one. What's sustainable about that? Absolutely nothing," said Danhof. In addition to asserting Cook got caught in his hypocrisy, Danhof believes another factor is at play as climate change advocates find it harder and harder to convince Americans that the planet's future is in peril unless major, costly steps are taken. He notes that over the past few election cycles, concern over climate change has dropped from being one of the five biggest issues for voters to barely cracking the the top 20 issues that motivate people at the polls. "For 17 years, we've been told the world is going to warm and for 17 years they've cried wolf. We have a world (temperature) that's staying flat if not cooling. I think that those who are really devotees of the climate change line are starting to run scared. They're starting to become more emotional and less rational because the science is no longer backing up their wild claims," said Danhof. |
| Obama Regs + Rough Winter = Power Shortage |
| Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:45:08 EST Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith says Obama administration regulations will further cripple coal-fired power plants and another brutal winter in the northeast could mean a power shortages for businesses in the region. Griffith, who represents coal-rich southwestern Virginia and sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says power grids are already stressed and regulations that will soon take effect will push the region past the breaking point if we get another winter like this one. "In January of next year, a lot of coal plants have to close down based on regulations already passed. We're not even talking about new facilities. We're talking about older facilities that are being shut down because they can't meet the new requirements," said Griffith. "A number of places had a hard time keeping the grid fully supplied with electricity. They asked people to cut back in the northeast. Gas prices went through the roof. A big part of that's going to be gone next year. If we were to have another cold snap next year, I'm afraid we would have serious problems," he said. Griffith says Obama administration regulations not only endanger future coal-fired plants but also make the operation of existing plants a losing proposition. "I believe the administration wants to eliminate coal as a fuel source. They're putting regulations in place on new buildings of coal facilities. You can't even find the technology today to really make those facilities work. It doesn't exist. The best estimates are maybe seven, ten or maybe longer years before we can even come close to matching the regulations that the EPA wants," said Griffith. "On older facilities, it just doesn't make sense for some companies to retrofit or retool those to meet the regulations to meet the regulations that they've been passing over the last several years. Come next January, a lot of those plants are going to shut down," said Griffith. The congressman says this is not some doom and gloom prophecy. He says it's happening in his district. "In my district alone, we have two facilities. One is shutting down completely. The other is converting two-thirds of their production to natural gas, but the natural gas won't produce as much electricity as it did in the past. So when you hit those peak periods, usually in the wintertime with cold and sometimes in the summertime with heat, we won't have as much electricity available next year as we have this year," said Griffith. "There won't be enough new power sources brought on board by next year. If we have the same kind of conditions next year then we're going to have serious issues. I think we may have some situations where companies say, 'We can't supply your factory. We've got to make sure the hospitals and the people who have homes are staying warm. I understand that, there's no need for it," he said. Even if the lights stay on for everyone, Griffith says the price of energy during times of high demand will continue to skyrocket and people are already feeling the stress. "We heard testimony this week in committee that even this year, with the rising cost of electricity, the (Northern Arkansas Electric Cooperative) president said we're going to have choices made. This one lady that called him and he talked to personally said, 'I figured out how I can pay my electric bill this winter. I'll take my medication every other day,'" said Griffith. Griffith says he and other congressional Republicans have repeatedly warned the Obama administration that it's regulations are costing jobs and threatening energy supplies. He says he administration's response has not been encouraging. "What they have always said is that they don't think that many plants will retire. They've been wrong on that number. The announcements of these retirements have been out there and it's much higher than the administration originally estimated. I think that they're hoping that we won't have that kind of a winter next year, and I'm with them," said Griffith. "I think some (in the administration) believe that they can get enough natural gas in there to make it happen. The infrastructure, I don't believe, can be built in time if in the next several winters we have a really cold winter. I think they're hoping that they won't have to face it, that they won't have to have a cold winter. I'm worried that we will," said Griffith. He says the results we've already seen from Obama-era regulations and the projections for what will happen offer an unmistakable message to policymakers. "The EPA needs to go in and make their regulations much more reasonable across the board. Even though they may want another energy source, right now coal is still one of the largest energy sources in this country. To have made the regulations so strict so quickly is going to impact business in America. It's already impacting the cost of providing electricity for people in their homes. It's going to impact business and it's going to have other negative impacts," said Griffith. |
| Bring A Commode |
| Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:28:47 EST While the Winter Olympics showcased amazing talent, much of the games was overshadowed by the comically poor accommodations for athletes and spectators in Sochi. From dangerous, discolored water to stray dogs, the Capitol Steps reflect on the lasting memories of Sochi. |
| Chilling Speech |
| Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:42:27 EST The public comment period ends Thursday on proposed IRS rule changes that it says provide greater clarity in what activity is allowed in non-profit organizations but critics allege it is an assault on free speech and association that would essentially codify the brutal treatment aimed at conservative organizations over the past few years. Administration officials have remained very quiet publicly about the suggested rule changes, but over 100,000 comments have been filed in response to the plan. Former Federal Elections Commission Chairman Bradley A. Smith is now chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, which filed comments criticizing the proposed rules. Smith says the IRS is using the veneer of clarity to make life difficult for political activists. "Essentially, the IRS wants to change and vastly expand the definition of what qualifies as political activity, to include things like non-partisan voter registration or talking about issues. 501 (c) 4 (status) limits groups that are engaged in candidate races. They want it to include talk about the budget or offshore oil drilling or green energy or whatever it might be," said Smith. "By expanding greatly the definition of political activity, that will bring a number of groups out of (c) 4 and into political committee status, where they have much more reporting burdens and they have to publicly disclose who their donors are, which the Supreme Court has normally said groups don't have to do," said Smith. If the rules are implemented, Smith says life could be much different for politically active groups from the National Rifle Association to the Sierra Club, but he says others will feel the pain even more. "It also includes many, many small groups and a lot of folks in the tea party and other small groups like that fell what the IRS has done is they said, 'What were we trying to get them for a year ago or two years ago. Let's just codify that and we can do it that way,'" said Smith. Smith says he believes some at the IRS genuinely want to add clarity to the process of properly designating organizations for tax purposes, but he says there is abundant evidence that the specific proposals and timing of the changes expose a political agenda. "For the last four years, there's been a steady stream of letters and complaints by high-ranking Democratic officeholders in Congress. Senator Levin, Senator Durbin, Senator Franken, Senator Bennet, we can name a whole number who have been pushing the IRS to crack down on various groups, to investigate them and to investigate their tax status. Often they have named specific conservative groups by name. The president himself has made some public speeches in which he's called these groups a threat to our democracy," said Smith. "There's strong evidence to believe that part of the reason the IRS proposed these rules and is acting in this way right now because of partisan pressure put on them by Democratic officeholders," said Smith. Smith also believes the IRS is wading into waters best policed by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). He says Congress explicitly created the FEC in 1974 to be a bipartisan commission. By law, there are an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on the panel so one party cannot ram through its agenda. Smith says Democrats tried to enact these rule changes through the FEC but couldn't get majority support. So they turned to the IRS instead. "That's exactly why we shouldn't put it to the IRS, because whether they're doing it because of this or not , it looks that way to people. It looks like a partisan power grab by Democrats to harm their Republican rivals," said Smith. "I think the IRS is going into an area where we really don't want our tax collectors to go. One of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon was that he was using the IRS to harass his political enemies. It's very important that we keep the IRS out of politics." So is this public comment time a mere pause in the IRS pursuit of these new rules or might the huge number of concerned comments actually achieve their goal? "They can change minds. That's why the comment period is required by law. It's usually not so much a political popularity contest but thoughtful comments pointing out some of the problems with the rules do change minds. The agency is required to address those, and if it doesn't explain why it ignored those comments it's decision could be overturned in court," said Smith. Smith says a final decision could some within a month or a few months. Even if they are approved, he suspects there would not be enough time to fully implement the rule changes in time to be enforced for the 2014 campaign. |
| Cuts Too Big, Obama Has No Plan |
| Wed, 26 Feb 2014 17:29:43 EST A key member of the House Armed Services Committee says the Pentagon's proposed defense cuts are too big, show no coherent national security strategy and will not pass the House of Representatives. He also says the administration's actions smack of political calculation. On Monday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced troop reductions to the lowest levels since the days before World War II. The Army will drop its troop levels to between 440,000-450,000. The U-2 surveillance planes and A-10 Warthogs would be scrapped under this plan and replaced in part by unmanned vehicles. Eleven Navy cruisers would also be put of the shelf for modernization. Virginia Rep. Rob Wittman represents a district in one of the most military-centered states in the country and chairs the Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. He says the reductions are too much and don't follow a coherent strategy. "There are deep concerns about the nature of these reductions, the scope of these reductions and then doing this without clearly elaborating what our national strategy is," said Wittman. "We've gone from a position of a national strategy of being able to fight and win a war on two fronts to going to a strategy of fighting a war on one front and holding serve on another front, to today where the current state of readiness is being in a spot where all we can do is to fight and win a war on one front. "To take that position and further degrade that in these different ways I think is extraordinarily problematic," said Wittman, who adds that assuming technology alone can replace human skill, judgment and ingenuity is a major mistake. He also says the Obama administration is making the very same mistake that other administrations pursued following major military conflicts. "We've seen time after time after time, historically, where when we go into that mode in our reset after we come out of conflict, we have done one thing with 100 percent certainty in that we've always gotten reset wrong after coming out of conflict. If you look at post-World War II, post-Korea and post-Vietnam, we cannot repeat those mistakes of the past," said Wittman. Wittman is confident the cuts will never actually pass in the House of Representatives. "I do not think so. I think there's a vast amount of skepticism and constructive criticism on how we address this nation's military needs going forward, I think this will have an almost impossible time getting through the House," said Wittman. Wittman also wants to see a detailed comparison on cost and functionality concerning the changes in weapons, particularly with respect to the U-2 and A-10s. He says unmanned aircraft may be preferable but they also need to be just as beneficial. He says the A-10s are even more critical since they provide close air support for ground forces. Wittman says any replacement system must be proven to protect American lives on the ground just as well or even better than the A-10s. In reaction to the proposed cuts, many conservatives ripped President Obama as being naive for thinking the U.S. would not be in a land war again anytime soon. They also scolded Obama for allegedly not believing in a robust military Wittman says many of those concerns are spot on. "If you look at what's projected by the administration, you notice that the cuts are on the side of the military but they also propose expansion of spending in other areas of government. If this was a serious effort to really reduce spending then the spending reductions would take place elsewhere and they would also have a serious proposal about how to reduce spending in the autopilot spending programs," said Wittman, referring to entitlements like Medicare and Social Security. "Instead, the proposals that were there last year are absent this year so there's not even an effort to try to contain or manage spending within Medicare and Social Security. There's also an increase in spending in other areas of the budget, which tells me that they're looking at this from a political perspective. That is, 'How do we go to areas where there may be political bases that need to be satisfied by increasing spending there, yet we're going to do that on the backs of the men and women that serve this nation," Wittman said. The congressman says the military people he speaks with are open to spending cuts in the military, but that those cuts need to be structured in a way that doesn't hurt or capability or demand far more in spending reductions from the military than from other parts of the budget. "I believe they are spot on. They want to make sure that if we're going to be reducing budgets that we reduce them top to bottom in every area of the budget. Remember, the military is the only place where we've had significant cuts in the law. All the other areas of the budget for the most part remained untouched. So, this just shows that this is more of a political exercise than it is truly a serious effort to look at the budget top to bottom and make those tough decisions about how we manage the finances of the nation," said Wittman. "It also shows there is not the kind of attention necessary to look at where we need to be with military readiness and making sure the forces are properly constructed for the challenges they'll face in the future," said Wittman. |
| 'Putin Has the Strong Hand Here' |
| Tue, 25 Feb 2014 15:52:12 EST President Obama is making a major mistake by concluding the United States has no strategic interest in the future of Ukraine and even if he does get tough Russian Vladimir Putin isn't likely to take him very seriously, according to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. The Obama administration is publicly warning Russia not to meddle in Ukrainian affairs as a transitional phase gets underway and eventually leads to new elections in the coming weeks. However, Obama is also signaling that the U.S. won't be encouraging a specific course of action, noting last week that has wasn't interested in "moving pieces around on a Cold War chessboard." Bolton says that makes an uphill diplomatic fight that much harder. "Putin has the strong hand here, both in terms of Ukrainian domestic politics and in terms of the economic leverage that he can exercise. By contrast, the United States and Europe don't have that much to offer. We've heard the president himself and his spokesman say repeatedly that we don't see ourselves in competition with Russia here, which is a big mistake because we certainly are in competition," said Bolton. "I'm afraid this may be a very unequal contest, unhappily for the people in Ukraine who just want a chance to have free and fair elections elect a representative government and decide their own course," said Bolton, who says Obama simply fails to grasp the importance of the opportunity presenting itself in Ukraine. "I think the president believes we have no strategic interest in Ukraine. He's said repeatedly he thinks it's a matter to be left to the Ukrainian people. In fact we do have strategic interests in Ukraine. It's a large country. It's almost 50 million people. It was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union and still has enormous and untapped agricultural potential. It could be a major player in Central European affairs, and it sits right between the eastern border of NATO and the western border of Russia," said Bolton. "Let's be clear, even if Obama doesn't see that, Putin sees the strategic interest from his perspective. So for us to say we're not going to play in Ukrainian affairs is just ceding the field to the Russians. I think it's a view on Obama's part that very curiously ends up in exactly the same place as Ron Paul," he said. So what should the U.S. be advocating and working towards with respect to Ukraine? "I think we should be making it clear that, along with the Europeans and the International Monetary Fund, we're prepared to help out a transition on Ukraine to help free them from Soviet-era linkages that bind them to the Russian economy. I think we also ought to be saying, as the United States, that we're prepared to revisit the mistake NATO made in 2008, when we should have put both Ukraine and Georgia on a path to NATO membership," said Bolton. "Even though economic integration with Europe and the West as a whole is on the mind of Ukrainians, the fact is the European Union cannot provide security. Only NATO can do that and I think that's the message that Putin needs to hear, that he is not going to have a free hand in Ukraine or any of the other former republics of the Soviet Union," said Bolton. Obama's "reset button" approach to Russian relations is widely panned, with many experts concluding Putin outmaneuvered Obama over nuclear weapons reduction,Syria's weapons of mass destruction and Iran's nuclear program. So if Putin is perceived as having the upper hand in our relationship, how much leverage could Obama gain by adopting a more aggressive posture like the one outlined by Bolton? Bolton says he fears it's too late for Obama to influence an ideal outcome. "Unfortunately, if Barack Obama said what I just said, they'd laugh at it in the Kremlin because they see that Obama has a foreign policy that is 99 percent rhetoric and one percent action. I think that's the problem we're going to have for the next three years. The idea that Obama says Russia should stay out of the internal affairs of the Ukraine , they find that laughable in Moscow. They are going to interfere. There's no doubt about it," said Bolton. "Everybody says this is a matter for the Ukrainians, but the Russians aren't going to leave it to the Ukrainians, and if we stand on the sideline the odds certainly favor the Russian position winning," said Bolton. Bolton says election corruption is certainly a danger in Ukraine, but he says the best course in the very near term is for the electoral process to play out. He says the nation is very evenly divided geographically, politically and by faith. Bolton does not think partition is a wise course to pursue right now, but may be needed in the near future depending upon how the next few months unfold. |
| Obama's 'Path to Unilateral Disarmament' |
| Mon, 24 Feb 2014 16:05:12 EST The Obama administration is proposing the biggest cuts to the military in generations, citing an end to the war in Afghanistan and the impact of sequestration, but critics allege the president and Pentagon officials are engaging in a deliberate and dangerous hollowing out of the armed forces. Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney also says these cuts will further erode already poor military readiness and signal the world that we will be in no position to defend national security threats on the scale we have in years past. On Monday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced plans for a $522 billion budget, which is still exponentially higher than than the defense budget for any other nation. But the plan also calls for bringing troop levels to the lowest level since before World War II. The plan would bring Army troops down to between 440,000 and 450,000. It also calls for the elimination of longstanding programs like A-10 Warthogs and U-2 surveillance planes, although plans are in place to replace them with different aircraft, including unmanned vehicles. The Navy will keep buying two destroyers and two attack submarines per year while shelving 11 cruisers for modernization. But the shuffling of weaponry and shrinking of personnel in response to changing needs and budget demands are not impressing McInerney, who is also furious that the plan calls for service members paying more for housing, seeing fewer benefits and losing a billion dollars in spending on military commissaries. "There's no question that this administration has us on a path of unilateral disarmament. Don't confuse ourselves. He's got us on a path of disarmament. What surprised me even more is that he is making such deep personnel cuts in the services as far as the commissaries, pay, these type of things that are going to have a very negative impact on our morale," said McInerney. The Obama administration asserts that with troops already out of Iraq and those in Afghanistan coming home this year, our ground troop numbers are safe to recede a bit. Officials also point out that sequestration is still in effect, and half of those cuts must come from the military. McInerney says Congress deserves some of the blame for that but the lion's share belongs with Obama. "This was the administration's plan all along. They're the ones that came up with sequestrationEverybody on the Hill thought people are reasonable and won't let this happen. The fact is it was (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid's intent to let it happen. It was clear the Democratic Party was not going to negotiate with the Republicans. So they drove it into sequestration, and they are very happy about sequestration. That's why the Defense budget is taking the bulk of the cuts," said McInerney. The Obama administration further asserts that troop numbers are safe to drop to levels not seen since before World War II because high technology weapons can handle virtually any threat and a major ground campaign is unlikely to be needed again. McInerney says the threats facing us right now should make it clear that's a bad idea. "The fact is this administration still does not have a strategy for how to defeat radical Islam. They don't even talk about it. They took us out of Iraq and what do we find? We find now that the Iraqis are buying weapons from the Iranians. That is a very disturbing thing. We fundamentally turned Iraq over to the Iranian sphere of influence. I'm afraid we're going to do the same thing in Afghanistan, and still no strategy for defeating radical Islam," said McInerney. "They are going to let Iran, in the next two or three years, let Iran become a nuclear power. I'm very disturbed with depleting not only our Army but also our Air Force and Navy and the Marine Corps. As I've said, we are fundamentally, unilaterally disarming," he said. McInerney's comments ring close to concerns over manpower and readiness voiced Monday by retired U.S. Army Gen Jack Keane on the FOX News Channel. "The fact of the matter is today, the Army has very few units that are ready to fight today. And that's the truth of it," said Keane. McInerney says that analysis is spot on and that much deeper cuts would only make things worse. "The Army couldn't put a division in the field and fight as a division. All they can do is fight as platoons and maybe at the company level. They haven't done the battalion or brigade level, let alone division and corps level attacks. So their readiness is very low," said McInerney. So how are friend and foe alike viewing the combination of America's diminished readiness and significant budget cuts in the near future? "I think they're going to read it as this administration is not going to be a superpower or a global leader and they are going to start taking advantage of us. There are a lot of things that are going to be happening over the next two or three years that none of us will have foreseen. We're going to have to react to them, otherwise it's going to be a very negative world that we live in," said McInerney. |
| Obamacare Nightmare for Small Firms |
| Fri, 21 Feb 2014 15:26:57 EST The same failed Obamacare promise that plunged the individual health care market into chaos last year is now hitting small group plans and could result in lost coverage for 20 million Americans. Obamacare's employer mandate does not apply to businesses with fewer than 50 employees, but many of those those companies are still receiving notices from their insurance providers informing them their previous plans are being canceled because they don't contain all the provisions required under the new law. Much like individual policy holders last year, small group plan holders are discovering that their plans don't qualify for being grandfathered despite the famed assurance that if they liked their plans they could keep them. "If you had your plan prior to March 2010 when Obamacare became law, it was supposed to be grandfathered in. You were supposed to keep it, but the Department of Labor came out with these grandfather regulations. It's almost like telling a guy you can keep walking on the beach as long as you don't get any sand on your feet. It's almost impossible not to violate," said National Center for Public Policy Research Health Care Analyst Dr. John Hogberg. "If one of your co-pays goes up ten dollars over one year, your plan is no longer grandfathered. If the co-insurance you pay for a procedure was at 15 percent and they moved it up to 16 percent, it is no longer grandfathered," he said. Hogberg points to Labor Department statistics that admit 66 percent of small group plans will fail to be grandfathered because of those types of technicalities. With 31 million people employed by firms with less than 50 employees, some 20 million Americans are facing cancellation of their policies. "It was obvious from the start that these regulations were going to result in loads of people losing their health insurance, but the president kept making that promise that if you like your insurance you can keep it, when he should have known better and I kind of suspect that he did know better," said Hogberg. The issue is not just theoretical for Hogberg, whose employer has fewer than 50 workers. In January, the National Center for Public Policy Research was informed by Kaiser Permanente that the policy the organization used since 1996 no longer met federal standards and had to be canceled. Hogberg says the plan Kaiser now recommends requires a six percent hike in premiums, which is a much better deal than other small firms are seeing. Hogberg says his boss noted the cancellation would provide most small employers plenty of incentive to scrap insurance altogether and force employees onto health care exchanges. He says it's hard to estimate how many businesses would actually do that. Another concern for Hogberg is how the story seems to be slipping below the radar for a mainstream press that was all over the headaches caused by individual policies getting canceled. He says it's probably because of how enrollment periods are defined for different groups. "Individual policies are mostly renewed in January of each year and so these cancellation letters had to all be sent out over a period of a few months. Small group plans are renewed practically every month," said Hogberg. "I think that's one reason why the media might not be giving small group cancellations quite the same coverage because it's happening over a more protracted period of time. The number of cancellations doesn't escalate very quickly, so at this point it's not making a huge media story." However, the number of Americans set to lose their small group plan coverage is much greater than those affected by the individual market, whether their employers end up finding another plan or dropping coverage and forcing employees to find insurance on the exchanges. As a result, Hogberg predicts this will be another black eye for Obamacare. "I think this is another reason why Obamacare is in such trouble. First of all, the law shouldn't be forcing people to lose their insurance to begin with, but if that's going to happen, if many people are going to lose the plans that they like, I suspect most people would at least prefer to get a new plan that's better than the old one," said Hogberg. "So far, I really don't see much evidence that that's happening and quite a bit of evidence that it's not. People are paying higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket costs. Networks of doctors and hospitals are more restrictive," said Hogberg. "I suspect the Obama administration and other Obamacare supporters are kind of in denial about that. Maybe that denial will end come November, but who knows?" |
| Shoe Bomb, Shoe Bomb |
| Fri, 21 Feb 2014 15:12:48 EST With national security officials warning of possible shoe bomb attacks on international flights, the Capitol Steps blow the dust off a song from the early days of the War on Terror. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport. |
| Obama's Tea Party Cousin Seeks Senate Seat |
| Thu, 20 Feb 2014 16:02:07 EST President Obama and Dr. Milton Wolf are second cousins, but that may be the end of the similarities as Wolf runs to the right of incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Roberts in the Kansas GOP primary. The 42-year-old Wolf is a diagnostic radiologist. He admits he didn't know he was related to Obama until 2008 and didn't meet him until they were health care policy adversaries in 2010. Wolf says being related to a president would be a great experience if Obama weren't so far left in his ideology. "Of course, who wouldn't be honored to have a president in your family and sit on the front row of history. We're related, of course I remind people you cannot choose your family," said Wolf. "Barack Obama is the worst president in our lifetimes if not in our history. He has been a disaster. It's nothing personal but his policies have been disastrous in America. "It's mostly because he either doesn't understand or has forgotten what America is all about. The American idea itself is about individual liberty, limited government and free market values. When we have embraced those we have become the most prosperous and powerful nation in history, and when we abandon those we suffer. We have suffered under Barack Obama," he said. Wolf is making no secret he would be a fierce opponent of President Obama in Washington. The home page of his campaign website reads, "Want to drive Barack Obama crazy? Send his very own fearless conservative cousin -- 'the next Ted Cruz' -- to the United States Senate!" Wolf says he touts himself as the next Ted Cruz because he believes the freshman Texas senator is approaching his office the right way while Sen. Roberts is not. "we need more senators like Ted Cruz, like Mike Lee, like Rand Paul. They stand by the Constitution fearlessly, unapologetically. They don't need an election year conversion because they're the real deal," said Wolf. "Pat Roberts, in an amazing election year conversion, is following the leadership of Ted Cruz, who's only been there for one year," said Wolf. "That's because Ted Cruz understand something that Pat Roberts has never quite figured out - that a United States senator should have something more powerful than just a vote. He should have a voice, and he should use that voice. He should stand up and fight for our Constitution and for that American idea itself. "Instead, what we have in our establishment Republicans are these go along to get along Republicans. Pat Roberts voted for Barack Obama's $600 million tax increase just a year ago. He's voted to raise our debt ceiling 11 times. And Pat Roberts voted to put Kathleen Sebelius in charge of Obamacare. That's not conservative, it's not good for Kansas and it's not good for America," said Wolf. Defenders of Roberts counter Wolf's arguments by asserting Roberts spent many years of his Senate tenure in key intelligence committee positions that were not conducive to bold public statements. They also note he was one of only 18 Republicans to oppose the spending bill that ended last year's partial government shutdown and that he was the first U.S. senator to publicly call for the resignation of Sebelius. "He only bothered to say Kathleen Sebelius should resign three days after I announced my candidacy. The Kansas City Star reported on it and said, 'If you think those two facts are unrelated, you probably think the Kansas Jayhawks are going to win the national championship this year in football,'" said Wolf, who says voters need to take a close look at Roberts' voting record throughout his Senate tenure and not just leading up to elections. "He claims to be in the top five conservatives in the Senate. That's according to Heritage Action. What he doesn't want you to know is his lifetime score from Heritage Action, which is a 67. Before I came along, in 2012 Pat Roberts had a 65 from Heritage Action. Before I came along, in 2012 Pat Roberts had a 55 from Club for Growth and a 54 from FreedomWorks. That is not a conservative. That is somebody who is going along to get along, and that's been the problem with our Republican Party," said Wolf. So what qualifies Wolf for the Senate and what would his priorities be if elected? "I confess I don't have the Washington experience Pat Roberts has. I've never voted to raise your taxes. I've never spent trillions of dollars that aren't mine and I've never paid $800 for a toilet seat. But what I have done is this. I have met payroll. I have balanced budgets. I have run a company and, far more importantly, I know every day what it's like to have patients come to me and put their lives in my hands and ask me to make the humbling, sometimes gut-wrenching decisions that are the difference between life and death. That's the kind of humility I think Washington lacks," said Wolf. His top legislative priority is PatientCare, his plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a system based on conservative principles. "We need to fully repeal Obamacare, and we need to replace it with patient-centered, free market health care reform that's being described as, by far, the best alternative to Obamacare," said Wolf. Wolf is not only running against a three-term incumbent, but the state's other senator, Jerry Moran, runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). That's the group tasked with re-electing Republican senators and recruit candidates to run for Democratically-held seats. Wolf says Kansas is in no danger of falling to the Democrats, so the NRSC should stay out of the primary. He says if it doesn't, it will show the group is not about electing conservatives but simply protecting incumbents. |
| 'It's Hard Not to Do It' |
| Wed, 19 Feb 2014 17:19:15 EST The debate over whether to raise the minimum wage is front and center this week as a Congressional Budget Office report gives political ammunition to both sides, and a former Clinton administration budget official says the benefits of the hike so easily outweigh the downside that "it's hard not to do it." In his State of the Union message, President Obama urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, saying it is simply wrong for any Americans to be working hard and still living in poverty. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report showing that following Obama's plan would result in 900,000 people rising out of poverty and 16.5 million people benefiting from the wage hike. The CBO also projected the move would cost the economy between 500,000 and one million jobs. Larry Haas served as spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration. He says the CBO report should make the question of raising the minimum wage a no-brainer. "What's really startling about this report is that while it acknowledges some job loss, the corresponding benefits so greatly outweigh the costs that it almost looks like it's hard not to do it," said Haas. Haas admits the job losses could negatively impact the same amount of people that would supposedly escape from poverty following a minimum wage increase, but he says other factors would still make such a move a net positive. "We are talking about costs versus benefits, and just in raw number terms, even if we talk about closer to a million (jobs eliminated) as offset by the close to a million who would rise above the poverty level and you consider that to be somewhat of a wash. I'm not minimizing the job loss, but if you consider just the raw dollars, you look and just go to the second level of this and see all the other low-wage workers who would get a benefit out of this as employers naturally raised their wages, 16.5 million people," said Haas. "At the end of the day, you look at any proposal and you say, 'OK, where's the good? Where's the bad, and where does this come out? While I don't minimize the job loss, I look at these raw numbers and I have to say, you know what, this would be a net benefit to society and to working people writ large," he said. Republicans and other conservatives are largely opposed to Obama's call for a minimum wage increase and are loudly highlighting the CBO's projected job losses if the plan were to become law. Instead of raising wages for the lowest skilled jobs, they argue for reduced corporate taxes, deregulation and rolling back employer obligations on programs like Obamacare. Haas embraces some of those ideas while dismissing others but says a hike in the minimum wage can be done alongside some of the GOP's ideas. "I don't necessarily disagree with all their approaches. I do think that the corporate tax is too high by way of international competitiveness. I do think that there are always opportunities to reduce regulation. On Obamacare, I think their concerns are, frankly, overstated and in many ways misconstrue what's happening," said Haas. "Just because we have other possible ways of promoting economic growth and spurring jobs doesn't mean we should dismiss this one." And Haas believes a bump in the minimum wage is the only politically realistic move in the near future. "The fact of the matter is that Obamacare is not going to be repealed. The fact of the matter is we're not going to see tax reform anytime soon, just because of the politics on the Hill. The administration will either reduce regulations or they won't. This is the issue before us at the moment. Congress can act. The president can sign it into law. I think that the case is very compelling. Whether we do any of the other things that would spur growth and create jobs, we should do this," said Haas. Another major point of contention in this debate is who actually earns the minimum wage. Is it largely moms and dads who cannot find other work and rely on those wages to support families or is it mostly teenagers and other young people who will later find higher-skilled and better paying jobs? Haas strongly believes it's the former. "Those who oppose a minimum wage increase tend to overstate the number of so-called teenagers who are just working side jobs and this really isn't their livelihood and we really don't need to give them a boost. I can't break it down in percentage terms, but the fact of the matter is that a very large share of minimum wage workers is the single mom with the kid or two or three, who's trying to scrape by and who may have more than one job and having trouble making ends meet with the child care expenses that she needs to pay," said Haas. "Those are really the people we've got to worry about in this kind of an economy where we see such long-term unemployment and such lingering unemployment from the Great Recession. Anyone who really thinks this is about teenagers is just missing the boat," he said. |
| Where's the U.S. as Ukraine Burns? |
| Tue, 18 Feb 2014 16:24:45 EST Recent Ukrainian unrest reached its deadliest levels yet on Tuesday, as protesters and police officers were killed, fires raged in Kiev and a nation divided moved closer to a national tipping point. Ukraine is closely divided between Russian-speaking residents largely loyal to Moscow and native-speaking western Ukraine, which identified with Europe and largely despises Russia for its decades of control during the days of the USSR. The latest volatility stems from Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejecting an opportunity to establish closer economic ties with the European Union and subsequently accepting bailout assistance from Russia. Protests that followed were met with new laws restricting protest rights and even a ban on citizens wearing helmets. Former Reagan administration Pentagon official Frank Gaffney says the people have very good reasons to be in the streets. "There's obvious frustration on the part of the people of Ukraine with their government, with the policies it's been pursuing, particularly to the degree to which it is acceding to what can only be described as domination by Russia. I think there's also a growing restiveness about the growing repression at home and the corruption of their government," said Gaffney. Now that the protests have evolved into violent clashes between protesters and police, Gaffney says violent repression of the protesters is possible but he believes the more likely scenario is for Ukraine to reach a tipping point towards freedom. The United States is currently taking a hands-off approach, urging both sides to resolve their differences peacefully. Gaffney says neutrality has no place in this dispute. He says the U.S. policy should be obviously and boldly stated. "We need to be unquestioningly and unmistakably aligned with those who aspire to freedom from the tyranny that they've been subjected to, the arbitrary, the corrupt and the increasingly repressive tyranny of Yanukovych," said Gaffney. "I think it is important to take sides and straddling the fence as the Obama administration is wont to do, or worse aligning with the oppressors either out of some misplaced belief that this will buy us some benefit the Russians in this reset policy of the president's or that it will enable us to have some sort of dialogue with the government of the state, in this case Ukraine, that is engaging in such repression. I think this is a mistake, both strategically and certainly morally," said Gaffney. What is at stake in terms of U.S. national security interests? What would be the result of the protesters being defeated, with or without physical assistance of the Russians? "It is probably a step in the direction of Vladimir Putin's longstanding goal of reconstituting, effectively if not technically, the old Soviet Union. He has been beavering away at this for several years, using his kleptocracy to cultivate the old power structures and relationships of the previous regime. Incrementally, he has made headway in bringing people to heel who have sought their independence, who have gained their independence in places like Georgia, to the point where that independence is increasingly a thing of the past," said Gaffney. "This is not good for the people most immediately involved. I'm afraid it will be detrimental to the free world more broadly and to us as well," said Gaffney. |
| Schlafly Unloads on Amnesty, Gay Marriage |
| Mon, 17 Feb 2014 15:16:35 EST The woman who vanquished the Equal Rights Amendment more than a generation ago is now focused on stopping what she considers amnesty for people in the country illegally, who will never vote Republican and often don't respect America's founding principles. Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly is also disgusted by the recent spate of federal judges striking down voter-approved laws and state constitutional amendments that define marriage only as the union of one man and one woman. On the issue of immigration, Schalfly compiled the results from a number of recent independent polls on her eagleforum.org website. She says the consistent results are proof positive that making illegal immigrants U.S. citizens will lead to greater advancement of the liberal agenda. "These millions of foreigners coming in will of course take jobs from Americans, for one thing. But they are not going to vote conservative. They're all going to vote for big government because that's what they believe in. A lot of these polls show exactly that and they corroborate each other," said Schlafly. "Pew found that 75 percent of Hispanic immigrants and 55 percent of Asian immigrants, who are the two largest groups, want a bigger government providing more services. Now you ask any Republican or conservative if that's what he wants, he's going to say no, but only 19 percent of Hispanics and 36 percent of Asians want a smaller government," she said. "So why is it any surprise that 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Obama in 2012. It's no surprise. That's the way it is." In addition to the leftward political bent of most immigrants, Schlafly says the polling data also indicates a troubling lack of respect among them for our Constitution. "One poll showed that 67 percent, that's two-thirds, of native-born citizens think our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, but only a third of naturalized citizens share that view. Naturalized citizens have already taken a solemn oath to renounce all of their connections and allegiance to where they came from. And yet they're coming in here thinking international law should trump our Constitution. Give me a break!" said Schlafly. The push for comprehensive immigration reform appears to be on hold. Just days after he and other House GOP leaders unveiled their principles for reform, House Speaker john Boehner recently announced nothing would be moving forward because a large percentage of Republican lawmakers simply don't trust President Obama to faithfully enforce provisions with which he disagrees. Schlafly is encouraged by the delay but says opponents are fighting a tough battle against elements in both parties. "I hope he'll never bring it up because what is mislabeled reform is actually amnesty and the lobbyists who are for this type of amnesty are very powerful and very well-financed. The Democrats are for it because they know it will create more Democratic Party votes. It's the big business Republicans who want the cheap labor," said Schlafly. National Republican Party leaders see things very differently. In the Republican National Committee's report on the 2012 elections, the only policy recommendation was passage of comprehensive immigration reform. In addition to advocating tighter border security, greater e-verify enforcement and a robust guest worker visa program, the party also believes it needs to find a way to connect with the nation's fastest-growing demographic. GOP officials say the issue may not be the only thing that matters to Latino voters but until Republicans address it in a substantive way, it will be nearly impossible to start a dialogue on many other issues that might otherwise attract Latinos to the party. Schlafly isn't buying it. "(RNC Chairman Reince) Priebus is part of the establishment and we have another 'choice not an echo' fight between the establishment Republicans, who are mostly the big business and the internationalist Republicans, against the grassroots. The grassroots is almost solidly against this amnesty they mislabel reform. It isn't reform at all. It's amnesty. It's letting in as many people as possible. And there's no good argument for it," said Schlafly. Even the most liberal advocates of immigration reform insist they are not in favor of amnesty. So what do they mean by "amnesty" and what does Schlafly mean? "When I say amnesty, I mean any of these different views that are mislabeled reform. Anything Chuck Schumer's for, we should be against.That's why we encouraged the House never to go into conference with him, because Schumer would just out-talk anybody else," said Schlafly. Schlafly is also one of the nation's leading voices on social conservative issues. She is incensed that federal judges are creating a pattern of overturning voter-approved constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Since December, judges in Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia have struck down amendments. A judge in Kentucky recently ordered the commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, despite voters explicitly giving the state power to reject them. Many of the judges are basing their rulings on last June's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on United States v. Windsor, which struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and found that the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages in states where it is legal. The justices did not address DOMA's provisions allowing states to set their own definitions of marriage and decide whether they would recognize marriages same-sex marriages performed in other states. "Judges are thinking they're trying to be on the right side of history, but they're not and I think what they're doing is not constitutional. The Windsor case that they're relying on did not uphold same-sex marriage, but they're all acting like it did and made it the law of the land. It is not the law of the land," said Schlafly. "It was 35 states I believe that have voted for marriage to be one man and one woman. They're ignoring that and that Utah decision was particularly outrageous and contrary to everything we know is right and just in this country. Several years ago, I wrote my book called 'The Supremacists', about how these judges are getting to think they are God Almighty and can do anything they want," said Schlafly. "What Obama says he going to do anything he wants now, the judges have been doing for years and they label it under the words living Constitution," she said. "I think the American people have got to stop this dictatorial attitude of Obama, who thinks he can do anything by executive order and the judges who think they can do anything they want by calling it a living Constitution." |
| Gohmert Rips Obama Lawlessness, GOP Timidity |
| Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:29:18 EST Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says he's not sure if he's more disappointed in President Obama regularly legislating on Obamacare and other issues from the Oval Office or Congress for letting him get away with it. The tea party favorite also ripped the Obama administration for trying to get business leaders to lie about Obamacare. He also aimed choice words at GOP leaders for allowing an extension of the debt ceiling with no conditions and for claiming they can't really rein in spending until the GOP also controls the Senate and White House. Earlier this week, President Obama declared another delay in the implementation of the employer mandate, specifically the part impacting businesses employing between 50-99 people. Those employers now have until 2015 to comply with the mandate. Republicans are characterizing this as another example of Obama unilaterally changing laws rather than enforcing them and ignoring the constitutional role of Congress to create or alter legislation. Gohmert agrees with that assessment but says there's more blame to go around. "Not only is it egregious that someone in the executive branch is legislating -heck, I left the bench to run for Congress so that I could participate in legislation, because I knew the judiciary and the executive is not supposed to. Not only is that egregious, but the fact that Congress isn't standing up against that sort of usurpation. Shame on the Democrats that won't stand up against that," said Gohmert, who lamented that the mandate delay is once again a lifeline for businesses while individual Americans get no such reprieve. "It is helping business and screwing over middle class Americans who are going to have to pay for this. It also points out how dishonest and disingenuous Harry Reid was when he shut down the government. We passed a bill that would postpone this for all Americans in our third compromise we offered. They wouldn't do it. Now we see they were willing to do it. They just wanted to shut down the government because they knew the mainstream would blame Republicans. It is really outrageous," said Gohmert. Gohmert is also livid at revelations the Obama administration is forbidding employers from reducing staff in order to avoid qualifying for the mandate. The U.S. Treasury is reportedly telling employers they can make the staff reductions so long as they swear, under penalty of perjury, that Obamacare was not the reason for the jobs being eliminated. "It's this president and this executive branch putting a financial gun to the head of employers and saying you've got to go under oath and lie or you're not going to be able to stay in business because the Obamacare penalty is going to hurt you so badly. It is really outrageous to force them to make a political statement for the administration in order to get what should be rightfully theirs under the law. Their is nothing in the law that says they can't let employees go to get down to a certain level," said Gohmert. "They were going to force people to lay off employees and now they're going to force them to lie about why they laid them off. It is really just so wrong, so immoral on so many levels," he said. Another major story in Congress this week was both the House and Senate comfortably passing a debt ceiling extension that gives President Obama borrowing authority for more than a year. The Senate version passed on Democratic votes, although a dozen Republicans helped them defeat a filibuster attempt. In the House, Speaker John Boehner bluntly informed the GOP Conference he was bringing forward a "clean" extension, with no demands on spending cuts, the Keystone XL pipeline or anything else attached. Democrats provided most of the votes for passage in the House as well, although 28 Republicans also backed the plan. Sources close to the Republican leaders say Speaker Boehner offered a laundry list of conditions to attach to the debt ceiling hike but that he was stymied by a large contingent of GOP members who refused to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances. Gohmert says that's simply not true. "They should get out and talk to real members instead of just talking to themselves before they make statement's like that," said Gohmert. "The executive branch should never have been given a blank credit card for the next year unless there were some measures on that bill that would have helped save America for the future," he said. "I don't know how they came to a conclusion that they couldn't get 218 (votes to pass a bill with conditions) because I talked to a number of people who are normally 'no' votes on raising the debt ceiling and proposed a couple of things that they said they'd be hard pressed not to vote for that. They thought they probably would. And these are people that were not whipped or checked by our leadership. So I don't know how they could conclude, 'No, we'll never get enough people on anything, so let's just throw in the towel completely,'" said Gohmert. Republicans were widely believed to have little stomach for a debt ceiling fight just months after taking much of the blame for the two-week partial government shutdown and just months before a midterm election in which the GOP appears poised to keep the House and make a strong run at winning back a majority in the U.S. Senate. Many Republican lawmakers and commentators also assert that Republicans need to accept the political reality of Democratic control of the House and Senate. They say until the GOP controls both chambers of Congress and the White House, advancing conservative principles is next to impossible. Gohmert says that rationale is deeply flawed on multiple fronts. First, he argues that Republicans have tremendous power on issues like debt and spending because the House controls the purse strings. "You cannot get one dime appropriate for anything, including all of the pet projects of the White House, unless the Republicans in the House go along with it. We have the most important half of the legislative branch. Because we haven't been willing to stand up for the Constitution and stand up for an end to this massive deficit spending like never in our history that's going on under this president, the country is hurting," said Gohmert. The congressman also flatly rejects the notion that Republicans should not do anything too ambitious or controversial that could rock the boat in an election year. Gohmert says recent GOP history proves that strategy is a loser. "I heard similar things back in the first of the year conference in 2006 when we had a Republican president, a Republican House and Senate majority. We were told at that time, 'Gee, there's a small chance we might lose the majority in November of 2006 so we better just hold up and not do anything. Our plan is we're not going to do anything big. We're just going to try to get through the year without ruffling any feathers and then in January 2007 we'll come back,'" said Gohmert. "I pointed out, 'Look, if you think there's any chance we could lose the majority here in the House, this has to be the year we stand up for what we believe in.' It sounds like we're going back into that now and saying, 'Gee, we have the majority. The American public gave it to us because we promised if you gave us the majority in the House, we will stand up for America, and now we're making it conditioned on getting the Senate and the White House before we stand up for what we believe?' asked Gohmert. "The Democrats are certainly standing up for what they believe. Harry Reid certainly stood up in his war against children by spending future children's money that we don't even have, when he last September and October said, 'No, I'm not negotiating at all,'" said Gohmert. "If we felt as strongly about our principles as Harry Reid does about shutting down the government unless they can keep spending children's and grandchildren's money, then I think we would be able to prevail on things that would help America," said Gohmert. |
| Hole in the Center of the Ozone |
| Fri, 14 Feb 2014 16:18:58 EST As a major storm brought ice to the South and snow to the Northeast, the Capitol Steps bring in former Vice President Al Gore for his climate change analysis and try to figure out if this means Gore was dead wrong or that he was right since climate change activists contend all weather is proof of global warming. We also chat about some of the oddities at the Winter Olympics in Russia. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport. |
| 'It Is Exactly As It Seems to Be' |
| Fri, 14 Feb 2014 14:15:39 EST The leader of a prominent grassroots organization targeted for unlawful scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service says she is not surprised by evidence of collaboration between the government and liberal organizations in reviewing applications for tax-exempt status. As reported this week, the IRS essentially subcontracted its responsibility to review the applications to the Urban Institute, a liberal organization that gets some federal funding but also gets significant financial back from George Soros. Specifically, online applicants are directed to the Urban Institute's website if they take in less than $50,000 in annual receipts. True the Vote President Catherine Englebrecht, who ripped the IRS for its heavy-handed tactics and not conducting any meaningful investigation into alleged abuses, says this sort of cozy working relationship should not surprise anyone. "It is exactly as it seems to be. They are weaponizing government against private individuals and non-profit organizations that oppose current policy or the performance of this administration. They want them silenced," said Englebrecht. "It doesn't shock me in the least. This is the bare-knuckle politics that we sadly see being used by agencies within the government that are not about representing the people but are about maintaining their own power." Englebrecht says she can't think of any legitimate reason for the IRS and a group like the Urban Institute to be working together on matters involving that kind of sensitive information the government requires from tax-exempt applicants. At least one conservative organization, the National Organization for Marriage, learned its donor list ended up in the hands of the Human Rights Campaign, its chief rival in the marriage debate. Englebrecht says True the Vote cannot be certain whether its confidential information was transmitted to opposing groups as well. "That's a tough question to answer because we been attacked so soundly on so many fronts. Whether or not information is being used, there's so much out there about us, it's entirely possible. And that is one of the things we're asking to be addressed in our lawsuit when we sued the IRS, is the discovery of certain documents that we can't get our hands on otherwise will be revealed in this lawsuit. We should be able to figure out who was pointing the cannons in our direction," said Englebrecht. True the Vote is an organization dedicated to cleaning up the voter rolls across the nation by weeding out the dead and those who have left a state. They also back legislation requiring voters to present photo identification before casting ballots. The Obama administration, Democrats at the state level and liberal advocacy groups staunchly oppose such efforts. In addition to submitting paperwork about the group's voters, Englebrecht says the IRS made other demands that were clearly absurd. "There were questions that still cause the hair on the back of my neck to stand up, questions like, 'We want to know everywhere you've ever spoken since the inception of your organization and to whom you spoke and what you said. That particular question was asked in 2012 (and) they wanted to know everywhere I intended to speak through 2013. That goes so far beyond the pale. It is such a clear effort to chill political speech. On the basis of that question alone, I think we should have had an investigation," said Englebrecht. Englebrecht isn't convinced any investigation into IRS abuses is taking place and if there is one, she believes getting to the truth is a pretty low priority. "It is smoke and mirrors. There is no intent to actually get to the bottom of who knew what when and why it all happened like it did. In fact quite the opposite, as we now see the IRS suggesting that it's going to impose new regulations on (501 (c) 4 non-profits), shutting down their ability to educate and reach voters and fundamentally changing the landscape of pro-liberty non-profits in this country. That's where we're headed is the codification, the legalization of the type of targeting that this administration is all too keen to just gloss over," said Englebrecht. Englebrecht says she cannot be certain if her group was singled out for even greater scrutiny than the other affected conservative organizations because of its work to ensure that voter rolls are up to date and elections are conducted with integrity. She says there's no good reason not to have voter ID but believes there is a crystal clear reason for the opposition on the left. "What is it that these organizations are trying to protect? What I submit is they are trying to protect an environment of hostility and agitation, using race-baiting to keep Americans falsely at odds with one another because in that wedge they derive power," said Englebrecht. "They need to keep people upset so that they can provide the solution. It is victimization as an art form." |
| The Fight Against Climate Science Corruption |
| Wed, 12 Feb 2014 14:49:19 EST Powerful forces at the United Nations, in national governments and inside the scientific community make life very difficult for scientists disputing the conventional wisdom on climate change, both personally and professionally, even though the real science is on the side of the skeptics. That's the assertion of Dr. Tim Ball, a former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg. He is also the author of "The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science." In the first part of our coverage on this story, Ball detailed how the modern climate change movement finds its roots in the Malthusian notion that the population must be lowered to avoid running out of food and other resources. He says that theory led to the demonizing of industrialized nations and, in turn, fossil fuels and carbon dioxide in particular. He also explained how Maurice Strong used his position as head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to set a political agenda towards purportedly backed up by the latest in climate science. Ball also says the UN then collaborated with the World Meteorological Organization to present the IPCC findings as settled science and shame or deny funding to any scientists who disagreed with their conclusions. For scientists bold enough to speak out anyway, finding any interest from scientists or the media in hearing opposing viewpoints proved very difficult. "It made the counter-argument almost impossible because one of the things they started is that they defeated the scientific method. Scientists create hypotheses and the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis was that humans are producing more CO2. If you increase CO2 in the atmosphere the temperature will go up and therefore we can predict runaway global warming because humans are going to keep expanding their industries," said Ball. "What would normally happen with a hypothesis is that other scientists would challenge that and those other scientists would challenge it as skeptics because all scientists are skeptics or should be," said Ball, who says the climate change activists turned that natural, professional skepticism into a public buzzword that branded Ball and others as part of an ideological fringe. "We were marginalized in blocking the scientific method. And then, of course, we were marginalized because of public relations attacks based on who was funding us or what our agenda was," he said. Ball says while few scientists are willing to publicly denounce the conclusions of the IPCC, many agree that the science is faulty. "I even had (Canadian) scientists say to me, 'Look, I'm a socialist and if I say I agree with you, then I'm immediately branded a conservative and I don't want that to happen to me.' I've also had a lot of scientists say, 'I've watched what you've gone through with lawsuits and everything else. I'm keeping my mouth shut.' So the intimidation factor has just been tremendous," said Ball. One of the most publicly compelling arguments on the conventional side of this debate, however, is there is near unanimous consensus that climate change is real and human activity is playing a major role in an increasingly volatile climate. Ball believes the real breakdown is closer to 50-50, but he says that whole argument is meaningless. "I'm not in favor of these surveys and the consensus argument. As soon as they started using that, that proved to me this was political because consensus has no place in science. As Einstein said, 'I can have a hundred things that prove me right and only one thing to prove me wrong and that's the end of it,'" said Ball. In addition to describing what he considers the long-term corruption of science, Ball also spends time in his book explaining what the full climate science record does tell us. "The reality is the major change of climate change is the sun. They pretend to eliminate the sun but they only look at one portion of the sun, that is the electromagnetic radiation. There are many changes in the sun that cause climate change, such as the changing orbit, the changing tilt and the effect of the sun's magnetic field upon cosmic radiation coming into the earth, which then creates low clouds, which effects temperature. None of that is included in their IPCC reports," said Ball. "I think it's important that if you're going to say they're wrong then you have to provide an explanation that covers what they're doing or what they're ignoring," said Ball, noting that the IPCC shows no interest in investigating ideas for the changing climate other than rising levels of carbon dioxide. This fight over climate science comes at a heavy price for those in disagreement with the IPCC and its allies. Ball is no different. He says the response to his outspoken opposition is taking a heavy toll. "I've often thought if I had to do it again I wouldn't do it. Until you have experienced, like some are having with the IRS attacking them in the U.S. You cannot relate to other people exactly what it's like when you are sitting in your little condo and you've spent all of your savings on legal fees. And (when there's) a knock on the door at four o'clock on a Friday and your wife starts crying because she's afraid it's the sheriff delivering a legal summons. People have no idea what that's like. I'm not sure that I would do it again. I'm almost at the point where if the world wants to be fooled, let it be fooled. I'm not going to fight for it again," said Ball. "That's why a lot of scientists said to me, 'We're not prepared to go through what you've gone through.' I sort of sympathize with that, but like Edmund Burke said, evil triumphs when good people stand idly by. That's really the challenge in an open democracy like you have in the United States with free speech," said Ball. |
| How Climate Science Was Corrupted |
| Tue, 11 Feb 2014 15:18:58 EST The climate change movement is ultimately designed to thin the earth's population and the science behind the movement is deeply and deliberately flawed in order to further a political end, according to climatologist Dr. Tim Ball. In his new book, "The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science", Ball also lays out how he believes those perpetrating this massive scientific fraud managed to keep the truth hidden from mainstream scientists and later intimidated most them to keep them quiet. Ball is one of the leading voices from the climatology community to loudly condemn the conclusions and tactics of those calling for major public policy changes to combat the purported threat to our climate posed by human activity. According to Ball, the motivation for the climate change movement's leaders is nothing new. He says they are the latest incarnation of of an effort that goes back to the 19th century writings of Thomas Malthus, who argued that the human population was growing so fast that the earth's resources could never sustain it. He therefore advocated population control to ward off mass disease and starvation. Malthus and others ultimately identified industrialized nations as the greatest consumer of resources and suggested the advance of industry needed to be stopped. As the years went on, Ball says, the focus narrowed to the fossil fuels powering the economy in advanced nations. He says that obsession ultimately led the modern day activists to settle on carbon dioxide as the culprit for the earth's dangerous climate trends but required an ingenious approach to get the public on board with the idea. "If you can shut off the flow of fossil fuels, that will stop the engine of those industrialized nations, but people would scream immediately if that happened. But if you could show that the byproduct of the combustion of that fossil fuel, carbon dioxide, was causing runaway global warming and climate change, then you could use that for a vehicle to introduce legislation to shut down those industrialized nations," said Ball. "That's been the whole driving force of everything Maurice Strong is doing and, of course, underlies what Obama's pushing," said Ball. Ball sees Maurice Strong as one of the most pivotal figures in the advancement of what he considers the modern-day assault on industrialized nations. He says Strong grew up in socialist Canadian family and rose to prominence in a way many might not expect. "He's a superb organizer of bureaucracies and he made a lot of money in industry. That's the irony of these people like Bill Gates. They get money and then they're going to go save the planet," mused Ball. Strong ultimately worked his way into becoming the head of the United Nations climate program in the 1980s. That role led to his calling for the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992 and the creation of a larger UN vision known as Agenda 21. Later in the 1990s, Strong shepherded the creation of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where Ball says Strong wielded immense power. "Strong, in an interview with Elaine Dewar, in a book called 'Cloak of Green', she said what he's doing is using the United Nations to establish world government and total control. When he made the comment to her about how we've got to shut down industrialized nations, she said, 'Why don't you run for politics?' He said, 'You can't do anything as a politician. I'm going to go to the UN and get all the money I want and not be accountable to anybody,'" said Ball. Ball says the fix was in from the start and that the IPCC was only tasked with one job, proving that global warming was caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide. "They did that by directing them to only look at human causes of climate change. Of course, if you don't know how much natural variability there is, you can't possibly determine the human portion. They didn't care about that. They just wanted to be able to say the science is settled and we're 95 percent certain that human carbon dioxide is causing global warming. That's why they picked on CO2 and that was Maurice Strong's role in it," said Ball. One of the most difficult arguments for the public to believe from climate change skeptics like Ball is that there was and continues to be some grand conspiracy to produce results concluding that human activity is triggering higher carbon dioxide and that urgent actions to curb emissions must be taken. Ball says the UN's climate panel was very carefully constructed to limit who actually saw the data and who made policy recommendations based on the research. He says the IPCC had three working groups. One did the scientific research that was predestined to show alarming climate change. The second group then projected how the climate would change if new policies weren't adopted. The third group formulated policies for industrialized nations to follow in order to avoid the dire predictions. Ball says the results were an odd combination of admittedly bad science and a tight circle of experts turning out the finished products. "In Working Group One, they tell you everything that's wrong with their computer models. They set it all out. They say, 'Look, we don't know this. We don't know that. This is wrong. That's wrong. But they set up a separate group called the Summary for Policy Makers, which includes politicians and bureaucrats and a few very carefully selected scientists. Most of these were scientists at the Climactic Research Institute (CRU), where all the leaked emails about what they were doing came from.," said Ball. "They controlled critical chapters (in the IPCC reports). They controlled the chapter on data and they manipulated the data. They controlled the chapter on paleo-climate data, that is reconstruction of past climates," said Ball. "So they set about through that Summary for Policy Makers, creating a completely false image of what their findings were. "The Summary for Policy Makers, by their own rules, is released before the science report is released and they know that's going to get media attention. It says the temperature is going to rise by this much and all of the other nonsense and that is what gets the media headlines. Then a few months later they bring out the science report, which of course they know nobody's going to read," he said. "But when you compare the science report with the Summary for Policy Makers, it's more than the difference of night and day. It's like two completely different planets. This is done deliberately to deceive," said Ball. "Everything's been manipulated to create a completely false and extreme scenario of what their research actually shows." Even if Strong and his allies at the UN and CRU managed to close ranks in conducting research and presenting the findings, how did such a large consensus of scientists around the world come to agree with the IPCC conclusions if the data is clearly flawed? Ball says some just don't understand the science well and for others the lack of public opposition pretty much boils down to money and power. "The vast majority of people, and even scientists, they don't understand climate science. That's part of the difficulty. They might know their own area of physics or their own area of biology but they didn't know what the climate science was, so they just accepted it," said Ball, noting that the bulk of scientists didn't examine the science report and merely read through the Summary for Policy Makers. Ball says another brilliant stroke taken by Strong and the IPCC was to enlist the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). That group is made up of bureaucrats from every national weather agency. Ball says the WMO then proclaimed the IPCC findings to be national policy in all member nations and the few political figures who dared to question the findings were dismissed as lacking standing in climate science. Independent scientists were also silenced because the WMO and its member nations only provided money to scientists who adopted the official line. "Because all of the national weather agencies were involved in this, then they directed funding only to those researchers that were proving what the IPCC was saying. As a result, people that were daring to question didn't get funded," said Ball. |
| How Amnesty Died in the House |
| Mon, 10 Feb 2014 15:56:02 EST House Speaker John Boehner recently announced Republicans would not be moving on any major immigration legislation any time soon, because GOP members simply don't trust President Obama to faithfully enforce provisions he doesn't like. Boehner's statement came less than a week after he and other House Republican leaders unveiled their key principles for immigration reform at a party retreat and expressed a desire to get something done. According to Iowa Rep. Steve King, what happened in between was a quick and boisterous revolt to the principles within the House Republican Conference. King is a longtime critic of the "comprehensive" approach to immigration reform and believes any legalization of people in the country illegally is tantamount to amnesty. He says many members were given no advanced notice of Boehner's immigration principles and were asked to give swift approval without much time to study them. But King says he was prepared anyway. "We didn't have a chance to examine the document or look at it or edit it or make our contributions to it. It was, 'These are the principles we want to live by and we don't want to talk about the immigration outside of this. We just want to talk about this document,'" said King. "Well, I had read the document thoroughly through when the meeting started because my staff had picked it up from a left-wing website and it was out there on the left-wing side, but not to the conservatives, not to our border security people," he said. King says it didn't take for the opposition to rise up among conservative members of the conference. "Member after member stood up to the microphone and said we don't need to move on this. We can't trust the president. A very few few of them said, 'I agree with your principles but we shouldn't move now.' I put out my estimate that three to four-to-one inside that conference stood up to that microphone and opposed going forward on immigration," said King. "Most of them understand that if we legalize people that are here, it is amnesty, that it does great damage to the rule of law, that there's no upside in it for Americans and certainly no upside in it for Republicans," he said, noting that GOP were trumpeting the immigration principles at the end of the retreat but already knew it was going nowhere. Late last week, Boehner poured cold water on the idea of major immigration legislation passing this year. "I have never underestimated the difficulty in moving forward this year. And frankly one of the biggest obstacles we face is the one of trust," said Boehner. "There's widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws and it's going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes." So did Boehner and other leaders ultimately agree that President Obama cannot be trusted or is this a matter of acknowledging that the Republican votes for this plan simply aren't there? King says it's probably both. "I've been making the argument for two-and-a-half years that the president can't be trusted, at least on immigration. He's violated his constitutional oath and the law multiple times. So I would think that if the Speaker had come to that conclusion it's not the first time that he'd heard that argument," said King. "But I think it was instead counting votes, not so much changing his conviction. He just knows that, at this point at least, he can't go forward with what he wants to do," said King. Perhaps most unsettling to King is that he sees the newly unveiled GOP immigration principles as largely a re-run of the Senate's comprehensive "Gang of Eight" bill that passed last year. "This document, when you lay it down and you go through more than a thousand pages of the Senate's 'Gang of Eight' amnesty bill, this document encompasses the 'Gang of Eight's' amnesty bill. It would comply with this document with the exception of, perhaps, blatantly promising the path to citizenship," said King. "That tells you how far this document goes. It's wide open. It's broad and there's a reason why the left-wing websites had it before the members of Congress had it." While immigration reform legislation might stay on the back burner for this year's midterm elections, the question now is whether GOP members believe it is possible for Obama to restore enough trust over the remainder of his term for lawmakers to take up the issue once again. King says he can't imagine that happening but believes Republican leaders do. "Listening to the Speaker's statement, he leaves room for trust to be rebuilt with the president. The minute I heard that, I draw a different conclusion, which is once you lose that trust, to restore that is just very close to an impossibility. I don't know why anyone would think that a president who has over and over again simply trampled over the legislative branch of government and waved his ink pen at us and said that he'll run the country if we don't do what he tells us to do," said King. "I don't know why anyone would trust a president like that to essentially change his spots afterwards," said King. King also laughs of suggestions from New York Sen. Chuck Schumer that Congress pass reform but hold off on implementation until a new president is in office as another "ploy" by those looking to pass amnesty. The congressman says Republicans also just dodged a major election year bullet by not plowing forward on immigration legislation. He says pollster Scott Rasmussen recently told the Conservative Opportunity Society. "Speaking of immigration and Republicans taking it up, he said, 'I can't think of a stupider thing for your conference to take up,' said King, quoting Rasmussen. "I agree with that. It allows the president and his party to split Republicans." King says that Obama strategy can be seen in Obama's holiday message from Hawaii earlier this year, in which called for immigration reform, a hike in the minimum wage and extended unemployment benefits. "Those three items have something in common. Each of them unify Democrats and divide Democrats. That's the tactic. That's why he has a priority, because he wants to take our minds off of Obamacare and get Republicans fighting amongst themselves," said King. |
| Persecution Relief Group Lauds Obama |
| Fri, 7 Feb 2014 15:42:50 EST President Obama sent a clear and vital message in favor of religious freedom and against sectarian persecution in his address to the National Prayer Breakfast this week, according to Open Doors USA President and CEO Dr. David Curry. Open Doors USA is one of the leading organizations providing assistance to Christians persecuted in repressive nations run by Communist, Islamic and other totalitarian-style governments. Obama's speech touched on a number of subjects, ranging from his own religious background to how he believes faith influences much of his domestic agenda. However, a major portion of his remarks centered around the quest to improve human rights around the world, with a specific emphasis on religious freedom and it goes hand-in-hand with other basic freedoms of speech, expression and assembly. Obama called for religious tolerance in volatile places like Nigeria and Burma, but he also called it an essential part of fostering stability in Egypt and Syria. "No society can truly succeed unless it guarantees the rights of all the people, including religious minorities, whether they 19re Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan, or Baha 19i in Iran, or Coptic Christians in Egypt. And in Syria, it means ensuring a place for all people -- Alawites and Sunni, Shia and Christian," said Obama. Curry says Obama's statement was a long time in coming but he hopes it will reverberate around the world. "Having just returned from Egypt just a week or two ago, where I met with Christians who had their property, their churches damaged, over 300 churches and building damaged since August, I was very encouraged that the president seems to be responding to the call that Open Doors has made and finally step up and fill the gap in being a voice for the persecuted church around the world," said Curry. "Christians happen to be, whether people understand it or not, the largest religious minority in the world. There has been a leadership and we're just glad that the president seems to be recognizing it and addressing it," he said. Curry admits there a lot of policies he would like to see the Obama administration pursue to back up the word we heard at the National Prayer Breakfast. He says they have been sorely lacking but could have a huge impact on the world if stated repeatedly. "We've been surprised thus far that the president has largely been silent on this issue, especially when you consider that the number of Christians who have been martyred for their faith doubled in the last 12 months. So there's been a lot of violence yet there's been silence coming from our administration and, to be fair, from other western governments as well. We were surprised at the silence. We're pleased that there seems to be some movement on this, even if it is a bit late," said Curry. Curry also credits Obama for linking religious freedom to other basic freedoms the U.S. regularly champions around the world. "It is fundamental to say I want to be able to think for myself. I want to read and study religious texts that I choose and then to make up your mind what you believe. I think Christianity always does great when it's in the free marketplace of ideas," said Curry, who says places around the world that repress free religious expression are usually this first squelch other basic human rights as well. |
| The Depths of IRS Abuse |
| Fri, 7 Feb 2014 14:42:37 EST In addition to its ongoing harassment of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, the IRS is also carrying out audits on right-leaning organizations on a level that cannot be coincidental and improperly sharing sensitive information with rival liberal organizations, according to one of the lead attorneys for groups accusing the IRS of misconduct. Cleta Mitchell made headlines Thursday when she told congressional investigators that the IRS scandal is ongoing and the Justice Department investigation into the alleged abuses is a non-existent "sham". However, Mitchell also says the IRS treatment of conservative groups and individuals continue to find themselves in the IRS cross hairs in large numbers and the cases are not at all limited to those seeking tax-exempt status. "There's been something going on in terms of the returns themselves and the high number of individuals who became politically active," said Mitchell. "I had an email from someone (Thursday) who saw the testimony on TV and said, 'I created a website for our local tea party group and then I was audited by the IRS.' I have heard stories like that over and over and over again. I want a prosecutor or someone to conduct a statistical analysis of those who have been audited the last two or three years. "It isn't just big donors, unlike what the IRS commissioner said (Wednesday) when trying to justify why so many major donors to Romney were audited. It's individuals. It's small businesses, web designers, people who provided services to tea party groups. They've been subject to audits as well. I do not believe that it is statistically random," said Mitchell. "I think that if anyone actually did the analysis that it would be clear these were not randomly selected." Another open question centers on whether the IRS not only overstepped its bounds in demanding sensitive information from conservatives but subsequently colluded with liberal organizations with that same data. One of Mitchell's clients is the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), one of the leading defenders of traditional marriage across the country. Multiple reports assert the IRS not only demanded excessive amounts of data regarding the group's donors but that the information subsequently turned up in the possession of the Human Right Campaign (HRC), the most prominent interest group promoting same-sex marriage and other aspects of the homosexual agenda. NOM is suing the IRS over the matter, and Mitchell is limited in what she can say as the discovery phase of the case unfolds. She says the lack of transparency from the IRS has been infuriating but what she has uncovered thus far has been stunning. "We asked for an Inspector General's report to find out what happened and why NOM's donor schedule was released to the HRC. How did that happen? Who did it?" she asked. "There was an Inspector General's investigation, which the IRS would then not give to us. They said even though the law is to protect the taxpayer, in this case the National Organization for Marriage, the IRS has construed that to mean that they cannot tell you information about the unlawful inspection or release of your tax return because then that would implicate the perpetrator's confidential information. Therefore, they have to protect the perpetrator, the IRS employee, and they cannot and will not then tell you anything," said Mitchell. "We have had to sue the IRS and we are beginning to get information. Discovery closes mid-March and we are learning some things that we are going to be making public within the next few weeks. Suffice to say it is shocking to learn the kinds of things the IRS employees are doing in terms of accessing confidential taxpayer information," she said. |
| Don't Cry I'm from Argentina |
| Fri, 7 Feb 2014 14:36:05 EST In just a few months on the job, Pope Francis has attracted attention for his public statements on hot button issues and for making himself far more accessible than many of his predecessors. As the Pope now appears on the cover of Rolling Stone, the Capitol Steps give an inside look at the papacy. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport. |
| IRS Probe A 'Sham' |
| Thu, 6 Feb 2014 16:15:47 EST The attorney for many conservative organization alleging illegal and unconstitutional treatment by the IRS says the Justice Department investigation into the misdeeds are a non-existent "sham" and the malfeasance goes far deeper than most Americans are aware. The debate took on new life Sunday when President Obama told Bill O'Reilly of the Fox News Channel there was "not even a smidgen of corruption" committed by the IRS, that the issue had been thoroughly investigated and the only culprits were a couple of low-level staffers in Cincinnati who improperly applied the law. Cleta Mitchell was one of several witnesses Thursday before a House hearing into the alleged IRS abuses. She says the president could not be more wrong. First, she asserts there is no completed investigation and she's not even sure one ever existed. "I have not been contacted until, interestingly enough, about two hours after I submitted my formal testimony which outlined all the things that if the FBI ever bothered to call me I would actually tell them. It became clear to me that the Democrats on the committee are calling and talking to the Department of Justice and getting information. I think that they had the Department of Justice call me. I still haven't spoken to them," said Mitchell. "I know they haven't talked to any of the organizations. I would have heard about that because I deal with so many of these groups on a regular basis," she said. "So the FBI and the DOJ have not talked to any of the victims or the witnesses in this case and yet the president announces blithely on Sunday the conclusion of the investigation." Mitchell says this cavalier approach by Obama and others within the administration is why so many want in independent prosecutor on the case. Notable in her absence at the hearing was Justice Department attorney Barbara Bosserman, who was believed to be the head of the Justice Department probe. Mitchell says it was the Justice Department that announced Barbara Bosserman, who maxed out her political donations to President Obama in 2012, was heading the investigation. Since the donor information became public, the DOJ says Bosserman not heading the probe but is simply a member of the team. Mitchell says that's still not good enough and demonstrates how badly the administration is trying to spin this story. "They just can't get their story straight. My response to all of this is let's not lose sight of the fact that what happened to these people was real. It is real. It is ongoing and the scandal has not stopped," said Mitchell. Mitchell says IRS harassment of groups filing for tax-exempt status continued as late as August 2013 and some groups are still waiting for approval more than three years after applying for that status. Worse yet, she says, the Obama administration is not seeking to prevent such treatment of grassroots organizations in the future. Instead, it's looking to make those actions standard operating procedure. "Basically what they are proposing to do is take all the activities in which 501 (c) 4 organizations normally and regularly engage , whether it's voter registration, get out the vote, candidate debates, candidate forums, grassroots lobbying, organizing events where they have organizations come and speak. The IRS is proposing to call all of these things candidate-related political activities and say that while an organization could participate in those, none of those would count towards the primary purpose of the organization," said Mitchell. "We have the federal government saying that a candidate debate is not in the public good. It doesn't count toward social welfare. Please. We would rather have everybody get their information about their candidates from the candidates' 30-second TV commercials? We think that's better than having a citizens group hosting a debate?," she said. "This is so outrageous that I can't even believe that we would sit and even contemplate allowing the federal government to move forward with these proposed regulations," said Mitchell. She says those wishing to fight the effort to impose these regulations on tax-exempt groups can join the fight at wewillnotbesilenced.org. |
| The Baby Boom's Mixed Bag |
| Wed, 5 Feb 2014 17:29:21 EST The Baby Boom generation made the world more fun but not necessarily better, says author and humorist P.J. O'Rourke. The generation defined as those born between 1946-1964 still comprises 25 percent of the U.S. population. Prompted by the youngest of the Baby Boom generation turning 50 years old this year, O'Rourke is the author of the new book, "The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way, And It wasn't my Fault and I'll never Do It Again." He says there are certainly good and bad legacies for the generation that that largely embraced illegal drugs, free love, campus protests and radical politics. "It is definitely a nicer, kinder world. We are the generation that wanted to give the world a hug and a drug and we want people to like us and we want to like other people. We're not about to belong to great big hateful organizations like the Communists or the Nazis and trying to kill a bunch of people," said O'Rourke. "The negative heritage from the Baby Boom is an excessive self-involvement. There's no doubt that we were spoiled kids and that we ended up acting like spoiled kids. And we're still spoiled kids even though we're 50 and up," he said. In the book, O'Rourke outlines some paradoxical traits of Baby Boomers, including the notion that they know everything but that their greatest skill is being able to BS their way through just about anything. He explained how both concepts are true and how it impact our national leadership today. "When you're convinced you know everything, it lends an extra power to your BS. Without making any political aspersions or judgments here, I think that the most Baby Boom of our three Baby Boom presidents clearly had to be Bill Clinton, who really had the BS thing figured out," said O'Rourke. "If you're looking at the political deadlock in Washington, what you're really looking at is the Baby Boom generation in political power and we would much rather yell at each other than do something." "I put the date on when we took charge when "Animal House" was released (1978). And if you look in Congress today, it's pretty much full of Senator Blutarsky, isn't it?" he said. O'Rourke also points out that Social Security and Medicare already account for 35 percent of federal spending and over the next couple of decades, the aging Baby Boomers will require half the federal budget to spent on those programs alone. He says his generation cannot be blamed for the creation of those programs but it is on the hook for not doing anything to reform them and combat massive deficits. "While we may be beneficiaries of this and too selfish to give up the benefits, as we so often say it wasn't our fault," said O'Rourke. "Did we show the kind of political will that would have fixed these things? Medicare is a difficult fix, Social Security somewhat less difficult. Did we show that political will? No, because we were too busy BS'ing." While the Baby Boomers were known for their liberal activism in the 1960s and 1970s, voting patterns within the generation have leveled off quite a bit as those Americans matured. O'Rourke says reality has a way of changing perspectives. "We were the guinea pigs in this experiment that you can just do anything you want. You can do anything you want sexually. You can do anything you want with drugs. You can do anything you want period. By the time the late '70s nd early '80s rolled around, it became evident that no you can't. There are consequences to actions. I think we did a great favor to all generations coming after us by being the guinea pigs, by being the experiment, by trying to just let it all hang out. Of course, the result was drug overdoses and sexually transmitted diseases and marriage breakdowns and single children. A lot of that is still with us but I don't think that there's anybody left in the United States who believes those things are good things," said O'Rourke. The current millennial generation is often compared to the Baby Boomers because of their liberalism and activism in movements like Occupy Wall Street. O'Rourke says he's far more impressed with today's young adults than with his generation at their age. "When I talk to younger people, yeah they get a lot of piercings and tattoos and funny little beards, but they are a much more sensible generation than my generation was. I think they learned from our example. It wasn't a positive example, but it was an example," he said. |
| 'Destroying Real People's Lives' |
| Tue, 4 Feb 2014 15:59:31 EST A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report shows the new health care laws are expected to eliminate the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs over the next decade, a huge jump from original estimates and opponents of the law say it's more proof that repeal is the only solution. The CBO report states the estimate is based on reduced working hours for some employees and the elimination of other positions by employers who want to avoid being required to provide health coverage to their employees. Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a longtime physician and author of a repeal and replacement bill, says this news is awful but not surprising. "You've got fewer jobs that are being created because of the 3-hour threshold for full-time employees. You've got employers with 50 employees who are trying to get under the 50-employee threshold so they don't come under the oppressive nature of Obamacare. There are all sorts of disincentives for employment within the law itself and I think that's one of the things CBO finally recognized," said Price. Price adds that this report not only confirms the new law is a hindrance to job creation but actively eliminates existing jobs. "People are losing their job because of Obamacare. The number of employers that are increasing the number of employees as well as the number of hours worked are having a huge effect on the economy," said Price. "And then the requirements for employers to provide a level of health coverage greater than their employees either desire or need or the employer provided before, what that means is there's more money taken out of businesses and employers, the job creators in this country, so that they have fewer jobs that they are able to cover from a financial standpoint," said Price. Coincidentally, defenders of the new law also consider the CBO report to be good news. Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, says the job numbers simply show that millions more people will have the option of having health coverage without depending upon an employer to provide it. "The report estimates that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent from 2017 to 2024. This reduction is almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor, which translates to a reduction in full-time-equivalent employment of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024," said Van Hollen in a statement. "This effect is not driven by a reduction in the demand for employees, but is the result of employees choosing to supply less labor because of the option to get affordable, quality health insurance through the new health insurance Marketplaces. The Affordable Care Act empowers individuals to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods, like retiring on time, choosing to spend more time with their families, or even opening their own businesses. Americans are no longer trapped in jobs just to provide coverage for their families," he said. Other supporters see additional good news here as well. Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik says the report shows the new law will end up being cheaper than expected, result in more American having health coverage and that risk-adjustment provisions will turn a profit for the U.S. Treasury. Rep. Price is not swayed. "Our goal ought not to be returning a profit to the U.S. Treasury. It ought to be allowing for individual American dreams to be realized as opposed to stifled by Obamacare. That's the problem with our friends on the left is that they view everything through the prism and the lens of government as opposed to through the prism and the lens of individual Americans. This is destroying real people's lives," said Price. "Although our friends on the left are excited when government expands, the fact of the matter is when government expands, liberty shrinks." While Price and his allies worry about the impact of the new health law on the freedom and bottom line of employers and employees alike, the congressman says even more problems are coming for patients because of a looming exodus of the best physicians. "So many physicians now are just disheartened. I'm 59. The vast majority of former medical colleagues my age are looking for the exit doors. It's so sad because what we're doing as a nation as a matter of public policy is taking this incredible intellectual power of the physicians of this land and those that are near retirement and telling them, 'Look, just go away.' And we as patients are losing the expertise at a time when all these folks ought to be able to practice medicine and care for their fellow citizens fr another 10-15 years," said Price. "They're looking to get out of the system because of Obamacare, not because they've forgotten how to care for people or they've lost their passion for caring for people but because the president's health care law is destroying their ability to care for patients in a responsible way," he said. Price says today's CBO report helps sets the stage for a clear choice for voters this year. |
| Judge Us by Results |
| Mon, 3 Feb 2014 15:16:43 EST Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston says his record in Congress proves he'll be a reliable conservative if elected to the U.S. Senate this year, claims he's accomplished more tangible results than his fellow congressional rivals for the nomination and he insists growing jobs and strengthening national defense are at the top of his agenda. Kingston was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992 and is currently a member of the House Appropriations Committee. He is one of eight Republicans seeking the Senate seat currently held by retiring Republican Saxby Chambliss. Kingston is also one of three GOP House members in the race, joining fellow Reps. Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey. Broun presents himself as the most consistent conservative in the race while Gingrey claims to be the most conservative candidate who can win in November. Both describe themselves to the right of Kingston, but he says the numbers speak for themselves. "I think on some of the things we split the differences.For example, I'm 100 percent with National Right to Life and I'm an A+ with the NRA. That's the highest rating of the three of (us)," said Kingston. "On other things, Club for Growth, Paul Broun is higher than me, but my American Conservative Union rating is 95 percent lifetime and National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is 100 percent," he said. Kingston says specific actions also show his conservative bona fides, including cutting $1.3 million from expenditures in his own office during his congressional tenure through frugality in salaries, mailings and other methods. As chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on agriculture, Kingston says he cut$3.6 billion in real money while his opponents can only talk about what they would do. "It was not a decrease in the increase (in spending) but a real cut. My colleagues cannot make that claim. One of my colleagues talks about all his proposals to cut spending. That doesn't mean anything. What did you bring home? What can you claim you actually did? I can say I cut spending and got it signed into law. That's a big difference," said Kingston. Broun and Gingrey both claim to be more fiscally responsible than Kingston, with Broun calling Kingston the most active in seeking earmarks among Georgia Republicans and being willing to raise the debt ceiling. Kingston addressed both issues, first noting that his votes on the debt ceiling have been very responsible. "When we've been at war, I have voted to increase the debt ceiling and usually that is in a trade-off for spending cuts or something to offset it," said Kingston, who also says he is a staunch opponent of earmarks and some of the projects he gets the most criticism for don't sound like wasteful spending to him. "I was the first author of an earmark ban. We introduced that in 2007. We got 130 co-sponsors on it. It was the first earmark moratorium that was introduced. Certainly earmarks got out of hand both numerically and in substance. Most of the earmarks I had been involved in were military," said Kingston. "One time, Fort Stewart wanted an IED simulator so that soldiers driving in Afghanistan and Iraq on Humvees would know how to react if an IED exploded under them. I would challenge any of my opponents to denounce that as pork," said Kingston, who says another earmark promises to provide a significant return on investment economically. "Another project that I have worked on is the deepening of the Savannah River. There's 352,000 jobs related to the state of Georgia for that. There's a state match to it and the cost-benefit analysis is a dollar spent and a five-and-a-half dollar return. I would love them to come out and say that's a pork barrel project," said Kingston. As for what he would do if elected to the Senate, Kingston says he would advance his American Renewal Initiative, a six-point plan that says is far more detailed than anything his rivals are proposing. The congressman says he wants to beef up military preparedness to the point our troops will never have a fair fight again because of their overwhelming superiority. He also promises to push for balanced budgets and an end to addressing key economic issues on the brink of a fiscal cliff. Eradicating job-killing regulations, restoring work requirements to public assistance and fostering energy independence in a way that helps to drive gas prices back below two dollars per gallon are also high priorities. Also on the list is major simplification of the tax code. "Whether it's Fair Tax or flat tax or whatever, let's have a tax code that's transparent and competitive," said Kingston. With the first round of the Senate primary just over three months away and national midterm elections looming in November, national Republicans appear to be treading in dangerous waters. The House Republicans are deeply divided over immigration policy. Last week, House GOP leaders unveiled a set of principles that would allow for the legalization of many people currently in the country illegally. While not directly stating where he stands on those principles, Kingston offered his own approach to how any reform should be handled. "Here are my four principles. Number one is no amnesty and number two is securing the border. Number three is cracking down on employers who knowingly hire illegals and number four, no welfare for illegal workers," said Kingston, who says border security takes on several components. "Some people say that means a big, big fence. Others will say it means putting predators (drones) and more Border Patrol agents down there. But 40 percent of the people who come in here come in with papers that are legal. It's just that they let them expire. So in my opinion, securing the border also means securing the people that are coming in here and breaking the law by letting their paperwork expire and staying too long," he said. In January, Kingston found himself in the midst of a brief media tempest after suggesting that students receiving taxpayer-funded lunches contribute tiny amounts of money or do some work at the school as a way to instill responsibility in kids and teach them that there is "no such thing as a free lunch." The congressman says he was stunned at the backlash. "It's sad that in today's society you can't even have a decent conversation without these gotcha moments. When you were 14 or 15 years old, did you have a job in which you learned something that you still apply to your life today? If that's the case, wouldn't it be better if we had everybody at a younger age learning this great American work ethic? I don't care if your Bill Gates' kid or my kid or your kid. Chores inside and outside the household will help you," said Kingston. Four to five of the GOP Senate hopefuls seem to have a shot at the nomination. Assuming no one gets a majority of the vote in the May 20 primary, the top two finishers will advance to a July 22 runoff for the nomination. That winner will likely face Democrat Michelle Nunn in November. Kingston says Republicans should spend a little less time sniping at each other and a little more time telling voters that Nunn is ducking the tough questions so far in this campaign. He also thinks he matches up far better against Nunn than any other Republican in the field. "What Democrats know is that I can appeal to voters that they feel they have to get to win. They know that I'm competitive. We've raised the most money. We have the most number of donors," said Kingston. "My opponents, both in the House and outside of the House, no one has raised nearly the money that we have. There are a couple of self-funders in there and I don't think you can really buy a U.S. Senate seat. Some of the candidates who spend a tremendous amount of time attacking me, they know they've got problems within their own campaigns." "I'm running against the Democrat. I'm running against the Harry Reid machine. I'm running for the United States of America. It's not about Jack Kingston. It's not about Georgia. It's about taking America back and getting us on the right track," said Kingston. |
| 'I Am Not A Career Politician' |
| Fri, 31 Jan 2014 14:09:22 EST Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey says he is the best U.S. Senate candidate for Republican voters because of his diverse background as a physician and a public servant and his record proves he is the most conservative candidate in the field who can win the general election. Gingrey is one of three House Republicans seeking the nomination. Eight Republicans in all are vying ffor the seat soon to be vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss. The party primary is set for May 20. With such a large field, no candidate is expected to win a majority of the vote on that day. The top two finishers would then face off in a July 22 runoff to claim the nomination. Gingrey says his diverse background gives him a leg up in this campaign. "I am not a career politician, even though this is my twelfth year in the United States House of Representatives. I am a career physician. I practiced for 32 years before I began my career as a public servant. I have been blessed, working both at the local level on a community school board, the state assembly, four years in the state senate and now almost 12 years in the House of Representatives. I think that résumé for this job shows that I am uniquely qualified for it and I think that puts me a little bit ahead f my opponents," said GIngrey. As a result of his medical background, Gingrey says repealing Obamacare is far and away his number one goal if elected to the Senate. He even took out an ad late last year promising he would be a one-term senator if he failed to repeal Obamacare over the next six years. That line in the sand even ruffled feathers within his own campaign, but Gingrey says he's making it clear he's running for the Senate to get things done. "A lot of people get elected to Congress and sometimes a part of their pledge is a term limit pledge. There's no accountability," said Gingrey. "This is different. This is an accountability pledge. This is putting skin in the game and telling people and telling the people that I represent from Georgia that I'll get up every day and that will be my job and that will be to get rid of Obamacare and replace it." Gingrey admits his goal is contingent upon Republicans winning back the Senate and taking back the White House in 2016. But he says the stage for replacing Obamacare is already set with this week's repeal and replacement legislation sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch, Tom Coburn and Richard Burr. Gingrey expects the public outrage over Obamacare to increase greatly as more problems strike. "Wait until next year when the health insurance carriers have to adjust their premiums and raise their deductibles even more than they are now," he said. The congressman says attacking massive debt and deficits and creating conditions favorable for more job creation will also be major priorities in the Senate. While Gingrey counts fellow GOP House members and Senate hopefuls Jack Kingston and Paul Broun as friends, he believes voters will find he has the record and the temperament that best suits the state. "They're both conservatives. Paul is maybe a little bit further to the right of Attila the Hun or certainly than Jack," laughed Gingrey. "I find myself a little bit right in the middle, right where the people of Georgia want me to be." Rep. Broun criticizes Gingrey and Kingston as being fond of earmarks and voting to grow the size of government, particularly in the George W. Bush administration. Broun also says Gingrey told him that voting for Medicare Part D was one of his proudest moments in Washington. Gingrey responded on multiple levels, first addressing the Medicare comments. "If we're talking about private conversations between on-on-one, I've had a number of private conversations one-on-one with Paul. I've had a number of private conversations with Jack. Those are not things I think people should talk about if it is indeed a private conversation," he said. As for spending and growing government, Gingrey says he stack up very well against Kingston, who is a longtime member of the House Appropriations Committee. "I haven't been in Congress but half the amount of time that Congressman Kingston has been. He has touted the fact that he has given $1.3 trillion back to the Treasury in the aggregate over 22 years. Well, I've given $1.2 trillion back to the Treasury in the aggregate of eleven-and-a-half years. So essentially I've given twice as much," said GIngrey. "We're fiscally frugal, sound and solid and I don't take a backseat to anybody on that," said Gingrey, who also staunchly opposes raising the debt ceiling unless it includes a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Gingrey firmly expects to be in the July runoff and says right now he doesn't care who the other Republican will be. "I'm just going to row my own boat and let the people of Georgia know what they have in Phil Gingrey and Dr. Gingrey and that he is the most conservative candidate in this race who can win in November," said Gingrey. His confidence is backed up by a recent Public Policy Polling survey showing he is just as competitive against likely Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn. |
| Making Government Work for the People |
| Thu, 30 Jan 2014 15:53:12 EST Michigan Republican Senate hopeful Terri Lynn Land says a record of efficient public service, two convincing statewide election wins and promises to repeal Obamacare and revitalize the state's economy are the reasons she can and will win the seat this year. Six-term Democrat Carl Levin is retiring and neither party appears to have primaries so Land is already gearing up for a November showdown against Democratic Rep. Gary Peters. Land says her motivation for running is clear. "Michigan needs a change. I've lived here all my life and as a mother, a small business owner and a public servant, I really have seen firsthand how the broken policies of President Obama and Congressman Peters are hurting the folks here in Michigan. So I want to go to Washington to get it back on track and make government work for the people," said Land. Land says scrapping Obamacare is at the top of her priority list. "I want to go down there and repeal Obamacare. I just does not work. It's driving up costs of health care, it's limiting access and it's hurting our economy," said Land. "In Michigan, over 225,000 folks have lost their insurance and their costs are going up and deductibles are going up and they've lost their doctors. So, those are things I think I will be able to do when I get down to Washington, D.C." Land also ripped Peters and President Obama for failing to make good on their repeated vows that Americans who liked their doctors and health plans could keep them. She also says a much different course is needed in Washington to restore the economy in Michigan and around the country. "The tax code does not work. As a small business owner, I've seen firsthand how much time and energy and resources go into preparing your taxes. We need to reform the tax code and make it simpler and more predictable. When I talk to businesses across Michigan, they want predictability. They want to know what their costs are going to be, what the tax burden is going to be and they want lower taxes. That's definitely a difference between me and my opponent," said Land. "Frankly, we need to get America back to work. More than ten million Americans are out of work. Six million have dropped out of the workforce because they've grown so discouraged. We really need to revitalize and grow our economy and get folks back to work," she said. Land was easily elected Michigan Secretary of State in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. While the responsibilities of a U.S. Senator are much different, Land says the core principles she followed in that job would be followed in Washington as well. "We had the Department of Motor Vehicles and also elections. Everything we did looked at how government could be cost effective, how we could make sure that customers were served and that government worked for the people. That was the most important thing and we were able to do that. We reduced our operation by over 20 percent and were able to still deliver great service to our customers," said Land. Land served as secretary of state at the same time Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm was overseeing a protracted recession that was spurred in part by the decline of the auto industry and pre-dated the national economic crisis by several years. Despite those challenging conditions, Land says she was able to balance and even cut her budget without layoffs while Granholm laid off personnel and still didn't balance the budget. Rep. Peters was a a member of the Granholm administration for five years, serving as state lottery commissioner. While Democrats will likely shy away from man references to the Granholm administration they are very focused on defeating current Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Elected in a landslide in 2010, Snyder maintained high approval numbers until a bruising but successful fight to make Michigan a "Right to Work" state. The move infuriated organized labor a lot of union money will be aimed at Snyder and his GOP allies. Snyder now faces a competitive race, but Land says he's done a good job and believes running on the same ballot as Snyder is a good thing. "Gov. Snyder has done something that D.C. needs to do and that's balance budgets. He's put money away. He's put money away in the rainy day fund and really worked hard to make Michigan the comeback state. Those are definitely things we need in Washington, D.C. - balancing the budget and not spending money we do not have," said Land. "Being on that same ticket, I think, is a good thing." Land also backs Snyder's approach to addressing Detroit's fiscal crisis, saying it's time someone dealt with it seriously. She is convinced Detroit is salvageable and will emerge stronger than ever in due time. Another Democratic tactic in recent national and state campaigns is the effort to portray Republicans as waging a "War on Women" based on opposition to abortion or the Obamacare contraception mandate. Land dismisses the effort, saying women care most about the same things all responsible citizens care about most. "What we care about is jobs, being able to provide for our families, to be able to buy groceries and be able to afford it when our wages have not kept up with the costs that have increased, whether it's buying groceries or gas or sending our kids to college. Those costs have gone up too and of course savings and money for retirement," said Land. "As a woman and a Republican, those are the issues that I care about and I know other women care about. It's all about a good paying job and being able to afford to feed your family and that's what we're going to talk about." |
| We're Not Going Away |
| Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:50:57 EST A Tea Party Patriots official is slamming President Obama for "co-opting" the language of free market advocates while pushing his agenda of wealth redistribution in his State of the Union address and for brazenly vowing to act unilaterally on a variety of issues if Congress doesn't back his agenda. National Grassroots Coordinator Keli Carender is also firing shots at congressional Republicans for not resisting Obama more vigorously and alleges the party's response to Obama's speech that was short on specifics. Several times during his speech, Obama extolled the hard work and creativity of American business owners and entrepreneurs. At the same time, he proposed a lengthy list of roles he believes the federal government ought to play in improving our economy, such as demanding an increase in the minimum wage and restoring emergency unemployment benefits that expired in December. He also urged government involvement in energy, education and other sectors. "He definitely co-opts the language of free markets and people who support free markets to sell his big government policies. I just find it ironic that he uses our language but means something completely different when he uses it," said Carender, who saw a lot of divisive rhetoric coming from the president. "The way that we see it is that he's basically trying to divide the citizenry based on income when the real inequality that people need to be paying attention to are the people in DC, the elected people, the bureaucrats, the government employees and the citizens of America. Their housing values are better. they have better perks. They have better benefits, better salaries. If you work for the government, you can get your student loans wiped out and you don't have to worry about them. We don't have that deal out here in America," said Carender. "There's so much inequality that comes out of Washington, D.C. that any inequality between people that happen to make a different amount because they have different jobs here in America is just dwarfed by that inequality," she said. "He's not addressing the really bad inequality, which is people that are supposed to serve us kind of flipping the script so we serve them." Conservatives are already furious with President Obama for they consider unconstitutional decisions without the consent of Congress, from implementing much of the DREAM Act to put children of illegal immigrants on the path to citizenship to his changing of various parts of the new health law such as the onset of the employer mandate to unilaterally allowing insurance companies to keep selling coverage that the new law deems to be illegal. On Tuesday, Obama boldly proclaimed that his administration would act in several areas, with or without congressional authorization, on issues ranging from pollution standards to gun rights to federal contractors and their wages. Carender says Obama's approach to his office and the bravado with which he uses it left her nearly speechless. "It was breathtaking. He's not the first president to do that but he has definitely done it the most and he has also done it the most brazenly. He doesn't care because he knows no one is going to hold him accountable. The press won't hold him accountable and the Republicans in Congress aren't going to hold him accountable. Every time he defies the Constitution and the separation of powers, he diminishes their authority, which is incredibly dangerous. Our founders definitely warned against an all-powerful executive," said Carender. Carender has positive and negative reviews of the Republican response offered by House GOP Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington). On the plus side, she says the top-ranking woman in the Republican House leadership seemed able to connect well. "I thought she was able to be personable. I thought that was good. For once it was somebody that had a pulse and seemed to relate to people. I think she seems like a very nice person. She obviously has a very nice family. I think the story of her son with Down Syndrome is great and I know it makes liberals crazy, so that's great," said Carender, who also says Rodgers missed an opportunity to offer specifics on what the party would do differently than Obama. She says that was a stark contrast to the speech by Utah Sen. Mike Lee in his message sponsored by the Tea Party Express. "The people representing the Tea Party aren't afraid to put out more specific proposals or to take on the issue of the president usurping Congress' power," she said. "The GOP response was a little more bland, a little more broad, not real specific. It really doesn't challenge the president on what he's doing unconstitutionally. It makes me very happy to see that the Tea Party leaders in Congress are unafraid. Regardless of what anybody's going to say about them, they're going to stand up for what's right and they're going to put it out there and be proud of it," said Carender. Carender dismissed criticism that addresses by Lee and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul muddied the Republican message in the wake of Obama's speech, calling it "bogus conventional wisdom" and asserting that the political arena needs more voices rather than fewer. She also says Tea Party Patriots will remain very active in this election year and are gaining in strength, contrary to pundits on both sides who claimed the movement would be a temporary phenomenon. "People thought we were going away after a couple of years or three years and all of a sudden we're coming up on our five-year anniversary. I hope they understand that we're just not going away. 2014 will be a big year and so will 2015, and so will 2016 and so will 2017. We're just going to keep plugging away until we have been able to persuade hearts and minds that our solutions are the ones that will help Americans grow and prosper and achieve their dreams," said Carender. |
| Broun: I'm A Consistent Conservative |
| Tue, 28 Jan 2014 16:08:32 EST Georgia Rep. Paul Broun says he is the only true constitutional conservative in the Republican race for U.S. Senate in his state and vows to be a tireless champion for creating jobs, ending deficits and repealing Obamacare. He also says his most prominent challengers either have no conservative record or lack consistency in backing conservative principles. The wide-open race started last year when Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced he would not seek a third term. Eight GOP candidates are seeking the nomination but early polling suggests four of them appear to have the strongest odds. In addition to Broun, fellow Republican Reps. Jack Kingston and Phil Gingrey are in the race, along with former Secretary of State Karen Handel. Media reports in Georgia suggest the candidates largely hold the same positions and differ only in nuance. Broun begs to differ. "All the candidates in this race can be categorized into three different groups. There's one group. and (Handel's) a part of it, that claim to be conservative but have absolutely zero record to back that claim up. In fact there's some things in the past where she has supported funding for Planned Parenthood. That's not conservative," said Broun. "There's a second category of candidates that claim to be conservative, but their record does not back up a consistent conservative position. That's where Kingston and Gingrey fall. And there's one candidate, me, who has a proven, consistent, constitutional voting record," he said. When asked to point to votes where he was a "consistent" conservative and Kingston and Gingrey were not, Broun pointed primarily to spending issues. "Both of them have been huge earmarkers. In fact, at one time, Jack Kingston had more earmarks than all of the Republican delegation from Georgia put together. Both of them have voted for expansion of government under George W. Bush. As an example, Dr. Gingrey told me one of the proudest votes he's made was expansion of Medicare with Part D. Both of them have voted for bigger and bigger government programs. Both of them have voted to raise the debt ceiling. I have never voted to raise the debt ceiling. I've never voted for a stimulus package. I've never voted for a bailout. They have," said Broun. Rep. Broun says he brings a very specific approach to any vote, an approach he believes would help America avoid many of our national problems. "There are four questions that I ask about all legislation. All four have to be yes before I vote yes. The first is, 'Is it constitutional according to the original intent? Is it one of the eighteen enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8?' The second question, 'Is it right? Does it fit the Judeo-Christian biblical principles that our nation was founded upon?' The third question is, 'Do we need it?' Fourth, 'Can we afford it?'" said Broun. "If all four are yes, I vote yes. I've done that for six-and-a-half year. If one (of the answers) is no, I vote no. I've been that way for six-and-a-half years. I'm the only candidate in this race that has a proven true conservative record. I also have legislation to back that up," he said. Broun points to three specific bills he is sponsoring that he contends would boost job creation and tackle our debt problem. First, he says his approach to repealing and replacing Obamacare is the only one that would completely remove government bureaucrats from the health care system. "We've got to rip this out by the roots and replace it with my Patient Option Act or otherwise our children are not going to have jobs when they get out of school. We're going to have a poor economy. We're going to have an economic meltdown in this country if we don't stop this out-of-control government and out-of-control spending that both parties are guilty of doing," said Broun. He also says he would revitalize manufacturing in this country by working to remove the onerous federal regulations that are stifling innovation and expansion. In tackling the debt, he says his simple approach would be effective in reducing red ink. "The government must live within its means. We've got to balance out budget. I've got the strongest balanced budget that's been introduced in Congress. It caps spending. It makes it very difficult for Congress to raise taxes, and those are the two problems with almost every other balanced budget amendment that's been introduced," said Broun. The congressman also identifies himself as a staunch defender of Americans' Second Amendment rights and is even awarding an AR-15 as a prize from his campaign. Accused by one of his opponents of using "gimmickry" with the AR-15, Broun says at a time when he believes President Obama is actively trying to restrict gun rights, it is important to make his views crystal clear. "It's not a gimmick. It's just a means of getting my supporters all across this nation to understand that I'm fighting for liberty. Guns have always been a symbol of liberty," he said. The Republican U.S. Senate primary is scheduled for May 20. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff in July. Michelle Nunn, daughter of former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn is the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination. |
| Repeal and Replace |
| Mon, 27 Jan 2014 16:04:32 EST An ardent supporter of President Obama's health law now admits the funding for the law is in peril because young Americans simply aren't signing up in large enough numbers and a health policy expert says Republicans are on the right track with their various repeal and replace approaches to the law. In an effort to get everyone insured, the health care law has always been predicated upon millions of young, healthy people choosing to enroll, even though the penalty for not having insurance is far lower than the premiums they are facing. The Obama administration now says more than three million people are enrolled in the various health care exchanges but won't offer statistics on how many have actually paid premiums and whether enough young people are in the mix to pay for the care needed by older, less healthy Americans. Virginia Rep. Jim Moran told NPR-affiliated WAMU radio that he doesn't expect the numbers to balance when open enrollment comes to a close. "I'm afraid the millenials, if you will, are less likely to sign up. I think they feel more independent. I think they feel a little more invulnerable than prior generations but I don't think we're going to get enough young people signing up to make this bill work as it was intended to financially," said Moran. Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner says Moran's fears are well-founded. "All of the indications say that young people are not signing up at the level that we expected. I suspect the president's probably going to have a couple of young people in the First Lady's box at the State of the Union speech tomorrow night, saying that young people should be signing up. They really need to encourage them. It's not happening," said Turner. "The reason is that the incentives are all wrong. They're charging them more for policies that are much richer than they want. Many of them don't even have jobs, for crying out loud, because of the Obama economy. I think it's very very unlikely you're going to see the young people and therefore it's even more unlikely that this Obamacare plan, and certainly the exchanges, become even more unstable than they already are," she said. Moran's comments come a day before Obama's State of the Union message and on the same day three prominent GOP senators unveiled their plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a market-based system that still protects Americans with pre-existing conditions and allows children to stay on their parents's health plans to age 26 but open up competition and risk pools to drive down costs and promote tax credit. to help Americans afford their coverage Sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), the bill would also include Health Opportunity Accounts for Medicaid patients, malpractice reforms to drive down the lost of liability insurance for doctors and transparency so patients would know how much individual treatments cost. Turner says much like House bills drafted by Georgia Rep. Tom Price and the Republican Study Committee, this legislation heads in the right direction in many ways. "They'd start by repealing Obamacare. They all provide subsidies for people to purchase health insurance if they're middle income and lower income. They all would create a true market. They all want to reform Medicare and Medicaid in a true 21st century consumer choice model. If you do side-by-sides, you'd see a lot of similar check marks on each one of them," said Turner. Turner expects the House to pass major reforms later this year but that they will die in the Democratically-controlled Senate. She says if the GOP manages to win back the Senate in the midterm elections, major changes would be passed out of both chambers. Turner says Obama would never sign a repeal of his signature domestic legislation but the difficult realities of Obamacare could force him to accept major changes next year. But before Republicans launch their legislative effort, Turner is offering two significant pieces of advice. First, she says, is to make sure the American people understand the differences between what Obamacare is doing and what GOP reforms would do. "I think what Republicans have to do is explain what their vision is. What would they do differently than Obamacare and why should the American people say, 'OK, we're ready to go with you all.' Don't get into all the details of all the hard wiring and the nuances of legislation because that'll confuse the American people even more than they're already confused," said Turner. "Talk about this vision of consumer choice and portability. You get to decide what your plan is, not disrupting the employer market, allowing people who have coverage through small businesses to either get coverage on their own or continue to get it through their small business plan, but to give them the same tax break whatever they do. Those are all really important principles and people need to understand that," said Turner. She also endorses the House GOP approach of taking on the reforms one at a time rather than trying to make all the changes at once, noting it would just as foolhardy for Republicans to get behind one mammoth piece of legislation as it was for Democrats when they passed Obamacare in the first place. |
| 'A Phony Compromise' |
| Fri, 24 Jan 2014 16:26:23 EST A House Republican leader embraced legalization of illegals this week, while other GOP heavyweights outlined legislation that critics call nothing more than amnesty and empty promises towards border enforcement. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced this week that he would support language to legalize millions in this country illegally. In addition, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan told Texas business leaders that the party wants to promote legalization that does not include a path to citizenship and adopting the DREAM Act that legalizes children brought here illegally and would allow them to become citizens. Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian says the Republican leadership is courting disaster. "It's actually not surprising because it's clear that Speaker Boehner is dead set on amnestying all the illegal aliens and so it makes sense that one of his lieutenants is going to say the same thing," said Krikorian, who laughs at the notion the GOP is being firm by not allowing a path to citizenship. "The supposed middle ground is that they're calling for an amnesty that won't give illegal immigrants regular immigrant status, green cards that could lead to citizenship. Instead they give them a work visa amnesty, where they get to stay and they get Social Security numbers and they get everything else. It's just that they wouldn't end up getting citizenship. It's a distinction without a difference. It still amnesties everybody," said Krikorian. "The Democrats are guaranteed to attack the Republicans for second-class citizenship or something like that. The Republicans will cave and give in after a couple years, so it's a phony compromise, this idea of having a non-citizenship amnesty but somehow they think that's an important difference," he said. "The bottom line is they want the same thing as Obama and (New York Sen.) Chuck Schumer, which is to give legal status to all the illegal aliens." GOP leaders are publicly wary of passing any such legislation while Obama is president because his handling of the new health care laws suggest he cannot be trusted to fully enforce all provisions of the law. Their solution is to include language that would forbid the president from picking and choosing which provisions he would enforce, but Krikorian shakes his head at that notion as well. "What is the Republican leadership thinking? It seems that they are going to trust President Obama to enforce new immigration laws even though he's not enforcing the old ones," said Krikorian. Krikorian is also furious at the notion of millions more guest workers coming into the country, noting that businesses are eager to bring in people to compete with jobless Americans in every sector of the economy. He says this is not just happening in agriculture, but immigrants will be making the job search harder for single moms, teenagers, minorities and other Americans in every area from retail to manufacturing. Despite his frustration with Republicans in both the House and Senate, Krikorian is still upbeat that comprehensive immigration reform will never happen this year. "I still don't think it's going to happen because John Boehner has made clear that he's not going to go forward with this unless he has a majority of his own Republican caucus behind it. That's going to be a difficult thing to arrange because even if the leadership wants it, a lot of the rank and file members don't because they understand this is something voters aren't enthusiastic about," said Krikorian. Krikorian also believes the effort will fail because the U.S. Senate will want nothing to do with the House GOP's piece-by-piece approach. |
| London Bridge |
| Fri, 24 Jan 2014 16:19:13 EST New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is not starting his second term as he expected. Rather than riding high on a landslide re-election, Christie is bogged down with incessant coverage of a decision two staffers made to close lanes from the George Washington Bridge into Ft. Lee, allegedly due to that town's mayor refusing to endorse Christie's re-election bid. Naturally, the Capitol Steps are turning this all into musical comedy in "London Bridge". Our guest is Capitol Steps star Elaina Newport. |
| 'A System of Lawlessness' |
| Thu, 23 Jan 2014 15:07:03 EST Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring announced Thursday that he will no longer defend his state's constitutional amendment defining marriage solely as the union of one man and one woman, but a leading traditional marriage advocate says Herring is casting aside the duties of his office to pursue a partisan agenda. As a member of the state senate, Herring voted for the 2006 state constitutional amendment that defines marriage in the commonwealth as solely between a man and a woman. Now, less than two weeks after taking office as attorney general, he says the government is not only abandoning the defense of the law but actively joining a lawsuit filed against it by two same-sex couples. 1cAfter thorough legal review, I have now concluded that Virginia 19s ban on marriage between same sex couples violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on two grounds: marriage is a fundamental right being denied to some Virginians, and the ban unlawfully discriminates on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender, 1d Herring said. Herring won the Virginia attorney general's race by less than 1,000 votes and actually trailed heading into the recount against Republican Mark Obenshain. It was by far the closest statewide race in Virginia, which also included Democrat Terry McAuliffe's win over the GOP's Ken Cuccinelli in the contest for governor. Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver is outraged at Herring's decision and says Virginia's attorney general doesn't seem to approach law enforcement much differently than President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. "This is unfortunately the consequence of elections and you've got someone who is lawless. You really trace that back to President Obama and Eric Holder, when they decided to pick and choose, through the Department of Justice, which laws they wanted to defend and which ones they wanted to not just step aside but actually intentionally undermine. They did that with the federal Defense of Marriage Act and now we see on the state level with this new attorney general, he does the same thing," said Staver. "He is not upholding the law. He is actually undermining the very law that was passed by the people. This was a constitutional marriage amendment that was passed by 57 percent of the Virginian voters. As attorney general, his obligation is to defend the laws, whether passed by the legislature or passed by the people. His obligation is not to simply act as a king or a potentate, where he just wants to pick and choose which laws he's going to defend and which laws he's going to intentionally undermine," said Staver, who says this sort of action sets a precedent that could greatly damage the separation of powers. "What would happen is if you had, for example, a Republican-led legislature and they passed laws that the Democratic governor or attorney general don't like, they would just simply refuse to defend them, or even worse, work to actively undermine them. That just makes no sense. That creates a system of lawlessness. It does not respect the rule of law and it certainly does not respect the process of the people in protecting their right for representation and the right to vote," said Staver. Herring is hardly the first official to declare he would not defend traditional marriage laws. In addition to Obama and Holder at the federal level, attorneys general in Pennsylvania and Illinois and the governor of Hawaii all unilaterally declared they would not defend state laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Washington Post reports Republican attorneys general have refused to defend other laws recently. Indiana's Greg Zoeller refused to enforce part of his state's immigration laws after the Supreme Court struck down similar provisions in Arizona's SB 1070. In Virginia, Herrings's predecessor, Ken Cuccinelli, declared one of former Gov. Bob McDonnell's education reforms to be unconstitutional and announced he would not defend it. Staver says there are different levels of refusing to defend existing laws but believes the practice is never a good idea. "There is precedent through history where attorneys general won't vigorously enforce a law, but that's a whole different ballgame, where you decide not to give as vigorous a defense or not to offer a defense than when you go into court and actually file a brief that undermines a case," said Staver. "What you ultimately have happen here, whether it's done by a Republican or a Democrat when a law is challenged and it's not vigorously defended, you ultimately have a system of lawlessness." he said. Staver is also quick to assert that refusing to defend the institution of marriage is far more significant than it is with respect to other laws. "We're talking about marriage. We're talking about a fundamental, observable relationship that has transcended governments. It wasn't created by a governor or a legislature. It predates the Commonwealth of Virginia. It predates the United States of America. It is an institution and a relationship that is from the very beginning of time to the present. It transcends cultures. It predates governments," said Staver. "It is something that is part of the created, observable universe in which we live and it has been transmitted through history and times and cultures. To undermine that is not to be put into the same category...as Ken Cuccinelli deciding not to defend a portion of an education law," he said. Apart from the legal arguments surrounding the issue, Staver says there are obvious reasons why marriage should be set aside for the union of one man and one woman, from procreation to child rearing, and he contends even the most vigorous activism of same-sex marriage supporters cannot change those facts. "Marriage as the union of a man and a woman is part of God's natural created order. You may not like it. You may disagree with it. You may not like gravity. You may disagree with it, but it doesn't matter what your opinion is on it. The fact of the matter is, it is what it is. It exists and it exists for a reason," said Staver. "Marriage is between a man and a woman. Ontologically, man and women are made for one another in a way that two men and two women simply are not. It is through the union of a man and a woman that we procreate the next generation. That's why we have placed laws and policies around marriage to protect that very survival of our society," he said. "Also, it's through the union of a man and a woman, husband and wife, male and female, that children have the best optimal environment in which to be raised. Moms and dads, male and female, bring different characteristics and components to the family relation and dynamic that two men and two women simply does not do," said Staver. "In fact, it is contrary to what two men and two women would do. When you eliminate one gender from the family, which is what same-sex marriage would do...and skew the view of the missing gender, have some antipathy or opposition towards the missing gender, you ultimately harm children. When you harm children, you ultimately effect society," he said. Liberty Counsel will likely get involved in the case, but Staver says it's not clear how or when the new defense team for the state law will be chosen. He suspects the case will end up in front of the Supreme Court within the next year or two but is not optimistic the justices will rule in the way he believes they should. "On this issue and other moral issues like abortion, I have absolutely no trust in the United States Supreme Court. These issues of life and marriage should not be up for a popular vote by justices of the United States Supreme Court," said Staver. "We've lived under the tragedy of abortion for 41 years. Fifty-six million people have died because seven people on the United States Supreme Court in 1973 and five people on the same court in 1992, ultimately voted, even though it has nothing to do with the Constitution," he said. "Frankly, I have no confidence in this court or any set of justices on the Supreme Court unless they're going to follow and adhere to the Constitutional principles and the rule of law." |
| Pro-Life Movement Sees Major Youth Surge |
| Wed, 22 Jan 2014 18:13:55 EST Despite frigid conditions along the National Mall, hundreds of thousands of pro-life activists carried out a spirited March for Life on Wednesday, buoyed by a major infusion of young supporters and disgusted with President Obama's relentless defense of what they consider to be the murder of unborn Americans. Wednesday marks 41 years since the landmark Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton Supreme Court decisions that legalized abortion across the nation. The March for Life started informally the next year and began attracting massive crowds soon thereafter. March organizers say one of the most encouraging signs over the past few years is the tremendous growth in young activists, including high school and college students as well as young professionals. Eric Teetsel is executive director of the Manhattan Declaration, a group founded by the late Chuck Colson that describes itself as a national movement of Christians for life, marriage and religious freedom. A young leader himself, Teetsel says he is greatly encouraged by the infusion of teens and twenty-somethings braving the elements and getting active in the pro-life cause. "It's really startling. There are so many high school and college students who bus in from all over the country. We saw signs from Kansas and Nebraska, Florida, Ohio. I talked to a young priest from New Orleans who had never been to D.C. before," said Teetsel. "Year after year, you see more of them. I think it's really true to say that this is the most pro-life generation." Teetsel says there are multiple reasons for young Americans flocking to the pro-life side in droves, ranging from the knowledge they could have been legally aborted to advances in technology that show developing babies in vivid detail. However, Teetsel says the trend seems to boil down to one conclusion. "In general, I think young people just simply believe that an unborn child is a life, and as a life I think it's worthy of protection. I think it's as simple as that," said Teetsel, who adds that the Supreme Court was dead wrong when the justices in the majority thought their decisions in 1973 would settle the national debate. "Forty-one years ago when this case came down, the members of the Supreme Court believed that they were putting the final nail in a movement that had been moving right along and that this was the apex and it would never change. They had no way of knowing that within just a couple of generations the country would have shifted directions so drastically," said Teetsel. "Now it looks like it's only a matter of time before we are a nation that no longer commits this great injustice," he said. Teetsel's thoughts echo comments made by several speakers at the March for Life, who vowed that the young people at the rally would live to see the end of abortion in the U.S. Teetsel admits the fight will be fierce, given the determination of the pro-choice forces and medical advances that could someday allow women to have an abortion by taking a bill and not even needing to visit an abortion facility. Still, he believes the momentum for outlawing abortion is very strong. "There's a long road ahead, but politics is downstream from culture and as my generation and other generations come into power and the polling shows that Americans no longer want to live in a nation that (harms) unborn children, I think our laws will follow," said Teetsel. Several pro-choice political figures celebrated the anniversary of Roe v. Wade today, with some even wishing the court decision a "Happy Birthday". President Obama released a statement lauding the ruling that read: Today, as we reflect on the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, we recommit ourselves to the decision 19s guiding principle: that every woman should be able to make her own choices about her body and her health. We reaffirm our steadfast commitment to protecting a woman 19s access to safe, affordable health care and her constitutional right to privacy, including the right to reproductive freedom. And we resolve to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, support maternal and child health, and continue to build safe and healthy communities for all our children. Because this is a country where everyone deserves the same freedom and opportunities to fulfill their dreams. Teetsel is not swayed. "There are so many inconsistencies inherent in that statement right there. This is the most pro-abortion, anti-family president that we've ever had and yet he's willing to go so far to talk about his desire to help women and children. It's ironic. I have to believe that this is a man who understands how inconsistent his logic is but has to say these things for political necessity. His party is one that is founded first and foremost on abortion rights and you can't deviate from that principle and get anywhere in the Democratic Party," said Teetsel. "He claims to be a man of faith and claims to be a family man. I hope that one day his espoused values and his political commitments come into line and be consistent. But today is obviously not that day," he said. |
| What's Really Happening this Winter |
| Tue, 21 Jan 2014 14:42:16 EST As the largest snowfall of the winter hits the eastern U.S., politicians and interest groups will claim the latest weather is proof of their position in the climate debate, but a prominent climatologist says this is nothing more than the latest development in a cooling cycle that started over a decade ago. Climate change activists regularly assert that volatile weather events are due to human activity that impacts our climate while skeptics point to the snow and expected cold snap that follows as further proof the earth is not running a fever. Dr. Tim Ball taught climatology for many years at the University of Winnipeg and is the author of the newly-released book, "The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science." He says it's foolhardy to draw conclusions on overall climate trends based on one weather system or even one winter, but he believed the harsher winter is part of a cooling cycle. "What happens as the cooling begins, the jet stream moves from west to east in very large waves but the amplitude, that is the north-south orientation of those waves, increase. It's called a meridional pattern of weather and that's why you see the record colds that you had in the U.S. recently, but also record warms," said Ball. "When you look at eastern Australia as an example, or Siberia earlier in the winter. So if you imagine these waves where you've got cold air pushing towards the equator in one area, you've also got warmer air pushing further towards the poles in other areas. That's why you've got this increasing variability of the weather," said Ball, who says history tells us exactly what these conditions mean. "If you look at the historic record, and I mean going over 10,000 years, this pattern occurs as the earth starts its cooling down process. And that's what's going to happen. We're going to be in this cooling until at least 2040," he said. The cooling started ten years earlier near the South Pole, according to Ball, who says the growth in Antarctic ice is why we witnessed the research vessel and its rescue ship trapped in ice in the middle of summer in the southern hemisphere. Ball says the cooling for us will not only continue for nearly thirty more years, but the depths of the cooling cycle could mean we experience some historic chills. "There's a debate about how much cooling will occur, but it's related to the changes in the sun, the sunspot cycles. That's the predominant control of long-term temperature patterns," said Ball. "The scientists that I've been working with a lot, we think, as I said, that's it's going to continue cooling until 2040, certainly getting to cooler temperatures than we experienced around 1800 or 1820 and possibly get as cold as it was back in what's called the 'Little Ice Age' when you had three feet of ice on the Thames in England in 1683." Looking at that historic record is critical to understanding how climate naturally changes over time, says Ball, and he contends trying to define climate or even policy on recent weather events is disingenuous. "The difference is the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what you experience if go and stand outside right now. It's the combination of thousands of variables, everything from cosmic radiation in deep space to geothermal heat off the bottom of the oceans," said Ball. "Climate is the average weather in a region or the change in the average weather over time. That's what I've been studying all my career is climate change and how it changes over time. You cannot say any one particular event is due to climate change. The only way you can do that is step back and look at the trend," said Ball, who says many scientists today are simply misusing historic climate data to suit their political ends. "It depends what starting point you pick on the temperature record or the precipitation record and then the ending point. You can prove anything you want from the record by selecting the time period that you want to look at," said Ball. "For example, since 1900, the world warmed up to 1940. It cooled down to 1980. It warmed up to 1998 and now it's cooling down again. You could pick any one of those periods and say, 'Oh look, it's warming or it's cooling' and then say it's going to keep on going and it's the end of the world, which of course is what they've done with the recent warming from 1980 up to 2000," he said. After years of contending there was an unrelenting rise in global temperature, climate change activists now contend that extreme heat, extreme cold or active hurricane and tornado seasons all mean human activity is making our climate more volatile. Ball says good science flatly proves those claims false. "Actually, the number of tornadoes is dramatically down. The number of hurricanes, particularly the ones coming ashore in the U.S., is significantly down. So, their arguments are completely wrong," said Ball. "The supposed increase in storminess is scientifically wrong because the storms occur along the boundary between the cold polar air and the warmer tropical air, which is essentially across the central U.S., between 30-50 degrees of latitude. If you decrease that temperature difference across that boundary, which is called the polar front, then you get fewer storms not more," he said. "The official argument is that the polar regions are going to warm up more than the tropical regions, which actually would reduce the number of storms but they're claiming it will increase it. It's just another example of climate science being used for a political agenda," said Ball. |
| The King Legacy and Beyond |
| Mon, 20 Jan 2014 15:40:56 EST Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as the pre-eminent leader of the civil rights movement because of his Christ-like approach to the struggle and would likely have focused more time on preaching the gospel than remaining politically active had he lived a full life, according to Council Nedd II, bishop of the Episcopal Missionary Church and founding member of the Project 21 black leadership network. Bishop Nedd also believes King would have remained more conservatives than many of his contemporaries turned out to be and would be both amazed at the racial progress in America and distressed at how the issue is exploited for political advantage. King rose to prominence during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott that followed the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Nedd says King's biblical approach to segregation and discrimination set him apart from other possible leaders. "His approach was so radically different than what everybody else in the black community was talking about at that time and it was the message on non-violence. He's a Christian pastor, a follower of Jesus Christ, and he believed in turning the other cheek and he believed that you could meet this resistance by not resisting at all. It had a profound impact on American society," said Nedd. "They're being met with violence. There's water hoses, dogs and all sorts of beatings and lynchings and everything, and he's saying, 'Let's just keep marching for what we want to march for and we're going to do it in a nonviolent manner. It got America's attention and it got the world's attention." While racial issues persist today, Nedd is confident King would be very pleased with the racial progress made in the years since his death. "I think he would say that a major victory had been accomplished. If you think about it, the world that he lived in and the world he knew was a very segregated America. At the end of his life, there were riots in the street. They were turning water hoses and dogs on children in parts of this country and because of the advent of television, people were able to see it and were rightly appalled by what they saw," said Nedd. "So, it's a very different world than the one he lived in. There's equality in the eyes of the law. Segregation is legally banished from the land, and black Americans have opportunities that have never been seen at any other point in U.S. history," said Nedd. Bishop Nedd believes that if King had lived many more years, he would have been pretty conservative and would have spent more time in the pulpit than marching for causes. "He comes from the same era as my father so I think he would probably be a fairly conservative individual. I think that he would still be involved in pastoral ministry or probably retired from it by this point. He was first and foremost a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don't think he was necessarily interested in the political pandering that you see people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton do. He was on a mission and the mission was to march for civil rights. but he never gave up his calling as a minister of the gospel and his ministry was evident in his approach that he took to try to achieve civil rights for all Americans," said Nedd. When asked why King would be somewhat conservative when other figures from that era, like Jackson, Rev. Joseph Lowery and John Lewis charted a more liberal course, Nedd said he wasn't sure why other leaders went in that direction, but he says people should distinguish among those figures, especially Lewis and Jackson. "I'd put John Lewis is a slightly different category because he is a committed individual to what he's doing. I don't know how much political pandering he necessarily does, but in my opinion he's given a certain amount of grace because of what he physically endured on the same marches with Dr. King," said Nedd. "Jesse Jackson has always been a political figure. He's always sought out the media and whatever gets him to that goal, seemingly, he's willing to do, whether it's smearing blood on himself or whatever it is.," he said. In the past several years, homosexual activists have contended that their efforts to pursue gay rights and even same-sex marriage are simply an extension of the civil rights movement. Nedd is having nine of that. "Gay is not the new black. There are lots of people who lived and died and suffered merely because of race. Any individual who happens to be homosexual, they're already covered under the law because of their color, because of their sexuality, because of various other things. It's not a separate classification and personally I'm offended by it. I'm offended by the politicians who caved on the issue and I'm offended by pastors who sold out on the issue and decided, 'You know what, I don't really care what the Bible says . The black president wants me to support this so I'm going to support this. It's absurd," said Nedd, who also suggested King would be disappointed in Obama's approach to the presidency. "That's one of the real tragedies. Here we are in America. We've got the first black president and everybody was sort of talking about the end of racism etc. and essentially what Obama has done is put on the Jesse Jackson cloak and he's just pandering on issues of race. He's not showing true leadership," said Nedd. "He's implemented or tried to implement a number of failed policies and when it didn't work out, he pulls the race card. I just that's inappropriate and I think it's just tacky," he said. |
| 'It's Not In the Right Direction' |
| Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:20:42 EST The House and Senate both overwhelmingly approved a nearly $1.1 trillion spending to fund the government through the fiscal year, but the conservative Club for Growth says the plan is a loser because it lifts the spending restraints Congress placed on itself less than three years ago. "It's basically Congress breaking their pledge from 2011. In that year, they raised the debt ceiling in exchange for a lot of spending cuts. In those intervening years between 2011-2014, those spending cuts apparently were too unbearable for a lot of members of Congress," said Club for Growth Vice President of Government Affairs Andy Roth. "This deal is the product of the Ryan-Murray deal that occurred in December, where they decided to get rid of part of those spending cuts so that they could increase spending immediately, and that's what this budget is," he said. By a lopsided 359-67 vote in the House and a 72-26 margin in the Senate, lawmakers easily approved the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. Many Republicans who backed the bill said they were concerned about the lifting of spending restraints but that the bill did contain cuts in funding for the IRS, the Environmental Protection Agency, Obamacare and the new health law's Independent Payment Advisory Board. They say it also bring discretionary spending back towards spending levels seen in the George W. Bush administration and that the overall tenor of the bill is in the right direction for fiscal conservatives. "It's not in the right direction because had we stuck to the spending cuts that we promised voters in 2011, that bill that just passed would have been even smaller and it would have reduced the deficit even more," said Roth. "It is true that it is small relative to previous years but that means it's because we've been successful at keeping the belt tight. What they're doing now is unwinding that belt. "It may seem like just a small little increase in spending now but this is all set up so that they can spend even more money in the year after next and the year after that," he said. So how does he explain the large number of Republicans who backed the omnibus? "We take kind of a cynical view of the politicians in Washington. I suspect at the end of the day there probably only are 67 , if we're luck maybe 80 or 100 who are true, committed fiscal conservatives. I think the other Republicans that don't fall in that category vote with us from time to time but they're certainly not reliable day to day," said Roth, who says House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is a brilliant man but not as conservative as many people think. "Paul Ryan's rhetoric doesn't necessarily match his voting," said Roth, who notes Ryan scored a 71 with the Club for Growth and holds a lifetime rating of 86. "Eighty-six percent isn't bad but it's not good either. He voted for a lot of the big spending bills during the Bush years. He voted for TARP with the Wall Street bailout. He's voted for a lot of pro-union bills and he just orchestrated the Ryan-Murray deal which unwound a lot of the spending cuts we had already agreed to. So, there are, unfortunately, far more blemishes on his record than I think people are aware of," said Roth. In addition to spending cuts in key areas, Republicans who backed the omnibus point to the realities of the current power structure in Washington, with the GOP controlling the House and the Democrats in charge of the Senate and the White House. They say winning more elections will improve the content of these bills even further. Roth does admit the GOP has some limitations. He says there was plenty of interest in reconfiguring sequestration to allow spending levels to shift without changing the overall numbers but Democrats had no interest in that. He also suggests his earlier comments about the reliable fiscal conservatives brings into question whether the Republicans really control the House. All that aside, Roth says he hates to see GOP members use the power breakdown as an excuse because it fosters a defeatist attitude. "That's kind of like surrendering before a fight. The House is the only chamber that has the power of the purse because they're the ones that start the ball rolling on all these appropriations bills. They have leverage. Now, they don't have an enormous amount of leverage but they do have leverage and one of it is just to let the current law continue," said Roth. In addition to the spending increases that he fears will materialize in the next few years, Roth says the GOP also surrendered the high ground for the upcoming debt ceiling debate. "Yes, the Republicans have lost a lot of leverage, both with their own base and with the general public when it comes to cutting spending or at least tightening the fiscal belt in Washington. I don't think that they're as believable as they once were," said Roth. |
| 'Opposition to Homosexuality Is Just Not OK' |
| Fri, 17 Jan 2014 14:00:06 EST The founder of the most prominent organization seeking to tie conservatism to the gay rights agenda announced this week he is leaving the Republican Party because it embraces big government and continues to tolerate "bigotry" within the party towards homosexuals, the latter of which he says will prevent the GOP from ever winning another national election. Jimmy LaSalvia says he founded GOProud with the intention of proving that gays were welcome in the Republican Party. He is no longer affiliated with the group but says he now believes the future of that cause and the party in general is hopeless. "In 2014, demonizing gay people and opposition to homosexuality is just not OK. We've determined that that's not OK in society, but it's OK in one place in America and that's ultimately what's going to bring them down," said LaSalvia, who says he did not arrive at this decision lightly. "Over the past several years, I have come to the conclusion that the Republican Party just doesn't represent my principles and values. I'm a limited government conservative and they're big government people. They like government as long as they're in charge of it. And I don't tolerate bigotry of any kind and they do. It's that cultural problem, that they seem to be out of touch with life in America today that's led me to the conclusion that the Republican Party will never again win a national election," said LaSalvia. LaSalvia says the reason the debate over homosexuality will permanently scar the GOP is because the attitude of Republicans is off-putting to countless families, who will then tune out the party on other issues. "Every American has a gay family member or friend who they know and love and they know that the people who demonize gay people are wrong. And they know that they're talking about their family and friends. The reason this is so damaging to the Republican Party is because it crosses all demographic lines because everyone has a gay person in their life," said LaSalvia. "So when they don't stand up to the people who demonize gays, they're essentially saying, 'We're not going to stand up for your family, your friends,' so why would anyone listen to anything else they have to say." GOProud made news in November, when co-founder Chris Barron publicly announced he was voting for Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race because he found GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli, a traditional social conservative, too extreme. LaSalvia does not live in Virginia, but says he fully understands Barron's decision. "The fact that Ken Cuccinelli was an acceptable candidate for Republicans astonished me. Let me be clear, it's not about positions on issues. It's not. If that were the case, I would have left the Republican Party decades ago," said LaSalvia. "It's about what Ken Cuccinelli thinks about people who aren't like him that made him an unacceptable candidate to me. And that's why, ultimately, the voters in Virginia chose a crook for governor rather than someone like KenCuccinelli. And honestly, that's why Barack Obama, a failed president, was re-elected in 2012 instead of a Republican." Some on the right were surprised at the timing of LaSalvia's decision, since the party seems to be edging in his direction. Over the past decade, the GOP has gone from championing a traditional marriage amendment to the Constitution to nominating gay candidates for national office, issuing a post-election report urging more inclusive language on gay issues and the vast majority of Republican figures remaining mute in connection with last year's Supreme Court decisions on the definition of marriage. LaSalvia isn't impressed. "There's no question that all Americans are thinking differently about how issues affect gay people, and they're coming to the conclusion that everybody is coming to the conclusion of. The problem is there's a very loud faction of the Republican Party that will never change on that issue and they're tolerated," said LaSalvia, who also dismissed the RNC's 2012 report. "Frankly, the autopsy report is putting lipstick on a pig. I've likened it to taking a cancer patient to get a makeover. She feels good, she looks great, but at the end of the day the cancer's gonna kill her unless you cut it out of her," he said. The other reaction among conservatives to LaSalvia's accusations of bigotry is to say their beliefs are based on God's word and faith traditions that have stood for centuries, and LaSalvia is actually the one engaging in religious bigotry. He rejects that assertion, once again being careful to separate policy positions from what he perceives as "demonization" of gays from social conservatives. He also the debate should be over because the nation has already decided whether homosexuality is right or wrong. "I do not believe that opposition to same-sex marriage, in and of itself, is bigotry. But there are some people who just don't like gay people, and that's not OK. In America in 2014, the vast majority of Americans and even the vast majority of Republicans have concluded that those people are wrong, but the Republican Party continues to tolerate their demonization of gay people," said LaSalvia. LaSalvia says he is now an independent conservative. He says 42 percent of Americans now consider themselves independents, with more and more people continuing to abandon both national parties and he will be working to build consensus with those disaffected Americans. |
| Carving Out a Case for Euthanasia |
| Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:59:48 EST A New Mexico judge says residents have the right to "aid in dying" through lethal prescriptions from doctors, despite a long-standing state law banning assisted suicide. This week, Second District Court Judge Nan G. Nash sided with plaintiffs from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico and Compassion and Choices, who argued that terminally ill patients have the right to receive deadly drug doses so long as they consent. Nash ruled that such prescriptions constitute nothing more than another type of medical treatment. Jennifer Popik of the National Right to Life Committee's Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics says this nothing more than torturing the English language to get around the law. "New Mexico has made it a crime since the late 1950s to assist in a suicide. Assisting suicide is a fourth degree felony in the state of New Mexico," said Popik. "What they got this judge to do was not to find there's an inherent right to assisted suicide but somehow that this aid in dying at the end of life does not fit the definition of what the legislature intended." So what's the supposed difference between assisted suicide and "aid in dying"? Popik says that's very unclear. "What everybody talks about and what this judge talks about is the provision of a lethal prescription to a terminally ill, competent patient. The problem is, in this ruling, that things aren't defined in any sort of meaningful way," said Popik, who says the diagnosis of someone being terminally ill is far more broad than most people realize. "In legislature after legislature, it's a difficult term to enforce so people typically think of it as having six months to live or something like that. But nowhere in this decision is any guidance given," said Popik. "A terminal condition, typically when defined in state statutes, and New Mexico is like this also, means that anybody who doesn't get treatment that might die within six months. Taken to its logical conclusion, that could be an insulin-dependent diabetic. If there is somebody who does not take medication and does not seek treatment within six months, they could die. "So this definition of terminally ill patients is going to incorporate a huge group of people," said Popik. The case for allowing patients to seek a premature end to their lives is often rooted in the Libertarian argument that an American of sound mind should have the power to make their own decisions, including the choice to end their lives. Popik says that's flawed logic. "We don't solve problems by killing the patient to whom the problem exists for. It's often couched as an argument of autonomy. This is a person's freely chosen right. But we have so much evidence out there that people that are seeking suicide typically suffer from some diagnosable depression or other mental illness. These are people that are facing a tough diagnosis. They're probably and very understandably suffering from some kind of depression related to it. "We don't help this group of people just because they're sick? I think anyone would look at an eighteen or a twenty-two-year-old who had just been through a break-up or a young mother who might be suffering from post-partum depression. They might be saying, 'I want to kill myself.' That's not what we would recognize as a freely chosen decision. At National Right to Life, we think it's a problem that just because somebody is sick or has a low quality of life as the rest of us would perceive it, we don't look at that person and see that ask for suicide as the cry for help that it might be," she said. The states of Oregon, Washington and Vermont have affirmatively legalized assisted suicide. Montana is in a bit of legal limbo on the issue and New Mexico's case will undoubtedly be heard on appeal. Popik says groups like Compassion and Choices are regularly pushing for states to move towards assisted suicide but she does not see a national wave of momentum for that cause. She remains optimistic that Judge Nash's decision will be overturned as a result of the strained logic in getting around a long-standing law. "It's pretty clear that when the legislature in New Mexico...makes assisting suicide legal that this is precisely what they contemplated. They contemplated this sort of where a doctor with no real guidelines and nobody looking at the situation, nobody seeing if the person is competent, nobody seeing if the person is suffering from dementia, nobody seeing if it's someone pushing someone who might be suicidal," said Popik. "The notion is we do not want people assisting in suicides. The New Mexico legislature has decided this and considered it on multiple other occasions. There's been bills over the years in New Mexico to try to loosen up this law and the legislature considered it and they said no," she said. |
| 'Constitutional Crisis' |
| Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:16:26 EST Texas Rep. Randy Weber is ripping Attorney General Eric Holder for recognizing same-sex marriages in Utah and is introducing legislation to strengthen federal laws allowing states to determine their own definitions of the institution. In December, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby ruled Utah's definition of marriage as only the union of one man and one woman was unconstitutional. He also refused to stay his decision to allow the appeals process to play out. Until the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the ruling, roughly 1,000 same-sex couples were legally married in Utah. State officials quickly announced those marriages would not be recognized by the state but Attorney General Holder countered by saying the federal government would consider them valid. Rep. Weber is appalled by the actions of both Shelby and Holder. "Well, obviously activist judges, as a Republican and a conservative we know that they get it wrong. They get it wrong so often. I was encouraged on the other side of that coin, that the Supreme Court issued a stay until they get to fully weigh in on this court decision," said Weber. "The attorney general, man, in my opinion this guy is incorrigible. They've gone around Congress on so many issues, with Fast and Furious and there's just a whole bunch of refusing to defend (the Defense of Marriage Act) and now coming in even though the Supreme Court has issued a stay. This guy goes around the Supreme Court and says, 'Well, we'll recognize it.' Where does he get that power to say we'll go around the Supreme Court. This guy needs to be impeached and out of office," said Weber. A similar scenario played out Tuesday in Oklahoma, where a federal judge ruled that state's marriage laws were also unconstitutional but stayed enforcement of the decision pending appeal. In response to what he considers judicial activism, Weber is sponsoring the "State Marriage Defense Act of 2014". He says the bill not only strengthens the remnants of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) but is based on the logic expressed in last year's Supreme Court decision on marriage. "The Supreme Court basically said in their U.S. v. Windsor case that Congress didn't have the right to define marriage. It's up to the states. OK. Well, now there's confusion because the different agencies are wanting to give federal same-sex benefits and they don't know whether to choose the law of the state of domicile or the laws of the state of celebration. My bill says you must act on the laws of domicile. This clarifies. This takes the ambiguity out of the Supreme Court's ruling," said Weber. In addition to clearing up the uncertainty following the Supreme Court decision, Weber says it is very important to respect the right of states to define institutions as they see fit. "What it does is it upholds states' rights. If the people of Massachusetts want to decide that gay people have right to marry in Massachusetts, that's up to Massachusetts. If the people in Texas decide, and we've got it in our constitution, that we define marriage and we don't recognize gay marriage, by golly that's up to the people of Texas," said Weber. "Texas won't tell Massachusetts that you must recognize marriage based on Texas laws and we don't expect Massachusetts to tell Texas that we must recognize marriage based on their laws. That's an individual states' rights issue. People in Texas uphold that traditional family unit of marriage between a man and a woman, and if Massachusetts chooses to do it between whatever, that's up to Massachusetts," said Weber. For Weber the federal encroachment on issues of state sovereignty go well beyond the marriage debate, particularly in the Obama administration. "You can see him going around Congress and just having a blatant disregard for the Constitution in a whole myriad of issues, whether it's Benghazi and being truthful...on the immigration issue he has recognized some of the children when Congress is not through having that debate yet on those who are here without documentation," said Weber. "He has abdicated what I would call his supposed upholding of the Constitution. He has trampled on the states doing that. Obamacare is an example, instead of states having the right to define insurance markets in their own states and to regulate them. You can go into Obamacare with all of the navigators. In the State of Texas, we have the Department of Insurance, who license insurance agents. Here you come in with navigators who have a whopping 20 hours worth of training," he said. "They have not been thoroughly vetted or background checked. Are they felons? Are they criminals? Are they child molesters or spouse abusers? I mean he has just gone around the states on a whole myriad of issues. In my opinion, we have a constitutional crisis because of this guy," said Weber. Less than a week after first introducing the bill, Weber has already received support from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, National Organization for Marriage and Concerned Women for America among others. Getting it through Congress is a taller order, however. Most congressional Democrats are now on the record supporting same-sex marriage. Weber does have the support of a group of black pastors and one House Democrat, and he believes his focus on preserving power for the states could draw even more because the bill is just "common sense". Weber also believes the Supreme Court will have a lot to say about this issue, surmising the court would not have stayed Shelby's decision if it didn't plan to hear the case. He's less sure which way the justices would rule on a state's right to define marriage for itself, but he's confident about what the Constitution has to say about it. "I would argue as a conservative and as an advocate for the Constitution, the Supreme Court doesn't have to decide states have the right. We've got the right. All you have to do is look to the Tenth Amendment. So if they struck down the third section of DOMA and said Congress doesn't have that right, then read your Constitution. Read the Tenth Amendment. The only other people that have that right are the citizens and the states respectively," said Weber. |
| Income Equality vs. Equal Opportunity |
| Tue, 14 Jan 2014 16:04:32 EST Joint Economic Committee Chairman Kevin Brady is slamming President Obama and other Democrats for trying to advance an agenda to confront "income inequality" and efforts to extend emergency unemployment benefits in what he calls a misguided appeal for compassion. The Texas Republican is also speaking out on the dismal jobs reports and what Congress can do to spur job creation and why he's generally supportive of the bipartisan spending bill that emerged this week. With Obama and other Democrats trumpeting the need to combat income inequality through proposed minimum wage increases and extending emergency unemployment benefits, Brady says the whole campaign on the left is badly misguided. "I just reject the whole premise. I think it is not the government's role to equalize everyone's income. I think it's our role to provide as unfettered of an opportunity as you can for individuals to climb up that economic ladder," said Brady. "I don't trust the government to equalize income, but I do trust the free market system to give us opportunities that allow us to move up that ladder. That's where I think the focus ought to be." Brady says the American system is a shining example of how the poor and underprivileged can elevate their condition by taking advantage of opportunities and making wise decisions. "If you're born into a family with very low skills and among the poorest in the country, you have a better chance of moving up the economic ladder into the middle class than the wealthy do staying at their station. In America, individual decisions on education, on work, on marriage, on family, all the factors that help you move up the economic ladder, are available," said Brady. While he dismisses the ideology behind the income equality movement, Brady acknowledges it will be a major issue in this year's campaigns and Republicans need to be ready with a rebuttal and better solutions. "It's going to be focused on equal opportunity, the opportunity to pull yourself up that economic ladder through hard work, through education, through opportunities. It is America's strength. Government is not so good at that and all they have to do is look at this new health care law to realize they do not have the answers for families," said Brady. The latest major salvo in the income inequality movement centers on President Obama's call to extend emergency unemployment benefits that expired in December and were not part of the bipartisan budget deal that passed earlier in the month. Republicans now seem willing to approve short-term extensions if they are paid for with spending cuts in other areas. Brady disagrees with both of those approaches. "I don't think we ought to extend the emergency benefits and that's what this is. These are emergency benefits beyond what state gives of half a year, beyond extra unemployment benefits if the unemployment rate is high in your state. These are emergency benefits designed for the unemployed when (the jobless rate) is high and going higher. The president tells us unemployment is lower in all 50 states. The emergency is over," said Brady, who fiercely rejects the contention that opposition to the extension is rooted in a lack of compassion for those out of work. "The measure of America's compassion for those who don't have a job is not how long you keep them on unemployment. It's how soon you get them into a good paying job," said Brady. "These folks are crying out for a job and I think extending it three months or some short period doesn't help them get back to work." As chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, Brady goes over the jobless numbers with great scrutiny. He says there was great hope for a healthy jobs report given some of the recent economic indicators, but the December report shows the economy is struggling mightily. In December, the nation added just 74,000 jobs and saw the jobless rate dip to 6.7 percent but that's only because 347,000 people gave up searching for work. Brady says there's little mystery as to why the economy is so stubbornly weak when he speaks with business owners in his Houston-area district. "What our local businesses tell us about the new taxes that landed on top of them. The health care law is having a real impact on hiring. There's the worry about red tape that they're all experiencing. And now, we have these recommendations that you force local companies to pay $5,000 more a worker through the minimum wage," said Brady. While Brady believes getting the government out of the way is the best avenue to encourage job creation, he says scores of bills passed by the House and languishing in the Senate could provide at least some relief. He pointed to two in particular: approving construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and making the employer mandate optional in the new health care law. This week, the House is expected to approve a bipartisan spending bill totaling $1.1 trillion. Multiple House Republican and Senate Democratic leaders committee chairs are urging their members to hold their nose on some items and approve the bill for the larger good. Veterans benefits are still a bone of contention. Most were cut in the December spending bill and, while both parties promised to restore them, only benefits for disabled vets seem to be getting restored while other veterans will see cost of living reductions and other cuts. Brady says there are items in the bill he doesn't like but he says given Democratic control of the Senate and the White House, this is about as well as the GOP can do until they win more elections. He also says there are some very bright spots in the plan as well. "There's some things to like in this. To take this part of the budget basically back to the Bush years I think is rolling back all of the president's spending since then. It not only freezes Obamacare funding, it actually cuts dollars out of that and cuts funding out of the Independent Payment Advisory Board. It cuts the IRS and EPA back, the EPA funding by almost 20 percent. More importantly, it restores defense by keeping the funding at the current level. That really helps with readiness," said Brady. The House is expected to vote on the omnibus spending bill on Wednesday. |
| EPA Fires Major Shot in "War on Coal' |
| Mon, 13 Jan 2014 15:35:48 EST A emissions rule on power plants requires a massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and threatens to block any new coal-fired energy facilities because they cannot hope to meet the new standards without using unproven and cost-prohibitive technology. Drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the rule is currently in the public comment phase, but free-market energy advocates see the coal industry clearly within the Obama administration's cross hairs. "They set an emission rate and that rate is so low that no coal-fired power plants can actually meet that goal unless they include this technology called Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), which is incredibly expensive and doesn't exist on any power plant in the world today. Essentially what this new rule is is a ban on new coal-fired power plants," said Daniel Simmons, vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research and the author of the group's response to the proposed rule. Simmons says the new rule slashes emissions standards in half from existing levels and he believes future coal plants are not the only targets here. "If they are able to do this and if they get away with it, they will then go after existing coal-fired power plants," said Simmons. According to Simmons, coal provides about 40 percent of the nation's power supply and it is not at all clear how that would be replaced. "That's a heck of a lot of electricity that would have to be made up somewhere. We're talking about dramatically increasing the cost of electricity all to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. I think that is the real goal," said Simmons, who has not officially crunched the numbers but firmly believes if the EPA proceeds with the rule it will have disastrous effects on our pocketbooks and the economy at large. "It could get awfully expensive. Some people might see their electricity rates double. If there's no backup power plants, that means electricity is going to get awfully expensive when you have shortages around the country," said Simmons. "If we want to build manufacturing in this country again, the cost of electricity is critical. Otherwise, companies are going to go places where electricity is reliable and inexpensive, and the EPA is trying to make it so that the electricity in the United States is neither reliable nor inexpensive." So what is CCS all about? Simmons says it's about an unreasonable desire to clamp down on carbon dioxide. "What EPA has tried to do is limit all of the pollution, so that it really only emits water vapor or carbon dioxide because those things don't harm people. You don't get sick from breathing carbon dioxide, you breathe that out. So the problem is the plants have gotten cleaner and now they're regulating the last thing there is to regulate, which us carbon dioxide emissions," said Simmons. The EPA says CCS is proven effective by the fact that a plant is being built in the U.S. that intends to use the technology and another is underway in Canada. Three additional facilities are also being planned, but Simmons says the government is leaving out some very inconvenient facts. "Every single one of these power plants are all heavily subsidized by the government," said Simmons, who says both of the plants currently under construction have received $300 million in taxpayer subsidies. "The technology is awfully expensive because it hasn't been tried anywhere and that's to try to capture the carbon dioxide as it comes out after they burn the coal." Simmons says the power plant that will feature CCS that is being built in the U.S. started with a cost estimate of $2.4 billion but has already ballooned to $4.3 billion. He is also agitated that the EPA is required to provide real-world examples of the technology working but only offers up future facilities as evidence. "That's kind of a crummy argument. Nothing says it's going to work in the real world or even be close to being cost-effective," said Simmons, who also takes aim at EPA's other defense that energy companies will all choose natural gas facilities over coal-fired plants because of the cheap price of gas. The government reasons the rise of natural gas makes the future of coal plants a moot point. "That, again, is awfully silly because the economics of natural gas can change rather quickly," said Simmons. While the immediate outlook seems bleak, Simmons says there are three avenues worth pursuing to stop the rule from taking effect later this year. "EPA has a comment period on this rule for the next 60 days, where citizens can write EPA and tell them what they think of the rule. Second of all, Congress really has to change the law so it's obvious that EPA can't do this. The third thing is, because I believe this is ideologically driven, it will end up in the courts. It will be there for the next couple of years and hopefully the side of affordable, reliable electricity prevails," said Simmons. |
| War on Poverty Plagues the Black Community |
| Fri, 10 Jan 2014 16:08:22 EST Fifty years have passed Lyndon Johnson first waged the War on Poverty, but the very people who were supposed to be helped from major government spending on social programs turned out to be the greatest victims, according to Cherlyn Harley LeBon, co-chairman of Project 21, a leadership network of black conservatives. Official accounts suggest the poverty rate in January 1964 was 19 percent. While the number has fluctuated over the past half-century, currently 15 percent of the U.S. lives under the poverty line and total number living in poverty is at or very near an all-time high. Supporters of Johnson's programs say countless millions of adults and children have benefited and even survived thanks to these federal programs, but not everyone sees it that way. "If you think about all these public assistance programs and how much they cost, and all we've seen in 50 years is a four percent decrease? Not even knowing the metrics, that's not something that impresses me," said Lebon, who says the far more damaging evidence can be seen in poor, and especially, black neighborhoods. "I find it a very curious coincidence that the issues that started to plague the black community: the higher incarceration rate, the drug use, the explosive rise in single, unwed mothers all started to plague the black community in the 1960s, which coincided with the development of these social programs. These very same problems still plague the black community as these public assistance programs get larger and larger," said LeBon. LeBon believes liberal had good intentions in trying to provide assistance for poor and fatherless homes, but their efforts only made the problem worse. "A good number of these public assistance programs are a massive disincentive to having a cohesive family because you're penalized if you have a man in the home," said LeBon. "They are contributing to the breakdown of the black family." While Johnson launched the War on Poverty, LeBon says the seeds for his thinking could be found in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs during the Great Depression. But even as he implemented major government assistance programs, Roosevelt also warned against dependence upon the programs which he feared long-term dependence on the government would be "a subtle destroyer of the spirit." LeBon says that's exactly what's happened. "In some communities, public assistance programs have become a subtle destroyer of the spirit because when you're looking at multi-generations of families who have been on public assistance, where is the incentive for individuals to want to start businesses and become entrepreneurs. It's just not there," said LeBon. Earlier this week, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio offered new approaches to battling poverty, including shifting the burden from the federal government to the states to work on different solutions. He also argued that having married parents was the greatest asset children have in escaping or staying out of poverty. Rubio was roundly mocked by the left for that belief, and LeBon believes she knows why. "Part of the narrative from the left, perhaps well-intentioned, is this patriarchal sort of notion and the belief that we need to take care of everyone. We really don't want the government taking care of families. We want those families taking care of their own families," said Lebon, who says that approach leads to better morale and initiative in the home and a greater sense of self worth for all when they are not dependent upon government for so many things. So what would be a better approach? LeBon says local governments need to do everything possible to attract businesses to set up shop in a community rather than having to walk through a maze of bureaucracy just to get started. In addition to the creation of new jobs, she says new businesses revitalize an entire neighborhood by attracting other businesses and encouraging current residents to fix up their homes and businesses and raise property values while putting their money back into the local community. "That has an enormous ripple effect and that's not from Congress, that is on local leadership and local government officials to put those policies in place, improve those communities and improve the lives in those communities," said LeBon. |
| Twinkie, Twinkie |
| Fri, 10 Jan 2014 13:46:15 EST As New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tries to navigate out of the traffic jam controversy, the Capitol Steps bring back a previous Christie parody piece from the governor faced a different crisis. Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton, who also weighs in on former Defense Secretary Bob Gates slamming President Obama and Vice President Biden in a new book. |
| Christian Persecution Explosion |
| Thu, 9 Jan 2014 17:12:16 EST The number of Christian martyrs was twice as high in 2013 as the year before and radical Islamist governments and groups are responsible for the vast majority of deaths and persecution around the world, according to the 2014 World Watch List. Compiled by Open Doors USA, which assists the persecuted church around the world, the World Watch list reports 2,123 Christians were killed for their faith last year, compared to 1,201 in 2012. In fact, the killings in Syria alone (1,213) trumped the total from a year earlier. "The target of violence is mainly taking place mainly from rebel groups who are Islamic extremists, so these are jihadists practicing extreme Islam and are targeting Christian areas," said Emily Fuentes, communications director at Open Doors USA. "Many of these Christians have had to flee and these towns have essentially become ghost towns because they've cleared Christians out. In October of last year, there was a massacre in one of these towns where more than 45 people died and hundreds were injured just because it was a Christian dominated town. "Syria is experiencing a whole new level of persecution and violence of Christians," said Fuentes, noting that Syria is now the third worst persecutor of Christians, skyrocketing from the 36th spot it held just two years ago. While Syria is the most deadly spot on earth for Christians, Fuentes says it fits a pattern in the Islamic world. She says of the 50 worst nations for persecution, 37 of them are Muslim. Fuentes says another disturbing twist is the melding of radical Islam with communist and other totalitarian ideologies. "Some of (Christians in persecuted nations) experience different forms of persecution or combined forms of persecution. An example would be some of the central Asian countries, like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and all those. You might still see persecution that comes from the the former days of the USSR, a little bit of lingering Communism, where the government is sending officials to monitor churches and monitor any Christian activities and secretly spying on Christians and using governmental tactics," said Fuentes. "But you're also seeing extreme Islam blended into that, so not only are they worried about the government but they're worried about sections of the government that are Islamic extremists or groups that are Islamic extremists coming in to attack them," she said. Nine of the worst 10 nations for Christians are Islamic. In addition to Syria in third slot, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran and Yemen are among the worst of the worst. But for 12 years running now, the communist North Korean regime is at the top of the list and Fuentes says things there are only getting worse there. "It is the most hostile place to be a Christian. It is an act punishable by death in North Korea to be a Christian, either by execution sometimes on the spot or execution very soon after finding out about your faith," said Fuentes, who says those who are not killed are sent to Nazi-like concentration camps. She also says the pain inflicted by the regime goes far beyond the Christians themselves. "The moral dilemma that North Korean Christians have that's unlike any other place in the world is that if their faith is discovered, not only them but up to three generations of their family could be forced to go to these labor camps. So that's their parents, their children, their grandchildren all because of their faith in Christ," she said. The biggest movers on this year's list were the Central African Republic leaping to sixteenth after not even being on the list last year and Mali which dropped from seventh in 2012 to thirty-third this year. Fuentes says although it is a majority Christian nation, Islamic groups have infiltrated the cities are have been targeting Christians for death. She says 13 pastors have been slain there in just the past couple of months. Mali is the opposite story. International military action rooted many radical islamists from that nation and greater religious freedom has emerged, although Fuentes hastens to add that any nation on the list is a nightmare for believers. Fuentes says the annual World Watch List is designed for multiple purposes, including the desire to attract more media attention to the surge of persecution around the world, alert public officials to address these problems and inform pastors and believers around the nation. However, she says all of those take a backseat to the number one goal. "The number one thing that persecuted Christians ask for in every country is our prayers. It's not bibles. It's not money. It's prayers, and they know that prayer is the most powerful thing. It can change the hearts of leaders who may not be as drawn to sharing the message of persecuted Christians. It can even change the heart of dictators like Kim Jong-Un," said Fuentes. To see the entire World Watch List and learn how to pray for persecuted believers around the world, Fuentes encourages those interested to visit www.worldwatchlist.us. |
| Demanding Obamacare Data |
| Thu, 9 Jan 2014 15:48:33 EST The House of Representatives will vote Friday on legislation to force the Obama administration to reveal Obamacare enrollment data and other key figures so lawmakers and the public can see whether the goals are being met and the right people are signing up. The Exchange Information Disclosure Act (H.R. 3362) is sponsored by Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Terry says he's pushing the bill because the Obama administration left him no choice. "(Health and Human Services Secretary) Kathleen Sebelius motivated me. She was in front of our committee and I asked her for information and she said, 'No,' just as blunt as that," said Terry, who says the administration is voluntarily releasing the number of visitors to healthcare.gov but little else. "That's fairly meaningless data. This is based on what state insurance commissioners as data. This is what they would require. If it weren't Obamacare and a federal law, this is what they require of policies sold within their states," said Terry. "They want to know who has signed up for what policies. OK, we have nine million people that have gained access through the exchange. Well, how many of them actually got a policy? We don't know that. What policies did they get?" Demographic information is also important for lawmakers to know, since the system is predicated on millions of young, healthy people signing up to help bear the costs for older, less healthy people. "This scheme of Obamacare collapses if young people aren't signing up, so we need to know if young people are signing up. What's the demographic? And how many of the people signing up are actually going into Medicaid versus a policy. This is just simple, necessary information," said Terry. Terry says there is nothing in the new health law requiring the administration to share relevant data and he says nothing Congress is asking for would endanger anyone's privacy. "This isn't personally identifiable information. It isn't associated to a name. It's just 'a person signed up for this policy and they are this age,'" said Terry, who also elaborated on how frequent updates in enrollment info would need to come. "They could actually do it in real time if they wanted to. All I'm requiring is that at least once a week, at the end of the week, they have to make the information accessible. So we're not even saying you have to send this to the Nebraska Insurance Commission. We just are saying you have to make this information available to them," said Terry. In addition to leaving Congress in the dark, Terry says the lack of information about enrollments is driving state insurance commissioners "crazy." He also says GOP members and state officials are increasingly worried about accuracy of information about enrollees because of the gaping holes in the navigator program. Navigators are the people hired to promote Obamacare and personally guide Americans through the sign-up process. "They're unlicensed and most of them have no experience in health care, let alone being able to go through the nuances policy. Yet, those are the ones that are empowered under this bill to, in essence, sell you a policy. Health and Human Services has published the names of those entities that have gotten grants, but they've refused to release the names of the individuals that out in the communities knocking on doors and trying to sign people up. In the state of Nebraska, as in any other state, you aren't allowed to be an unlicensed broker of insurance like these folks are," said Terry. As with many efforts to amend or repeal Obamacare, congressional Democrats want nothing to do with Terry's bill. "You would think that an administration that is all about transparency would be in favor of this bill, but the Democrats are lined up against this because they don't want the people to know the data, the real story," said Terry. "They've circled the wagons around Obamacare and they do not want there to be any signs of weakness, whether it's weaknesses of Obamacare or their enthusiastic defense of Obamacare. And they're trying to get a new narrative out there that the Republicans are just going to spend one hundred percent of their time and they're just obsessed with Obamacare," said Terry. "Yeah, we do want to repeal it. We do think it's going to be bad for the patients, bad for the people and bad for our country. But this is one of those things that's just simply transparency." The House is expected to approve the bill, but even Terry is pessimistic that it will even see the light of day in the U.S. Senate. "I'm going to be blunt. I have no confidence that Harry Reid is going to allow a bill like this on the Senate floor," he said, while again blasting his Democratic colleagues for preaching transparency but rejecting when they have a chance to vote for it. |
| Caring vs. Growth |
| Wed, 8 Jan 2014 14:46:26 EST The Obama administration has wasted little time in 2014 demanding an emergency extension of federal unemployment benefits with no spending cuts attached and questioning the compassion of those who don't want to continue aid to struggling families, but a former chief economist for the Joint Economic Committee says it's not the smart or compassionate thing to do. Brian Wesbury has been an economist for 32 years, worked on Capitol Hill and is now chief economist at First Trust Advisors in Chicago. He says the economic history of the U.S. and the world is clear and stands in contrast to Obama's contention that extending the benefits boosts the economy. "Every dime that the government spends, no matter where it goes, those monies come from either borrowing or taxing from other people. So this idea that we can take from one group and give to another group and, therefore, help the economy has a serious flaw in the logic to begin with," said Wesbury. "I know what people will say. They'll say, 'Well, this guy doesn't care about people.' That's not true. What I want to see is the best economic growth that we can have. What I know from looking at history is that the smaller the government is, that the more resources we leave in the private sector, the more the economy grows and the more jobs we create," said Wesbury, who points to Germany as the only European nation to cut the size of it's government and also witnesses a shrinking jobless rate. "That's what this debate is about. Spending money is not the only way to show that you care about people. Unfortunately, in an emergency situation, then Washington just devolves into just another way to see who can spend the most and say they helped the people the most. In fact, at least in my view, history shows the more government spends, the less people are helped, not more," said Wesbury. During his public push for extended benefits on Tuesday, President Obama emphatically dismissed the notion that some people are in no hurry to accept new jobs because they would rather getmoney from the government for not working. Wesbury says there's plenty of economic incentive for those on public assistance. "I haven't seen major macro data on this but if people are looking at jobs in a factory, in a food plant or on a farm and they're looking at ten to twelve dollars and hour in pay, but if the benefits you can get from the government is the equivalent of fourteen to fifteen dollars an hour then way would you take that job?" said Wesbury, who says Europe has already proven this point. "We saw this in Europe over the last 40 years, that they've made it literally almost painless to be without a job. I know that sounds cold, but we're looking at this from an economic point of view. If you subsidize something, you get more of it. If you tax something, you get less of it. What happened in Europe is they subsidized non-work and non-production and they taxed production. It hurt their economy. The United States has been moving in that direction for many years. No wonder our economy is slower. no wonder the unemployment rate is higher," said Wesbury. The argument from supporters of the extension is that we are in an economic emergency and continuing the benefits is needed in the short-term. Wesbury doesn't buy the premise. While noting many have been hurt by it, he says the scope of the recent crisis has been exaggerated and politicians have exploited the situation. "The 2008-2009 crisis doesn't even come close to one of the worst crises in the world, but because it scared so many people we've continued to call everything an emergency, whether it's agricultural subsidies, defense spending or stimulus spending," said Wesbury. After initially demanding an end to the extended unemployment benefits in the recent budget deal, Republicans seem more intent on cutting spending elsewhere to pay for new benefits rather than hold the line on keeping the public assistance going in perpetuity. "If Republicans are going to be forced to accept this, having to prove their empathy for people in doing this, then Democrats ought to be able to allow spending to be cut in some other area," said Wesbury, who suggested ethanol subsides as a good place to start. So how does he explain the six Senate Republicans who went along with Democrats in approving an extension in unemployment benefits without any spending offsets? "In an election year, votes in Congress are based on what people think will get them re-elected. When it comes down to it, lots and lots of things that Congress does are not the most economically perfect kind of policies. There's lots of things that government does that I believe hurt the economy but seem to win votes or be politically correct. That's unfortunate because I think in the end that hurts the U.S. economy in the long run," said Wesbury. |
| Upheaval |
| Tue, 7 Jan 2014 15:00:00 EST The nexus of big government, big banks and politics as usual is preventing the United States from taking the most effective approach to some of our greatest national challenges, according to business television host and author Lou Dobbs. Dobbs is host of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on the Fox Business Network and author of the new book "Upheaval: Winning Back the Country with Knowledge that Empowers, Ideas that Matter and Solutions that Work." The book details flawed policies from the economy to energy and from education to foreign affairs. But Dobbs says one of the biggest problems is that politicians from both sides forget who they work for. "The jobs of both political parties must start with individual citizens. Their responsibilities are to the individual interests of Americans and the broad national interest, but we cannot lose sight of the citizen. Frankly, at this point, both parties are looking at the individual citizen as a consumer, as a taxpayer or in some other role. But seldom do they acknowledge that the citizen is the foundation of this nation and policies have to be created to benefit our citizens, not business interests , not union interests and certainly not special interests," said Dobbs. The explosive growth in the size of government, corporations and banks greatly worries Dobbs because he believes they were never designed to accumulate this much power and individual citizens are increasingly powerless to stand up to those massive entities. "The first thing we must do is deal with these problems in terms of scale. We have government that is far too large. We have permitted too many of our institution, our corporations, to get way too big. I enumerate within the book the massive consolidation of economic power within the banking industry," said Dobbs, noting there are fewer than half the number of banks in the U.S. than we had 20 years ago and just 12 banks control 69 percent of commercial bank assets in the country. "That is an extraordinary concentration of economic power. With it of course comes immense social and political power that is not, in my judgment in the economic interest of the nation and it's certainly not appropriate to the American nation," said Dobbs. Much of the book cites key figures showing how the current policies of our government are major failures, from record spending on education for worse and worse results to massive investment in renewable energy, when it's a tiny fraction of the energy we produce. Dobbs was known for years for his fierce rejection of the two-party system, but in "Upheaval" Dobbs admits he has changed greatly and now believes the Republican Party is the only realistic vehicle for change. "As a registered independent, it is clear to me now that going into the primaries, I've got to make the decision, as do millions of independents, as to whether or not we're going to continue along this path or whether many of us will go over to the Republican Party and say we're going to be part of the Republican Party. We want to be invited in. We want to feel at home there. And we want to make certain that this is a party committed to solutions and not just more rhetoric, not pandering but true effective governance in the national interest," said Dobbs. First, although a longtime critic of comprehensive immigration reform, Dobbs believes House Republicans are on the right track with their emerging immigration legislation. "(Republicans) have to have the guts to lead. They're doing it right now in the House of Representatives. No one has done better than Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He and his committee have put forward, in four pieces of legislation, the solution to illegal immigration and border security in this country," said Dobbs. "Now, Speaker of the House John Boehner and the rest of the Republican Party have to decide whether or not they're going to support the remarkable, landmark legislation that Goodlatte has pushed through," he said. Dobbs also wants a GOP that appeals to everyone, noting he believes Mitt Romney doomed his campaign when he said 47 percent of Americans had no incentive to embrace his campaign. Also citing a poll showing 78 percent of Americans support legal abortions in at least some circumstances and the recent momentum for same-sex marriage, Dobbs calls for Republicans to forget the focus on social issues and embrace an economic agenda that will appeal to a wide swath of voters. "I believe the Republican Party just has no choice but to embrace all Americans around the traditional values of the Republican Party. That is a temperate foreign policy, a prudent fiscal policy, a pro-economic growth policy, a pro-prosperity policy and equal opportunity for all within our borders. To create a nation that is prosperous, that is at peace, and is focused on a brighter future rather than creating more debt for our children," said Dobbs. For all the rough economic waters in recent years, Dobbs believes we are seeing signs of noticeable economic improvement and the problems America faces can be conquered. "There are not any challenges we face right now that we cannot resolve as Americans, that we cannot bring to bear our ingenuity and our resources and persevere and overcome," he said. "We have to face facts and both political parties have to face facts that we've got a lot of work to do." |
| War Hero Reacts to Fall of Fallujah |
| Mon, 6 Jan 2014 15:51:21 EST In late 2004, U.S.-led forces won the Battle of Fallujah in some some of the most brutal fighting of the war and pushed out radicals from their major stronghold in Iraq. Ninety-five American troops paid the ultimate sacrifice. Several U.S. service members were honored for heroism in that battle, including U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Jeremiah Workman, who was awarded the Navy Cross. However, just over nine years later, reports now confirm that Al Qaeda forces have control of that city and efforts to impose a radical Islamist government are now moving on to Ramadi. The news struck Workman pretty hard. "I'm saddened. My heart aches because of the Marines we lost in that city and for their families obviously," said Workman. "I'm not surprised. What I am surprised is there really wasn't a lead-up to this. You didn't hear of any major fighting going on before they raised the flag on the mayor's complex." So why isn't Workman surprised that Fallujah fell just two years after the United States left Iraq when so many others are shocked? "The fact of the matter is we have an elephant in the living room when we're trying to watch the Superbowl. If you look at that culture, it's the same now as it was back in biblical times. They haven't really moved forward as a culture. They're still running around hacking people's heads off with dull, rusty knives," said Workman. "We can't lay an egg in the middle of Baghdad and expect it to hatch and all of a sudden there's democracy. It just does not happen in that part of the world. They've been a people at war and turmoil for thousands of years," he said. While Workman isn't surprised, the Al Qaeda seizure of Fallujah reverses what been considerable progress there. He can't say what Fallujah was like when U.S. forces left Iraq in 2011, he says the change between the 2004 battle and his return in 2007 was remarkable. "One thing that really stuck in my memory from that 2007 trip was that you had Iraqi Fallujah police officers pulling people over for minor traffic infractions that you would see on (Interstate) 95 here in the United States. So I left in '07 feeling they had really come a long way. It was orderly and peaceful. I would like to think that from '07 to 2011 that they continued to build on that success," said Workman. On Monday, the Obama administration announced no personnel would be sent to Iraq to deal with the Al Qaeda advances but that drone assistance would be available to the Iraqi government. Workman doubts that will have much impact since competent Iraqi intelligence would be needed to make the drones effective. But he says the political mistakes in Iraq go much deeper. "On both sides, the United States and Iraq, you have the complete political fumble. What the current administration has done by saying (Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri) al-Malikiwanted all Americans out of the country. I think it's come to surface that that was not completely 100 percent truthful," said Workman. "I think to pull out abruptly like that. I think we're starting to see the results of that." He also noted that political infighting in Baghdad forced al-Maliki to remove national troops from Anbar Province, leading to regional defense measures and a green light for Al Qaeda violence. As difficult as it is for Workman to watch Fallujah fall back into the hands of extremists, he says the latest news does not diminish the devotion and sacrifice of his brothers in battle nine years ago. "Regardless of what's going on in Fallujah right now, nine years ago I watched heroism, sacrifice, dedication that gives me goosebumps to even talk about. The way that those Marines fought for their brothers and for each other, it's unbelievable to know that America has people like that willing to go do that type of work for them," said Workman. |
| 'A Morally Bankrupt Presidency' |
| Mon, 23 Dec 2013 21:23:00 EST Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver says 2013 will go down as an historic year in the fight to save the unborn, he believes America is in even greater peril as a result of the homosexual agenda and he says traditional Americans are fighting against a "morally bankrupt presidency". The biggest debate in the cultural battles this year centered on the advance of gay marriage, which was legalized in several states through legislative and judicial means. The biggest showdown came at the Supreme Court, where justices upheld gay marriage in California despite a 2008 constitutional amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman. The court also struck down part of the Defense of Marriage act, contending that the federal government had to issue benefits to same-sex spouses in states where gay marriage is legal. "What the Supreme Court did was strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and essentially call everyone who believes in marriage as one man and one woman a bigot and a hater of humanity," said Staver, who sees the ruling having a far-reaching impact. "That particular decision is being used around the country to attack state constitutional marriage laws or state laws that affirm marriage as one man and one woman. I think it'll have a very destructive impact," said Staver, who believes the court decisions deserve a spot alongside some of the most infamous in U.S. history. "That decision delegitimizes the United States Supreme Court just as much as the Dred Scott decision delegitimized the Supreme Court where they said that people of color were not citizens, therefore they were not entitled to the protections of the Constitution," he said. "This decision is just a bigoted opinion of five individuals. but in the meantime, I think it'll ultimately have a very negative effect around the country." While Staver admits the legal momentum is not in his favor, he believes the homosexual lobby is overplaying their hand and the American public will reject them. "The American people are seeing the underside of the same-sex agenda that we've warned about and that's the intolerance of it, that is the absolute dominance of it against any worldview, particularly a Christian worldview," said Staver, who cites the recent controversy over "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson as the latest evidence. "More and more people are starting to say, 'This is just going too far' and I think this whole agenda may well overplay its hand." When it comes to the abortion fight, Staver is very bullish after watching many states propose and pass legislation banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy following the conviction of abortionist Kermit Gosnell on infanticide charges. "The 2013 year is going to be a very historic year. More pro-life legislation was passed or put on the ballot for statewide initiatives than any other year. That momentum will continue to grow. Even the Obamacare, with regards to the forced funding of abortion has taken a number of hits with court after court after court issuing injunctions blocking the Obamacare from forcing religious or even for-profit companies from having to fund abortion," said Staver. "2013 has been a good year. We need to continue that momentum, but at the end of the day we need to ultimately return America to a culture of life. One child is too many children that are sacrificed for convenience," said Staver. Just days after the 2012 elections, Staver considered Obama's re-election so troubling he suggested it could mean the beginning of the death of America. After another year of the culture wars, does Staver stand behind that quote? "Yes I do. I think that President Obama has been a devastatingly negative impact and effect on America, and not just on America but around the world," said Staver, who says a recent visit to a family conference in Peru showed him just how far the Obama administration is trying to push its homosexual and abortion agendas. "One thing that was very clear is the concern that they have over the Obama administration actively working to undermine their Judeo-Christian values, particularly in the area. of life and marriage. It's not just in Latin America. It's all over the world. So not only are we seeing that here in America, but we're seeing the devastating negative impact of a morally bankrupt presidency that is having a very negative and bad effect globally," he said. |
| Down the Road Again |
| Mon, 23 Dec 2013 21:17:02 EST As a new year dawns, Congress seems to have avoided a government shutdown for the foreseeable future but another debt ceiling fight may be right around the corner. As we prepare, the Capitol Steps focus on that favorite Washington sport of delaying any real change with their song "Down the Road Again". Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton. |
| 'An Inattentive, Weak Administration' |
| Mon, 23 Dec 2013 20:33:21 EST 2013 was a year of foreign policy blunders and miscalculations that left our standing in the world diminished, the Russians on the rise and the Middle East in greater turmoil, according to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. One of the biggest events in the Middle East was the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. After days and weeks of gigantic protests throughout the country, the military gave Morsi and ultimatum to leave. He refused and the military took power. Bolton praises the move and notes the U.S. condemnation of the military's actions once puts this administration on the wrong side of the debate. "As we come to the end of the year, we have the Egyptian military back in power, which is essentially where we were at the beginning of the Arab Spring. Yet, because of the administration's inept handling of events in Egypt, we have now succeeded in alienating every major element of Egyptian society." said Bolton. "The military don't trust the Obama administration. They think they're pro-Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood doesn't trust the administration. The pro-western, pro-democracy protesters just pull their hair out when they think about how the administration has handled this. The consequence is we're now at our lowest influence in Egypt in decades. The Russians are now back in trying to sell weapons, which they haven't been in 40 years. So, it's hard to imagine a worse outcome for the United States than where we are now," said Bolton. Another major foreign policy showdown came in September over Syria. After the international community concluded that President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, President Obama attempted to convince allies and Congress that military action was necessary. Neither was interested. The political and diplomatic showdown was averted when Secretary of State John Kerry suggested Syria could avoid military strikes by giving up all chemical weapons. Kerry immediate said that would never happen, but Russia immediately seized on the comment and eventually worked out a deal for Assad to stay in power in exchange for turning over his chemical stockpiles. "This is another situation where the United States has absolutely failed to achieve its objectives. The president said his objective was removing the Assad regime from power. That obviously hasn't happened. If anything, momentum is now in the direction of the regime. The president said that if he saw the use of chemical weapons that would be a red line that would prompt American intervention. Chemical weapons were used. There was no American intervention," said Bolton. "Whether you agree with the administration's policies or not, what they have done has let the United States again in a much weaker position," he said. Late in the year, the U.S. touted a temporary, six-month deal to ease economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran taking steps to prove it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons. The short-term agreement is designed to set the stage for a permanent deal early next year. "Since the beginning of the Obama administration, the president has believed he could find a way to deal diplomatically with Iran's nuclear weapons program, contrary to the reality that Iran's been after deliverable nuclear weapons for over 20 years. It's one of their highest national security goals. Notwithstanding that reality, President Obama thought he could cut a deal with them," said Bolton. "Iran got what it wanted. It protected its nuclear program. At the same time it got some relief - exact quantity unknown - but it got some relief from the economic sanctions. The United States came away with essentially nothing," he said. In each of these diplomatic matters, Russia played a key role and Bolton says they are just some of the signs that Russian aggression is on the rise. Not only does he see Russia more influential now than at any time in the past four decades, but he warns of Vladimir Putin's attempts to reconstitute the old Soviet Union. In 2014, Bolton expects all of these issues to create more headaches for the United States in addition to the threat posed by renewed aggression by China in its sphere of influence. "This is the consequence of an inattentive, weak administration. American interests are going by the boards. Other countries see this weakness and lack of attention and they recalibrate their policies accordingly to take advantage of it. So I'm afraid we're in for pretty heavy sailing here over the next three years," said Bolton. |
| Remembrances 2013, Part 2 |
| Mon, 23 Dec 2013 20:26:45 EST In the second half of this special report, we remember the famous individuals from film, television, music, books and more who passed away in 2013. |
| Remembrances 2013, Part 1 |
| Mon, 23 Dec 2013 20:23:44 EST As 2013 draws to a close, we remember the famous names and faces who died this year. In the first of our two-part series, we examine the major figures from politics, media and sports who left us over the past 12 months. |
| Long, Long Lame Duck Period |
| Mon, 23 Dec 2013 19:03:52 EST President Obama's credibility will be difficult to regain after the failure of his core Obamacare promise and the disastrous roll-out of the health care law rescued the Republicans from a public relations nightmare following the government shutdown, according to one of the nation's leading political scientists. Larry Sabato is a professor of political science at the University of Virginia and directs the school's Center for Politics. He says President Obama lost a lot of ground with the American people by promising them if they liked their health plans and doctors that they could keep them. "One thing that I think all historians and political scientists look for is the moment, if it occurs, when the credibility gap opens and it's happened for Obama. It's not because of the rocky roll-out of Obamacare and not because a website doesn't work, although it should have," said Sabato. "It's because of that oft-repeated statement, which many people bought because the president said it and people said, 'Well, if he's got all these advisers, surely they checked.'" "The fact that a president would say that over and over again creates a credibility problem," said Sabato, noting similar drops for Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam, Richard Nixon over Watergate, Ronald Reagan over Iran-Contra, George H.W. Bush over taxes and Bill Clinton over denials of in intimate relationship with an intern. "There are these moments in a presidency when people can focus on whether a president is telling the truth or not. And once you've found out that somebody can lie to you over and over again and do it pretty convincingly, you're a little less inclined to be gullible," said Sabato, who says the credibility gap is obvious in Obama's latest polling. "Right now, depending on the poll, it's between the upper thirties and the low forties. Obviously that's not a very good position to be in when you're the incumbent president and you have more than three years to run in your term. This is going to be a long, long lame duck period," he said. In addition to severely damaging the president's credibility, Sabato says the timing of the fiasco saved congressional Republicans, who were getting the lion's share of the public's wrath over the government shutdown. But Sabato says Republicans also need to dodge the bullet again in 2014. "Obamacare saved the Republicans from a long-term hit. Remember, we've got the debt limit coming up again. The question is did Republicans really learn a lesson from that 17-day shutdown because it cost them big. They're not going to get a second roll-out of Obamacare to rescue them in all likelihood. If they learned their lesson, they're going to leave that alone during the election year and they're going to go ahead and raise the debt limit and not shut down the government. People may not like it, but, politically, in an election year, that's the thing to do if you want to win," said Sabato. In assessing the legislative battles from 2013, Sabato says he never thought President Obama's gun control push would ever gain much traction. "On the day of Sandy Hook, as sad as we all were and as tragic as that situation was, I tweeted that there wasn't going to be any gun control legislation because of the alignment in Congress. You always go back to the last election. What did it create?" said Sabato, noting that some deeply Democratic states advanced new gun restrictions but a GOP-led House would never go along with Obama's agenda. "I don't know if Obama thought he was going to get it. I rather suspect he was because presidents are surrounded in this bubble by aides who basically like to give him good news," said Sabato. Another issue that got bogged down in 2013 was immigration reform, which passed in the Senate but is being addressed piece by piece in the House. Sabato says those waiting for the lower chamber to approve what the Senate did shouldn't hold their breath. "You can forget about comprehensive immigration reform. Piece by piece reform? I mean it's possible. Both parties agree on certain pieces. The question is will they agree to pass those pieces? Democrats don't want to let the popular pieces of immigration pass without having a comprehensive reform for all the illegals living in the United States," said Sabato. The growing rivalry between the establishment Republicans and the conservative tea party side of the GOP flared up several times this year. Without a specific prescription for resolving the differences, Sabato says they better reconcile before November 2014 and especially before the 2016 campaign. "The real challenge for Republicans is going to be in 2016, because that's when the new leader of the Republican Party nominated for president has got to bring the factions together to have a chance of winning," said Sabato. So what does Sabato, the chief prognosticator for the Center for Politics Crystal Ball, see happening in 2014? Overall, he says history suggests this will be another rough midterm for Obama. "These sixth year elections tend to be very unpleasant ones for the incumbent White House administration," said Sabato. He expects the House to stay in GOP hands and for Republicans to gain about six seats by his early calculations. Sabato also sees Republicans gaining at least three Senate seats and he believes getting the magic number of six is doable. "There's a very real shot. You can see the path to a majority in the Senate for Republicans if they don't divide and if they don't nominate candidates who can't win the general election. These are a lot of ifs and we have to see it play out in the new year," he said. |
| 'Tremendous Opportunity for Wrongdoing' |
| Fri, 20 Dec 2013 15:44:54 EST On Thursday, the Obama administration made its fourteenth change to the new health care law without requesting congressional action to make the amendments. Such a move is precisely why an effort is underway in the House of Representatives to sue President Obama and force him to abide by constitutional restraints. The measure is known as the Stop This Overreaching Presidency (S.T.O.P) Act and is sponsored by freshman South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice. He says this is about abiding by the Constitution. "Article II, Section 3 requires the president to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. Everybody's bound by the law, including the president. He is not exempt," said Rice. "If a president is allowed to pick and choose which laws he wishes to enforce, it creates tremendous opportunities for wrongdoing. "What would we say if the next president who came in decided he didn't like Obamacare and he wasn't going to enforce any part of it. What would we say if a president decided he wasn't going to enforce the maximum bracket on the income tax or wasn't going to enforce the income tax on his political friends. Of course, those things wouldn't be tolerated," said Rice. "We've got a similar type of lines going on here with Obamacare. We've got the president giving 1,300 exemptions. We've got him waiving the employer mandate for businesses but applying the individual mandate for the common conservative. It's not right. The law has got to be applied uniformally." Rice says he actually started exploring this legislation earlier in the year based on comments made by a Democrat. "I started working on this last July. Right after the extension of the employer mandate was in the press, one of the Democratic senators said, 'How can the president do this?' That's what spurred me to look at what we could do to force the president to enforce the law," said Rice. While executive branch changes to the health care law are the most visible examples of Obama altering laws, Rice says there are plenty of other examples too. "In the resolution, we list four specific things. One is the waiver of the work requirements under the welfare law. One is the granting of legal work status to illegal immigrants en masse. One is the waiver of the employer mandate under the Affordable Care Act. The fourth is the extension for one year of the ability of the insurance companies to sell 'substandard insurance policies'. In this case, substandard means any insurance policy that people actually want to buy," said Rice. The congressman points out that the resolution only needs to pass the House, since the House can file or defend a lawsuit as a standalone institution. He says that would carry far more weight in a federal court than a lone member filing suit. He says he didn't "ask permission" from GOP leaders before filing the bill and and a conversation with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor gives him reason for optimism. "I have spoken to Cantor about it and he seems interested in it. I think the chances of it hitting the floor are pretty good," said Rice, who says he has 34 co-sponsors, including three House Judiciary Committee members. He says the ultimate success of the effort will depend upon how vocal the American people are about making sure the president follows the Constitution. Democrats are expected to label the effort as another attempt by Republicans to scuttle Obamacare because they cannot accept that was passed and signed into law. Rice that's not the goal at all. "I hear that a lot, but they don't want to enforce what was passed. That's the problem. They want to enforce the parts that they want. Let's enforce exactly what was passed," said RIce. "This is not a tea party thing. This is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing. This is not any personal animosity toward the president. What the president is doing undermines our constitutional protections, the separation of powers. Congress makes the laws. The president enforces the laws, and he's refusing to do that. He's not carrying out his constitutional duty and I simply want him to do what he's required to do by the Constitution," said Rice |
| Joe and Christie |
| Fri, 20 Dec 2013 15:30:38 EST The Capitol Steps break out a pair of their Christmas parodies, including a look at Vice President Joe Biden's proclivity to say the wrong thing and the enthusiasm building around New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Steps impressionist Mark Eaton joins us as we listen to "Muzzle Joe" and "We Need A Little Christie". |
| Protecting Churches in the Marriage Fight |
| Thu, 19 Dec 2013 16:27:00 EST Roughly a third of U.S. states have legalized gay marriage and the federal government is helping to advance the homosexual agenda in numerous federal policies, but Utah Sen. Mike Lee is leading a congressional counter-offensive designed to protect churches and other religious institutions from being forced to perform same-sex ceremonies. "What we want to do is make sure that religious institution, churches, synagogues and other entities, are able to maintain their own religious freedom and enable them to define marriage in the manner that they deem fit without the threat of adverse action being taken against them by the federal government,"said Lee, lead sponsor of the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act. The vast majority of jurisdictions that have legalized same-sex marriage have included language in their laws to provide freedom of conscience for religious institutions and protect their right not to endorse activity or ceremonies contrary to their faith. Lee says more needs to be done. "The federal government is also a significant entity in all this and we know that there is a practice of federal officials sometimes taking adverse action against people that they disagree with either for political reasons or otherwise. We want to make sure that we create this care-out to provide that protection," said Lee, who asserts Democrats should have no problem with this legislation since they claim to respect the rights of churches and synagogues to adhere to a traditional definition of marriage. Lee admits there aren't many reports of the government harassing churches right now, but suggests there is great concern that could come pretty soon. "It's not necessarily pressure that they're feeling acutely right now. It's pressure that they know could be coming, especially as more states move in the direction of opening up their marriage laws. This is something people view as a preventative step towards addressing he kind of religious discrimination that could occur," he said. The senator says there are a number of ways the legislation could protect religious institutions, but primary goal with the bill is to protect the tax-exempt status of religious institutions. "Losing the tax-exempt status is probably the number one concern of churches as they look to what could happen here. Presumably there could be other decisions as well. There could be decisions related to someone's ability to enter into a contractual agreement with the federal government. There are an almost infinite number of possibilities. My job is to try to prevent that and I think that's something that the American people support," said Lee. |
| Recipe for Heartache & Disaster |
| Wed, 18 Dec 2013 16:08:20 EST As the Senate moved towards final passage of the budget compromise, 33 Republicans staunchly oppose the plan, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who says the math just doesn't work. Crafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, the plan calls for over $60 billion in new spending in the next two years but calls for over $80 billion in cuts during future years. "It promises to make the cuts that were scheduled to kick in next year and the year after and promises to make those same cuts about 10 years down the road. So what it does really is make government more expensive now, not so that we can pay down the debt or reduce the deficit but so that we can spend more now. It does that with the assurance that we will cut more 10 years in the future," said Lee, who does not believe those spending reductions will ever take place. "Experience has taught us that cuts that are promised far down the road will not materialize. One congress cannot bind another except by constitutional amendment. Our saying that Congress will make these cuts 10 years down the road isn't really worth a whole lot, because experience and the way our legal system works tells us that we can't make that promise and people shouldn't necessarily believe it," he said. The $60 billion in additional spending over the next two years essentially means the sequestration cuts that took place in March will vanish and the fierce debt ceiling fight in 2011 is rendered almost meaningless. Lee, like most lawmakers, is no fan of how the sequestration cuts were targeted, but he believes they were better than nothing. "Sequestration cuts, as bad as they were, were cuts that were necessary. In other words, we needed to reduce the costs of the federal government by at least that amount, probably more but we needed to do it in a smarter fashion. So we see that great bargain that was struck at the time the debt ceiling was raised now largely evaporating, at least for the time being," said Lee. So what would Lee like to see in a budget deal? "I'd like to see sequestration replaced with cuts that are more targeted and cuts that don't cut disproportionately into national defense. I'd like to see us reform a whole host of programs along the lines that I proposed last year in my 'Saving the American Dream' plan, which would bring us to balance within a period of five years," said Lee. But without a formal alternative budget on the table, Ryan-Murray supporters have accused Lee and his allies of charting a course to another government shutdown. Arizona Sen. John McCain contends senators opposing the compromise lack "intellectual integrity" if they don't offer a substitute plan. Lee fiercely rejects that logic. "I don't feel comfortable making or agreeing with that argument. It cannot be the case that we simply say every time we have to do whatever the Democrats want us to do, because if we don't we'll cause a government shutdown. That can't be the way that we operate the federal government," said Lee. "We need to get back to regular order appropriations. We need to get back to the point where we make individualized spending decisions based on the program and based on government function. Otherwise, we end up in this situation where we spend money on the basis of continuing resolutions, which is where we're asked to fund everything in government at current levels or fund nothing in government and cause a government shutdown," said Lee. "That can't be the way that we operate government. That cannot be a recipe for anything but heartache and disaster down the road," he said. |
| Obamacare Misery Abounds |
| Tue, 17 Dec 2013 16:11:08 EST Despite recent assurances to the contrary, the federal health care exchange is still not transmitting the correct information to insurance companies and personal information is still at great risk. Furthermore, the administration is now strongly urging insurance companies to provide coverage for people who have enrolled, even if they have paid none or only some of their first month's premium. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to stress that the widely reported technical problems with healthcare.gov were largely a thing of the past when asked if people would actually have coverage by January 1. "What I can tell you is that we are working overtime to make sure that every 834 form is accurate when it goes to the issues at the back end problems that existed. I think you've seen a lot of reporting on how those back end issues have been addressed and continue to be addressed," said Carney. "First of all, he's talking in gobbledygook. How on earth are the American people, who are desperate about losing their health insurance, going to understand that answer, said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner, who also rejected the notion that the problems getting accurate information to insurers are now solved. Turner testified earlier this month before the House Ways & Means Health Subcommittee. She and the other panelists discussed the possibility of patients thinking they had coverage come January but not actually being insured because of the data problems. "One member asked me, 'What are the chances that's going to happen to somebody?' I said 100 percent. There are going to be people who think that they are covered. People who have filled out paper applications, there is no way that it's physically possible to get those paper applications through the website and approved to get people to pay so that they are covered as of January 1," said Turner. She also says the problem stems from major technical holes in healthcare.gov. "The part of the website where you check out and you put in your credit card information and you actually pay for what you have selected, that part of the site isn't built yet. So insurance companies are having to bill directly and find the people. The forms are not accurate and don't have all the information they need. They're having to call individuals to try to get the information they need if they know who they are," said Turner. Some state exchanges are working better, but Oregon's has not enrolled a single person and the District of Columbia exchange, where many congressional staffers are forced to enroll, has been found to withdraw two months worth of premiums from some bank accounts. As a result of these many problems, the Obama administration is strongly urging insurance companies to provide coverage for patients, even if they have received no payments. "It's just outrageous. It is exactly like telling Amazon that if somebody has something in their shopping cart and they haven't pressed 'pay' yet, send it to them anyway. That's exactly what the administration is saying to the health insurance companies. 'Pay for this care and trust us. We'll pay you back later,'" said Turner. "Even worse, the HHS regulations that ordered this are basically saying to the health insurance companies, 'If you don't comply, we may not allow you to participate in the exchanges in 2015.' They could be kicked out if they don't give away health care for free," she said. "It's crazy. The administration is just desperate and it's doing desperate things because they have created such a mess," said Turner. |
| Slowing the Police State |
| Mon, 16 Dec 2013 16:09:24 EST A federal judge on Monday declared the National Security Agency's metadata gathering program "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary" and will likely be ruled unconstitutional. Judge Richard Leon minced few words in denouncing the NSA's strategy of gathering as much phone, internet and other data in case it's ever needed as part of a criminal investigation. "I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval," said Judge Leon in his ruling on Klayman v. Obama. "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment." Leon further stated the NSA appeared to be engaging in a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure, that the plaintiff would likely win on the merits and they had proven "irreparable damage". The ruling will not take effect anytime soon, however, since Leon is staying his own decision in anticipation of a Justice Department appeal to a higher court. Nonetheless, Leon's ruling has civil liberty champions very upbeat. "I think it's very significant because it's very clear under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment says that the government can't do surveillance and a policeman can't touch us unless they have actual evidence we're doing something illegal," said John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute and author of "A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State." Whitehead believes Judge Leon was too kind to the NSA in allowing the program to continue while the case is decided in higher courts, although he understands why Leon acted the way he did. Whitehead says it is vital for governments to have probable cause before gathering personal data on any American. "If not, we're back to the days of the general warrants, and that's why we have a Fourth Amendment. The British would execute a general warrant and they would search everybody's home to see if they could find something that someone was doing illegally," said Whitehead, who noted Leon rejected the government's argument that the metadata program clearly helped to foil many terrorist attacks. "I think if the judge sticks to his guns and makes the NSA show some actual facts. If they're alleging something, they should have to show the facts. If not, I think it is absolutely a clear violation of our rights," said Whitehead. "I think we need to slow this train down. I think the government knows if they have facts, they should be able to listen in and check out and see if there's some kind of evidence showing a terrorist attack. But doing my phone messages and my text messages or yours, that's clearly unconstitutional," said Whitehead. Whitehead is very confident that an examination of the NSA's activity through the lens of the Fourth Amendment will yield a victory against the government, but he says that's not necessarily how this case will ultimately be decided. "It definitely depends on the judge you're before. We've had cases with the TSA for example. We challenged some TSA policies over the body scanners and all the searches they were doing. The judge actually said he ruled in favor of the TSA because there was a secret order. No one ever saw the secret order," said Whitehead. "That's the kind of instances we get into, but if we live in a secret police state, my feeling is that if the wrong person gets into power, people are going to get into a lot of trouble and historical regimes show that. I do hope that the right kind of judge hears this case and we stay very consistent with our constitutional freedoms," he said. |
| 'Lawmakers Love to Spend More' |
| Fri, 13 Dec 2013 16:56:35 EST Both Republicans and Democrats are publicly holding their noses as they support the Ryan-Murray budget plan, but Heritage Foundation economist Romina Boccia. "I think this is largely a smokescreen that nobody likes it. What both parties like about this deal is that it increases spending, and it does so immediately by a fairly large amount, $63 billion over the next two years. Any deficit reduction wouldn't happen until nine years later. It wouldn't start until 2022," said Boccia, who believes those cuts are unlikely to happen. "Even those savings may never materialize because the nature of them are Medicare provider cuts and there are more than 700 billion of those in the Affordable Care Act. The actuaries have already said these are unsustainable. Nursing facilities would have to operate at a loss and many Medicare patients might lose access to care. So already down the road, there's a high risk of overturning those savings," said Boccia. "So what do taxpayers end up with? More spending now and promises of savings in the future that may never materialize," she said. The conventional political wisdom suggests Republicans are going along with the Ryan plan because it's the best deal the Senate can agree to and the GOP fears more public blame and backlash if the government were to be shut down again in January. "This is likely the largest motivator in addition to that lawmakers obviously love to spend more," said Boccia, who doesn't buy the argument that the GOP would necessarily bear the brunt of the blame. "If there had been a government shutdown because Republicans stuck to current law and said we want a clean (continuing resolution), it would have clearly been on the Democrats to cause this government shutdown," she said. Boccia also has little tolerance for House Speaker John Boehner lashing out at conservative groups including the Heritage Foundation for what he says was condemnation of the bill before it was ever introduced and for opposing legislation that he says reduces the deficit. "I'm not surprised. This is Boehner and Ryan's deal. They want it to pass. For Heritage and Heritage Action to come out and explain just what's in this deal and what a bad deal this is for the American taxpayer. They don't like to hear it so they will come out this way," she said. On Thursday, the House easily approved the budget, with an overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats backing the deal. Many Democrats loudly complained about the lack of long-term unemployment benefits being left out of the agreement. So is that a major win for Ryan? Boccia says it's just common sense not to string along the unemployed but instead create better opportunities for job creation. "You can extend the long-term unemployment benefits longer, but in the end they will have to become part of the other safety net if they can't get back in the job market, so what we need is an economy that works better for the American people that creates the kind of jobs so we don't have this long-term unemployment problem," said Boccia. "Some of it also has to do with education and where people live. If you think about towns like Detroit. Things aren't looking up there so if you live there and you're having a hard time finding a job, some of these people might look to moving to other cities where there are actually jobs. There is a moving pain associated with this but we have a dynamic economy and not all states are doing as well as others," said Boccia. |
| Kim and Kim |
| Fri, 13 Dec 2013 16:49:01 EST With news that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un executed his uncle over charges of treason, the Capitol Steps are here to remind us that the apple didn't fall very far from the tree. |
| Inside the Immigration Fight |
| Thu, 12 Dec 2013 16:34:05 EST Iowa Rep. Steve King considers 2013 a win for opponents of legalizing illegal immigrants in the United States, but he fears a bruising fight in the new year against congressional Democrats and likely his own leadership. In the wake of President Obama's 2012 re-election and Democrats retaining the U.S. Senate, comprehensive immigration reform was considered by many to be as good as done. In May, Senate overwhelmingly approved the so-called "Gang of Eight" plan, which conservative critics immediately labeled as amnesty. For King and other opponents of this approach to immigration reform, their plan was pretty simple. "We formed a group in my office back in February to do battle with what was emerging from the Senate and what was starting to emerge from the House, against their amnesty legislation that was coming. Our goal was to get through the first month, then the second month and could we get to Memorial Day and then the Fourth of July, then Labor Day? Now could we get all the way to Christmas and we essentially have," said King. "I would count that a success looking back, but looking forward we've got some real challenges," said King, who says he cannot see what good the GOP leadership's piece by piece approach to the legislation would accomplish. "Explain to me how any of this legislation in the House can pass the House, pass the Senate, get to the president's desk for his signature that looks anything like something we would support over here. Right now, no one's been able to answer that question," said King. King says the Judiciary Committee, of which he is a member, has passed a good domestic enforcement bill, which he says has no chance of passage in the Senate. The panel has also approved a guest worker program for agricultural workers that King says is tantamount to amnesty for half a million people in the U.S. illegally. While he takes House Speaker John Boehner at his word that the House GOP will never go to conference on the Senate's immigration bill, King says the danger of the House being forced to vote on anything negotiated with the Senate leaves him with no choice but to oppose every piece of immigration legislation. "I strongly believe that only bad can come from passing anything out of the House that has to do with immigration. It can only be a vehicle to get components of the Gang of Eight attached to it," he said, while offering procedural option to move on some smaller items. "The Speaker can give Harry Reid a call and say, 'Why don't you start a bill over there that is a companion to a House bill that actually doesn't give amnesty? Send it over to us and we can send it to the president's desk. That way we don't have to wonder about whether they will keep their word or not," said King, who says allowing a bill to go to conference has no silver lining for him. "It splits the Republican Party and it changes the subject from Obamacare. The president and Democrats win. Americans lose," he said. Although King applauds Boehner for wanting nothing to do with the Senate immigration bill, he is more skeptical about Boehner's overall approach to Obamacare. In addition to hiring Arizona Sen. John McCain's former chief of staff, Rebecca Tallent, to shepherd the immigration debate, other reports suggest the Speaker is holding off on any immigration votes until after many state filing deadlines pass and incumbent GOP members won't have to worry about a primary challenge if they vote for the legislation. "Both of those issues are valid and of significant concern to me," said King, who notes that the recent Texas filing deadline is a big deal given the number of Republicans in that state. He sees the Tallent hire as an even bigger sign that his coalition is in for some rough waters. "If you were to reach outside the halls of Congress and hire someone from anyone in America so send a strong signal that you were committed to advancing some form of comprehensive immigration reform, Becky Tallent would likely be the number one person that you would hire," said King. In addition to serving in Sen. McCain's office and essentially authoring three previous Senate immigration bills, Tallent also worked for former Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe, whom King describes as an "open borders" advocate. Is Boehner's hiring of Tallent anything more than a clear-cut sign that he intends to embrace the type of immigration reform that McCain has championed in the past? "I think it says exactly that. Why would you hire someone whose whole track record was one thing and think they're going to be able to run a different direction," said King, who likened the hire to choosing a relief pitcher with the bases loaded and the game on the line. "I think that she's a high value relief pitcher for the other team," said King. The congressman is quick to point out that he is in favor of legal immigration but that there is world of difference between legal immigration and what many in Washington want to do. "I just spoke at a naturalization ceremony last Friday in Sioux City, Iowa. I had to pause a couple of times because it emotionally means so much to me that people that respected our laws then become Americans by choice. But they need to respect our laws, and that's the fight that's ahead of us. If we allow for rewards for lawbreakers, we get more lawbreakers and in the process, the rule of law is chiseled away and you can never restore it again in our lifetime at least with regard to immigration if these things pass into law," said King. |
| Cooling Support for Climate Agenda |
| Wed, 11 Dec 2013 16:59:07 EST The Obama administration is still aggressively pushing a climate change agenda that centers on developed nations paying the costs of keeping greenhouse gases out of developing countries but several important partners are abandoning the effort over lack of money and increasing doubts over the wisdom of the plan. The divide was stunningly evident last month at the international climate conference in Warsaw, Poland, where the Obama administration again tried to rally the industrialized world to its cause. "The Obama administration has historically signed on to the entire man-made climate change disaster narrative. Todd Stern, who was the chief U.S. negotiator at the conference in Warsaw did ultimately agree to what is called the International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (IMLD), which is a formula through which the industrialized world transfers money to the developing world," said Marita Noon, executive director at Energy Makes America Great and the Citizen's Alliance for Responsible Energy. But while the IMLD agreement sounds like a win for the administration, the plan contains no concrete funding mechanism because of the increasing reluctance of nations to spend billions without any promise of tangible results. The skepticism was on full display in Warsaw. Australia's new conservative prime minister, Tony Abbott, refused to commit another dollar to the climate change agenda and called the program "socialism masquerading as environmentalism." Japan also announced it was essentially abandoning it's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noting that the problems with it's nuclear energy program left it no other course. Great Britain is also looking to scrap its involvement in the climate change movement, with the Guardian newspaper reporting Prime Minister David Cameron told his ministers, "We've got to get rid of all this green crap." "We are really seeing a large falling apart of this entire process. In fact, Susan Smith with the World Wildlife Fund has called the entire conference a farce because they didn't accomplish what they had hoped to accomplish. They went into this thinking there was going to be so-called 'money on the table'. As she reported, what they found when they got there was exactly the opposite," said Noon, who says only the United States and European Union seem committed to the climate change agenda at this point. So are other nations getting out of the climate change movement because they cannot afford it or because they are growing increasingly doubtful of the science behind it all? Noon says it's both of those concerns and more. "The developed countries are all in economic trouble themselves and they just don't have the billions to pour into this. The world is supposed to be sending one billion dollars a year to the developing countries by 2020 and that's just not going to happen," she said, while noting that the latest scientific data are also sparking increased skepticism. "[Carbon dioxide] emissions have continued to rise but global temperatures have stalled. In fact, German scientists are currently predicting that we are now heading into a new ice age for like the next hundred years," said Noon. "While [carbon dioxide] have risen, the economy has gone down and global warming has not continued to rise. So people are seeing there's really not a connection between the emissions and global temperatures." Noon says with just the U.S. and the European Union left on board the climate change movement, it makes it much harder for them to claim any efforts they undertake will make any difference when the rest of the world just goes about its business. Nonetheless, Noon says Americans should be sobered by the fact President Obama has no intention of abandoning this fight and will try to enact as much of this agenda through the executive branch as possible. "As we've seen with this president, he can go as far as he wants to. Hopefully, we are beginning to see some pushback on questioning the constitutionality of all of these executive orders that are being used to go around Congress. Certainly, Congress is not going to ratify any new climate change treaty that might come out of Paris in two years, which is the goal of the climate change alarmists," said Noon. |
| Closing Shop Over Obamacare |
| Tue, 10 Dec 2013 15:16:59 EST A Kentucky physician is closing his practice at year's end rather than pay tens of thousands of dollars to comply with the provisions in the new health care law. Dr. Stephen Kiteck has practiced for many years in Somerset, Kentucky. He recently attracted attention for his decision to end his practice after taking out an advertisement in the local newspaper. "Due to the policies of Obamacare, Stephen Kiteck, MD will be closing his medical practice on December 31, 2013," stated the ad, which encourages patients to stop by the office to pick up their medical records. "Dr. Kiteck wishes to thank all his patients that have visited his office over the past 20 years, and apologizes for this inconvenience," the ad concludes. Kiteck says one provision in particular led to this difficult decision. "I'm leaving because I can't afford at this point the electronic medical records and electronic transcribing that's being instituted to practices. We're required to do that. If you don't do it, you get penalized," said Kiteck. He says whether he complies with the electronic records mandate or pays the fines, the costs are simply prohibitive. "It's variable, but it can cost up to $20,000. But it's more than that. You have to train your staff and train myself. Plus, you have to scan all your medical records. I have over 6,000 medical records. These have to be scanned and copied and put onto the computer. That takes thousands of man hours or woman hours, overtime and things like that," said Kiteck. "So the total costs together, as I say, maybe $20,000-$30,000. It's just too much of a financial burden to go into right now. I'm approaching 65 years old. Even though I'd like to practice into the sunset for 10 more years, but when this came along I felt this was the best decision to make for our medical practice," he said. The decision comes only after Kiteck attempted to find relief from the federal government but was flatly denied. "I tried to get to a grandfather clause in that. I tried to make an application and be grandfathered for an older doctor and not have to do it. But they said no. It's a 100 percent rule and I was rejected immediately so that didn't work either," said Kiteck. As expensive as compliance would be for Kiteck, he says the cost of noncompliance is also steep. "The penalty may seem small. It's approximately one and a half this year. Next year it'll go up to two percent, two percent of each Medicare and Medicaid doctor's visit. That adds up. Thousands of patients a year means thousands of dollars," said Kiteck. Most other doctors in town don't face the same concerns but Kiteck's explanation suggests others around the nation may be squeezed. "Most doctors are putting out the finances to switch over to electronic medical records. They're younger. Maybe they've got the finances to do it. A lot of them are in a large group practice. A lot of them are associated with the hospital. So I think they've got some financial assistance from the hospital that's helping them out. I'm a sole practitioner. I don't do hospital practice. I'm separate from it, just a little mom-and-pop type practice. All the financial responsibility would be on my shoulders," said Kiteck. Kiteck says he and other doctors in town are concerned about the long-term issue of reimbursement for Medicaid and Medicare patients, but the medical records mandate is the pressing issue for him. Kiteck says he will stay in the area and may look for some "sub-contract, part time work" but his no firm plans for what comes next. |
| 'Absolutely Deceitful' |
| Mon, 9 Dec 2013 15:58:18 EST President Obama regularly asserts that Republicans oppose his health law but won't offer a plan of their own, but one GOP congressman has been pushing his alternative for several years, accuses the president of lying to the public about it and demands that his own leaders allow a vote on a market-based alternative. Georgia Rep. Tom Price is a longtime physician and is now advocating for his Empowering Patients First Act for the third consecutive Congress. His legislation calls for allowing Americans to shop for health insurance across state lines to drive up competition and drive down costs. He also urges tax credits that make buying health insurance affordable for everyone and improving insurance portability for those who change or lose their jobs. In recent days, Price received a fiscal shot in the arm for his bill. Former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin completed a study showing Price's bill would save taxpayers $2.34 trillion over the next decade. He says that would happen because of four simple reasons. "One is the repeal of Obamacare and all of its taxes and costs that it has. Two is the significant increase in choices for patients. Once you give greater choices for patients then you actually decrease the cost of health care because people select what is right for them, not what the government forces them to buy," said Price. "Third is some significant lawsuit abuse reform which we think will save much more than the estimates, but it's estimated to save billions of dollars. Fourth and finally is a limitation on the deductibility of health coverage for those at the upper end of the economic spectrum," said Price. Is President Obama simply unaware that this plan and at least one other formal GOP bill are in the pipeline or he simply keeping the truth from the public? "It's so sad and I get so frustrated with it because he continues to put forth this tripe about Republicans not having a plan. It's absolutely deceitful for the chief executive officer of this country to tell the American people something that patently is not true. He's done it over and over and over and in this instance it just increases the cynicism of the American people," said Price. Just last week, Price used a committee hearing to point out that Republicans do have a bill and even gave his phone number out on television for President Obama to call for further discussion about the plan. Thus far, Price has not heard from the White House. Price's bill was largely ignored by the Democratic majority in 2009-2010, but GOP leaders have also failed to bring his a conservative plan to the floor over the past three years. Why not? "It's a great question. It hasn't come to a vote. It's one that we've been pushing for. It doesn't necessarily have to be my plan. We've been pushing for a vote on a plan from our our side of the aisle for a long, long time. I think you've got to have positive solutions and you've got to stand up with principle for what you believe in," said Price. The relentless push seems to be yielding some movement towards a vote. Price says House GOP leaders have asked him and others to work with them on bringing an official GOP reform bill to the floor in the first few months of 2014. In addition to his work on health care, Rep. Price is also one of the negotiators tasked with hammering out a budget agreement before the next scheduled government shutdown in January. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray are reportedly close to an agreement. Price is cautiously bullish that a deal can be struck but says there are some very prominent people who want the effort to fail for political reasons. "I am hopefully optimistic about the possibility of having an agreement before the end of the week. If it doesn't happen, I promise you it's because of either House Democrats or Harry Reid or the president don't want an agreement," said Price, who says he wants a deal, but he has some important priorities that need to be part of the final package. "We've talked endlessly with the Senate Democrat colleagues to try to fashion an agreement that would allow us to make sure that there's greater certainty out there for budgeting needs and that we continue to have the savings that were gained during the Budget Control Act sequester agreement," he said. |
| Stand by Iran |
| Fri, 6 Dec 2013 16:52:09 EST The Capitol Steps take us inside Secretary of State John Kerry's approach to the recent nuclear agreement with Iran. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport. |
| Chasing the Phantom |
| Fri, 6 Dec 2013 15:02:46 EST The end of November also closed the 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season, which is easily one of the quietest on record, a fact climate change skeptics admit is not proof they are correct but is part of a mountain of evidence showing climate change to be cyclical, natural and unaffected by human activity. "One hurricane season doesn't mean anything but an alleged increase in hurricanes was at one time asserted as the best indicator of the clear and present danger of global warming. Yet, all of that was built not just around one year but really around one hurricane, Hurricane Katrina," said journalist and attorney Michael Fumento, who formerly wrote for Reason magazine, The Washington Times and the Hudson Institute. "If they can build this huge case around this single hurricane, then they should be the first to admit that one of the quietest hurricane seasons on record must go against their position," he said. Fumento says the Hurricane Katrina argument often fails to remind people that the storm had dissipated strongly before reaching shore and only became a humanitarian disaster because of where it struck. "It's just incredible. It's like the case for global warming was built around problems with the New Orleans levee system. It's that absurd," said Fumento. "The logical thing was to look at the entire hurricane record, going as far back as there were data. And depending on what you mean as data, it goes back 150 years to see if in fact there was any kind of a year-to-year or decade-to-decade increase. The answer quite flatly was no, no increase whatsoever. It was a dead issue from the very beginning," said Fumento. According to Fumento, there's much more evidence that our climate is not in crisis and not even warming as so many scientists had predicted. In a Dec. 5 New York Post column, Fumento says, "Arctic ice increased by almost a third this past year, while that at the South Pole was thicker and wider than it's been in 35 years." Even more significant, he says, is the quiet admission from the climate change activists that there has been no increase in the planet's temperature for over a decade, a fact he says is very significant. "Even warmists admit in the last 15 years there has been no warming whatsoever. Fifteen years of warming and yet greenhouse gas emissions are pouring out at the highest rate ever and they're at the highest level ever. How can that be? The only explanation, which they admit, is there's something natural preventing this connection right now. But if that's true, couldn't warming have entirely been natural the whole time? And the answer of course is yes," said Fumento. Most climate change activists contend the 15 year cooling trend is merely a "pause" in the warming of the earth that will result in major ecological problems if industrialized nations do not take significant steps to reduce emissions. Fumento says scientists simply looked at concurrent acts over a limited period of time. "There has in fact been global warming. It's been tracked very carefully since 1951. There has in fact been a tremendous increase in emissions and ambient levels of so-called greenhouse gases, the most important of which is carbon dioxide. So the global warming people put two and two together and they came up with seventeen," he said, noting the climate has always gone through major warming and cooling cycles. "Nobody would have ever heard of the Vikings but for a 400-year warming period that allowed them to escape their fjords and go almost literally all over the world. That was a 400-year warming period just a little before carbon dioxide and things like that became a big issue," said Fumento, who noted in his column that the warming period ended around the year 1300. Nonetheless, President Obama is forging ahead with administrative action to advance his climate change agenda. In his New York Post column, Fumento reports Obama "signed an executive order establishing a Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience that could dramatically expand government bureaucrats' ability to restrict Americans' use of their property, water and energy to reduce so-called 'greenhouse gas emissions.'" "There's always people out there who say that doing the right thing environmentally can be free or even pay for itself. It's never, ever true. These things all cost money. It's just a matter of how much because you're telling a business or individual to do something that they wouldn't otherwise be doing. Why? Because it costs money. We don't know how much money these things might cost, but they definitely will cost money," said Fumento. "The last thing the American public needs is more money spent on chasing what appears entirely to be phantom." So will a lack of ongoing evidence of global warming trigger a major reverse in public opinion in this debate or will the entrenched conventional wisdom win the day? Fumento is not optimistic. "It's definitely got momentum because so many people have reputations involved, whether it's politicians, whether it's scientists, whether it's ex-politicians," said Fumento. "So many people may have a stake so that the science may not matter at all." He says his work in the 1980s and 1990s debunking the threat of AIDS to heterosexuals was proven true, but that hasn't really changed government policy. "I'm famous for debuking this 'Everybody's Going to Die of AIDS' thing. I began in 1987. In 2013, the federal government spends more on AIDS than all other diseases combined. The science did not matter. The science may not matter here either," said Fumento. |
| 'We'd Probably Be Locked Up' |
| Thu, 5 Dec 2013 15:01:55 EST Gross incompetence led to the problems with the federal health care exchange, the government deserves more blame than the contractors and no one should feel safe entering personal information on the site, according to a well-respected information technology expert. The Obama administration is touting healthcare.gov as working fine for the "vast majority" of Americans, although there are still accounts of the site malfunctioning and many more stories emerging about information being transmitted inaccurately to insurance companies and the mechanism for customers to pay for their coverage still does not exist. Reports are also emerging that data security is even worse than before on the site and some experts believe there's no coherent security in place at all. "Yeah, that's pretty scary," said Chris Witt, CEO of the respected IT firm Wake Technology Services, Inc. "Since we are talking about patient health data, there's already laws on the books, specifically HIPAA and HITECH, that regulate security and privacy of projected health information. So it's a little surprising that they would even have these types of problems. If it was you or me that were doing this on a private basis, we'd probably be locked up because we'd be breaking all kinds of different laws," said Witt. "It seems like the folks who have done a little more of the security auditing did not find too much difficulty in breaking into the system and accessing users' data," he said. But with the individual mandate looming and just days left for many to enroll if they want their coverage to start on January 1, should Americans roll the dice and go on healthcare.gov? "Oh, I wouldn't. No, not from what the experts have been saying. These people do not have an ax to grind. They have come in very apolitical and raised some very serious red flags. What's even more problematic is more than one have stated that this is not a fixable problem in its current state, which would concern me greatly," said Witt. As for the problems at the "back end" of healthcare.gov such as patient information transfers and payment challenges, Witt says things are only getting worse. "What we've only seen is the very superficial layer and that's the people trying to access and put their data in and go through the process," said Witt. "So we've got some front end superficial problems. We've got security issues, which you never want to understate, and you've got some back end interfacing or connectivity problems. So as they fix layers, it's going to shine a light on layers further down or deeper into the application that are flawed." So how did this get so badly bungled? Witt says it appears there was very poor communication among the various project managers, but is skeptical that no one knew about all the problems before the site launched October 1. "Throughout the process, it was surprising that certain things came to light after the website was rolled out. I find it hard to believe that was really the case," he said. He also believes the government did not delegate enough to the contractors. Witt cites congressional testimony from government contractors that strongly suggests they were not responsible for the testing. "They probably did some levels of unit testing, some integrated testing but not complete end-to-end testing, which would also include load testing," said Witt, referring to tests to see what kind of web traffic the site could handle before it crashed. "It seemed like the government was supposed to be doing the load testing, so the contractor did all of their testing up to a certain point," he said, noting that he would not normally expect to handle load testing and we would have already heard the administration cry foul if that work should have been done by the contractors. So what is the lesson learned through the technical side of the exchange? "There's always a question of what's the place of the government in large initiatives like this. The government's not always in the best position to oversee and implement this type of technology solution. I think they would have been better off putting the complete implementation of it out to contract to a large, U.S.-based developer who could have done it in a much quicker timeline and that would meet all the requirements," said Witt. |
| We Have Not Even Begun to Fight |
| Tue, 3 Dec 2013 16:05:50 EST Liberty University is shocked the U.S. Supreme Court rejected it's multifaceted challenge to the new health care laws but vows to keep resisting components that its leaders claim violate their conscience. Without comment, the justices announced they would not be hearing the school's appeal of a lower court rejection of its suit, Liberty University v. Lew. The case challenged the constitutionality of the employer and individual mandates as well as the government's ability to force employers to pay for insurance policies that fund abortions and abortion-causing drugs. "We were very surprised and disappointed to hear of the court's decision because our case would have provided the most comprehensive challenge to Obamacare and it would have been the perfect vehicle for the Supreme Court to once again examine the entire law," said Harry Mihet, senior litigation counsel at Liberty Counsel, which is affiliated with Liberty University and representing the school in court. He is particularly surprised that the Supreme Court rejected the university's appeal of an appellate court ruling since the justices agreed just days ago to hear more limited appeals of the contraception mandate from business leaders at Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties. So did those cases contribute to Liberty's appeal being rejected? Mihet says that is possible but contends that if the court only took one case, it should have been Liberty's because as troubling as the contraception mandate is to his client, there is much more to be worried about. "That is certainly a huge problem constitutionally speaking with this law, but that is by no means the only problem with this law. When the Supreme Court indicated last week that it would look again at Obamacare we thought that it would be inclined to look at the whole law, but alas, we now find out that they want to do it piece by piece," said Mihet. The high court has yet to speak on the employer mandate, but Mihet says there's little doubt it's unconstitutional. "Whether it's under the Commerce Clause or the Tax and Spend Clause, we argue that the Constitution simply does not permit that kind of a power grab by the federal government because that is a power reserved for the states," said Mihet. The Supreme Court ruled in June 2012 that the individual mandate was constitutional only because the penalty for not purchasing health insurance could be considered a tax and that power is granted to Congress. However, Mihet says that makes the mandate unconstitutional for other reasons, namely that all tax and spending legislation must originate in the House but the final health care bill originated in the Senate. Leaders completely gutted the original House bill, replaced it with the Senate version and the House then approved that measure in March 2010 to pass the law. The rejection of the Liberty University case is seen by some as a death blow to the lawsuit, but Mihet says the fight still goes on. "It is by no means the end. We have not even begun to fight. We do not ever, ever give up, particularly when such precious constitutional rights are at stake," said Mihet. "Whether in this litigation or some other new litigation, these issues are not going to go away. We're going to continue to bring them to the forefront until someone looks at them and decides them on the merits." In the meantime, Mihet says we can expect civil disobedience from Liberty University. "Liberty University, like Hobby Lobby and the Conestoga family, has made it clear that it will not participate in the abortion industry and it will not fund the abortion industry with its dollars. We have drawn a line in the sand and have said that the government is powerless to compel Liberty University to ignore its conscience and to ignore God's law in favor of man's law," said Mihet. |
| Draining the 'DC Cesspool' |
| Mon, 2 Dec 2013 14:42:04 EST A high-ranking U.S. Secret Service agent gave up his lucrative career after watching political cronyism up close and he says Americans need to do much more than vote if they want to see positive changes restored to the American system of government. Dan Bongino served as an officer for the New York Police Department before joining the Secret Service in 1999. He later became part of the protective detail for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Distressed at the way the nation was headed, Bongino left his job in 2011 and won a crowded Republican U.S. Senate primary in Maryland in 2012 before losing to incumbent Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin. He is now a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland's sixth congressional district. He is also the author of "Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away from It All." While Bongino says he didn't witness much of Obama's actions on policy, working at the White House as the health care debate intensified forced him to enter the public arena. "A particularly acute incident was being behind the scenes as a Secret Service agent and just seeing the carousel of insider interests coming in and out of the White House as Obamacare was being passed and just the horror of the American people actually believing that this was meant to give them better access to health care," said Bongino. "It was an insider-rigged system from the start. There's no question about it. If there was one moment that was a tip of the spear more than others, that really frustrated me. I knew I had to do something and leave it all behind and take on a bigger cause." Bongino says another incident that crystallized the "bubble" mentality in Washington came while he and other agents provided security for a trip President Obama made to Afghanistan. As Obama prepared to meet with various military leaders, a Delta Force officer waited patiently in full gear to have his turn with the commander-in-chief only to have an administration staffer request that the officer disarm before entering the meeting. "I laughed at him asking me to tell this guy to leave his weapon at the door. The utter absurdity of it really sums up in one story what the book tried to get at, this insulated insider atmosphere that has really destroyed what was the best system of government we've ever had, which really represented the interests of the people," said Bongino. When asked to explain why he believes the system is already destroyed rather than endangered, Bongino unflinchingly says it's destroyed because both parties are now contributing to the destruction. "At least we used to have one side fighting against this insiderism, this cronyism. Now, I feel the real battle is not Democrats or Republicans anymore. I think there are weak Republicans and Democrats all in cahoots together to prolong this insider system. I think the real battle now is government elitist fois gras for lunch crowd versus American populists, just regular middle class Americans trying to get the government to leave them alone. I think they've really ruptured that relationship," said Bongino. "My diagnosis is that (we have a) polluted DC cesspool of insiders that are really corrupting. It's not the people that get up and go to work in the morning that are causing the problem. It's these bow tie-wearing bureaucrats that are really corrupting the system and making what was a representative government only representative of the special interests and that interest isn't yours," said Bongino. The solution, according to Bongino, is a very engaged citizenry that will dedicate their time and resources to restoring America's greatness. "Voting is not enough. It's not. You haven't done your duty by voting. If you're not calling your congressman, if you're not sending letter to the office, if you're not volunteering for campaigns or volunteering for a cause, if you're not donating money to a cause or a campaign, even a dollar, then folks you're not part of the (solution), you're the problem," said Bongino. "We need you. We need your voice. The left has been experts at this for years at whittling away our freedom, Voting is not enough. I cannot say that enough. You have to do. Talk is cheap. Action matters. Action is what changes the world. Talk is only good if it changes action," said Bongino. Bongino is challenging freshman Democratic Rep. John Delaney in Maryland's most competitive district. It was held by the GOP for years until redistricting made it more favorable for the Democrats in 2012. Bongino says the district officially leans left by just a couple of points but he expects to have much larger volunteer forces and be very competitive in the money fight. |
| Your Daughters Will be Cannon Fodder |
| Tue, 26 Nov 2013 16:44:53 EST Earlier this year, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey announced they were lifting the ban on women serving in ground combat operations, a move one vocal critic says is the result of an aggressive feminist agenda and military brass unwilling to stand up to politicians and champion military readiness over political correctness. "If you look at the chiefs of the services, none of them have direct ground combat, so they really don't know what we're talking about here. There's a radical feminist agenda here and they never would have been selected by the Obama administration...unless they agreed that they would move forward on these particular agendas," said retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis, author of "Deadly Consequences: How Cowards Are Pushing Women Into Combat." "They know what the facts are but they're cowering with a silence, much like the people on the Hill are cowering because they have a constitutional obligation to stop this, but they're going ahead with it," said Maginnis, who quickly points out that bowing to politically correct forces was commonplace in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and is not unique to the Obama presidency. The most common argument for allowing women to serve in ground combat is one of equality, that women should have the opportunity to serve anywhere men can serve. Maginnis says that may sound like a nice argument, but the facts tell a very different story. "The overwhelming evidence out there on physical, psychological, historical and medical reasons, say no. when we're talking about direct ground combat, I'm talking about smashing heads, shooting at short range, wrestling people in a death struggle to the ground," said Maginnis. "The question that ought to be asked is whether we want to be that kind of society that really puts women into ground combat. Are we that society and what are the consequences for men, women and children?" He also says this decision will ultimately lead to American women being drafted for military service on the front lines. "When, not if but when, because of all the economic and world turbulence issues, we return to a draft and a conscription military, women will be drafted for the infantry and every other position that must be filled," said Maginnis. "We used to call them cannon fodder. Well, your daughters of America will be cannon fodder just like your sons because of spineless people today making decisions that are not in the best interests of our families, much less our country." Ultimately, Maginnis believes the obvious differences between men and women will hurt readiness if these policies proceed. "Most people need to understand what every mom and dad in America understands and that is that. by and large, women are not little men. They are, according to the Army, about five inches shorter on average, 32 pounds lighter, 37 pounds less muscle mass . They have about half the upper body strength of the average man and three-quarters of his cardiovascular fitness," said Maginnis, who believes the military's solution to those discrepancies is very troubling. "Standards are being jeopardized and we see that even today with the experiments that the Army and Marine Corps are conducting where you see in the media that women are going through the infantry officer course down at Quantico. Of course, none have graduated yet because it's so tough and rightly should be," said Maginnis. "You had a couple that graduated from the enlisted infantry course recently. What you don't hear is that they had to abide by two different tests that had gender norm standards. In other words, the standards are different." While the push for gender equality is behind many of these policy changes, why are feminist organizations so eager to place women in the most dangerous positions possible? "They want women to be forced into all positions, whether it be direct ground combat, special forces or infantry. They say there should be no prohibition even if it means it's detrimental to readiness," said Maginnis. "The radical feminists believe in an androgynous world." With military leaders saluting and accepting these cultural changes in the Armed Forces, members of Congress hardly making any protest and three-quarter of the American public on board with women in combat, reversing this policy seems very remote. Maginnis says only one factor can make the government change course. "Only if our American people recognize the insaneness of a decision that will push their own daughters into direct ground combat against their own wills. Once you've opened Pandora's box, and that's what we've done with this decision, we've gone against history and against psychology and all the physical differences. We're pushing in a direction that will jeopardize the very safety of our nation," said Maginnis, who used a football illustration to explain the deliberate disadvantage the U.S. would be facing on the battlefield. "If we go down to the University of Arkansas and tell them, 'You have a winning schedule but this coming game you're going to have to put three women on the front line.' If they put three women on the front line on every play, guess what's going to happen? They're going to lose and they're going to be the laughing stock of the NCAA," said Maginnis. "That's what we're being told here. For political reasons we're being told we have to have a certain percentage of women in direct ground combat and the consequences they could care less. Unfortunately, you don't have the experience on the Hill and the generals are too cowardly to say what is obvious. The American people may end up paying a very high price when we do go to war and we will go to war in a serious way in our not so distant future," he said. |
| Beware of Smiling Iranians |
| Tue, 26 Nov 2013 16:05:08 EST Retired Israeli Brigadier Gen. Elihu Ben-Onn says Israelis are very upset with the nuclear agreement in Geneva that relaxes sanctions against Iran in exchange for a freeze in enrichment and no curbs on weapons programs. He also fears the U.S. and our allies fell prey to the smiling diplomacy of Tehran. "The Iranians try to gain time. They start what we call the smiles operation. Suddenly the foreign minister of Iran Mohammad Zarif starts smiling. The new leader Rouhani is also smiling. All of them know how to speak English. All of them went to American colleges, so the enemy is not so frightening as it might have been before. If they are nice and speak good English, maybe they are nice guys," said Ben-Onn. "This is a misleading operation, a smiling operation, but they haven't reached the point that the Iranians really decided to stop what they started. In other words, one day we may wake up in the morning and find Iran again in a position that can threaten the entire free world and Saudi Arabia and Israel and other countries in the Middle East who may be the victims of this policy," said Ben-Onn. So why does did a multilateral team led by the United States agree to this deal? Ben-Onn believes President Obama was determined to find a diplomatic resolution rather than get close to the possibility of U.S. troops being deployed again in the Middle East after years of being in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It's better to speak than to fight I can assure you. I was in many wars and I know what I'm talking about," said Ben-Onn. "I don't know what to predict but I can tell you we are very worried about what will be the outcome of this agreement. Ben-Onn says just 48 hours after the deal was signed in Geneva, Iran is already showing it has little intention of honoring the deal, with leaders in Tehran saying the document it signed does not contain the same terms as what the U.S. has released to the press. Israel was not a part of the negotiations, and Ben-Onn says government ministers have assured him the deal will not impact Israeli leaders from acting in the national interest. "They say if Israel will be under danger, then this agreement in Switzerland does not apply to Israel and Israel always has the right to defend ourselves against any threat or any enemy that might attack Israel in the future," said Ben-Onn. While unimpressed with the temporary deal, Ben-Onn says he hopes the U.S. drives a hard bargain in negotiations over a permanent agreement that will result in the eradication of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. |
| Touchy TSA |
| Tue, 26 Nov 2013 15:55:53 EST Thanksgiving is the busiest travel time of the year and millions of people will hit the friendly skies to spend time with family and friends. But before that happens, they have to navigate the TSA security checkpoints. The Capitol Steps offer their unique take on this nightmare, as we're joined by Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| 'It's All in the Hands of the U.S.' |
| Mon, 25 Nov 2013 15:47:34 EST The Obama administration is trumpeting a weekend deal with Iran and five other nations that will freeze certain parts of the Iranian nuclear program and open facilities for greater inspection in exchange for the relaxing of some crippling financial sanctions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is incensed at the deal, calling it an "historic mistake". Congressional Republicans as well as many Democrats are worried that the deal results in the U.S. giving up key diplomatic leverage while Iran technically gives up nothing. The group responsible for exposing Iran's clandestine nuclear program is also unimpressed. Officials with the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) say the west wasted a golden opportunity to demand major Iranian concessions. "The very fact that this regime agreed to whatever it agreed to shows their weakness, their vulnerability. This is something that should have been exploited. If the international community, and particularly the United States, was decisive enough, this was a regime that you could have actually forced them to abandon their entire program," said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director in the office of the U.S. representative of the NCRI. Jafarzadeh says the Iranians came to the table for three main reasons, including the economic toll of sanctions, major protests against Ayatollah Khamenei and additional NCRI revelations of additional nuclear facilities. "This was a regime that was in trouble. This was the time that you needed to increase the pressure and force them to make the serious concessions that they were supposed to do. They didn't press them hard enough. The agreement could have been much much strongerthat would have in effect really abandoned and dismantled the nuclear weapons program of Iran. It didn't," said Jafarzadeh. While President Obama says the deal removes the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Netanyahu and others believe it greatly increases the likelihood the Iranians will get the bomb because the deal provides legitimacy for the program and the easing of sanctions allows Iran to be more bold in pursuing it's goals. "Those are very valid allegations to take into consideration because you don't want to provide financial assistance to this regime because that money is definitely going to be used, at least partially, in funding the very same program that you want to stop," said Jafarzadeh. Critics of the deal also point out Iran has repeatedly flouted United Nations Security Council sanctions, leading many to conclude Iran simply cannot be trusted to honor any agreement. Is there any reason to think this time will be different? "Absolutely not. They have never honored any agreement at all on any issues but particularly on the nuclear weapons program of Iran," said Jafarzadeh, who also rips the agreement for completely ignoring Iran's weaponization programs that are being developed simultaneously with the nuclear weapons. "It's not all about enrichment. It's also about the nuclear weaponization program of Iran, the kind of research and development they have been doing along with their enrichment program," said Jafarzadeh, who says it's not too late for the U.S. and our allies to demand access to those sites as well if Iran truly has nothing to hide. The agreement struck over the weekend is designed to last six months and give the seven nations time to forge a permanent treaty concerning Iranian nukes. Jafarzadeh says where we stand six months from now depends mostly on the United States. "It all depends on how seriously and how strongly this administration will pursue it. If Iran detects that the White House is pretty much happy with what they got, they can play games with the White House and the State Department about this. Then you're either going to be back to square one or in a worse situation six months from now," said Jafarzadeh. "On the other hand, if this administration would stress on some of the points in this agreement and really really press it hard, we could actually be several steps ahead of where we are," he said. "The ball is in the court of the United States. How they're going to pursue this and where we're going to stand six months from now, it's all in the hands of the U.S. period," he said. |
| Just Can't Hide Biden |
| Fri, 22 Nov 2013 15:59:34 EST As Vice President Joe Biden celebrates his 71st birthday, the Capitol Steps mark the occasion with their hilarious parody, "You Can't Hide that Biden Guy". |
| Amnesty Battles Far from Over |
| Wed, 20 Nov 2013 15:48:10 EST House Speaker John Boehner recently vowed never to go to conference over the Senate immigration reform bill but he still intends to forge an immigration bill that largely achieves the same things, according to Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian. Krikorian also says House Republicans have stiffened their resolve against amnesty as a result of the recent government shutdown battle and the disastrous roll out of Obamacare. Last week, many opponents of the Senate bill rejoiced when Boehner announced the House would not be part of any negotiations involving the bill. "The idea that we're going to take up a 1,300-page bill that no one had ever read, which is what the Senate did, is not going to happen in the House. And frankly, I'll make clear that we have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill," said Boehner. Krikorian says that is an encouraging sign from Boehner because that statement is very different from his original intentions. "I've talked to people on the inside and this really was the plan that he's now backed away from, was to pass a border security bill and then go to conference with the Senate. In other words, (he wanted to) negotiate with the Senate and stick the Senate bill into the House bill and present it to House members as an accomplished fact that they have to vote for," said Krikorian While that approach has been thwarted, Boehner admitted at the same press conference that he is still pursuing major immigration legislation in this Congress through the work of the House Judiciary Committee and chairman Bob Goodlatte. "Chairman Goodlatte is working with our members and across the aisle, developing a set of principles that will help guide us as we deal with this issue," said Boehner. "I want us to deal with this issue, but I want to deal with it in a common sense, step-by-step way." For Krikorian, this is a much better approach to lawmaking, but one that will likely end up with a product not much different than the Senate produced. "What the House is planning to do is pass targeted, smaller bills dealing with particular issues, which is just a much more responsible way to make law, instead of a thousand-page Obamacare-style monstrosity," said Krikorian. "But what they're hoping is that they will be able to put all those together and come up with a bill that does the same thing as the Senate bill. So the danger still exists." Krikorian says the Judiciary Committee has passed some provisions out of committee, including the SAFE Act, which he calls "a pretty good enforcement bill" allowing local and state police to work closely with immigration authorities. But another bill that has cleared committee and others likely coming down the pike give him great concern. "They've also passed a bill to import more foreign farm workers and amnesty some that are already here. Another bill would give green cards to people who have gone to technical education in the United States," said Krikorian. "What they're working on is a bill to amnesty the 'dreamers,' illegal aliens who came here as kids and another bill, this is the talk anyway, which would amnesty all the other illegal aliens. But instead of giving them a green card which would lead to citizenship, what I've heard is they're talking about just giving them work visas that would make them legal...but wouldn't lead to citizenship. It's still amnesty. It would legalize everybody. So there's still going to be a lot of gun and games over the next year on immigration," said Krikorian. One of the reasons Boehner is abandoning any hopes of a conference with the Senate bill is the growing resistance to the bill in the House GOP conference. Krikorian chalks that up to the fallout of the government shutdown and the bungled Obamacare roll out. He sees both tactical and policy reasons for the GOP to hold firm against what he considers amnesty. "I'm not sure so much that those Republican members on the fence actually changed their thinking. I think what happened is the government shutdown and, even more recently, the complete debacle of Obamacare has hardened views so that people say, 'Look, we're not going to cooperate with these guys. We're not going to give Obama his signature second term victory,'" said Krikorian. "The only thing he has left now that would salvage the wreckage of his administration is an amnesty. Why any Republican, even if they agreed with him, would save President Obama's political fortunes is beyond me," he said. At the same time, Krikorian says no one on the right is going to touch a comprehensive approach to anything after watching what happened with Obamacare. "It's an extraordinarily complicated thing. After the incompetence we've seen with the Obamacare roll out, does anybody think, even if you thought it was a good idea, that this administration could successfully implement all that stuff? No, they'd screw that up too. Obamacare and the government shutdown , which is obviously related to it, make the whole immigration thing just a whole lot less likely to happen," said Krikorian. Obamacare and immigration reform collided in a different way in recent days, as Democratic Colorado Rep. Jared Polis suggested giving legal status to illegal immigrants would get them into our healthcare system and help drive costs down. "American citizens are essentially being forced to pay for the health care costs of people who are here illegally every day, until we pass comprehensive reform," said Polis. "We're wondering why rates are going up...it's no surprise. When somebody doesn't have insurance, their costs are shifted onto other people that do." Krikorian says that doesn't pass the laugh test. "It's kind of hilarious actually. This is the kind of thing I would expect from (Democratic National Committee Chairwoman) Debbie Wasserman Schultz it's so dopey," mused Krikorian, who notes the Senate bill specifically forbids illegal immigrants from enrolling in Obamacare for a decade after the bill passes. "Because illegal immigrants are low-income, if they're legalized and can sign up for Obamacare, they would be much more likely to get the taxpayer subsidies that other people are paying. It would actually cost taxpayers more," said Krikorian. "This is just another example of a Democratic congressman who doesn't know what he's talking about." |
| Rep. Launches Income Tax Repeal |
| Tue, 19 Nov 2013 16:13:30 EST Saying the tax code is a complex web that caters to the connected, that the 16th amendment violates constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure and that the IRS cannot be trusted to deal honestly with the American people, Oklahoma Rep. Jim Bridenstine says it's time to repeal the amendment legalizing a federal income tax and abolish the IRS. Bridenstine filed the proposed constitutional amendment on Monday, saying that this year's scandal exposing IRS harassment of conservative organizations is just the latest proof that the current tax system needs to be scrapped. Especially galling to Bridenstine is President Obama's insistence that the problem was limited to a couple of rogue staffers in the Cincinnati office. "That's not true. We now know that by direction these 'insensitive agents' were sending the packages to Washington, D.C. Once these applications got to Washington they were sent upstairs to the office of the chief counsel of the IRS, which is one of two Barack Obama appointees in the IRS," said Bridenstine. "The idea that the IRS is being used as a political weapon has got people in my district just outraged." The proposed repeal amendment is pretty straightforward. "We just want to repeal the 16th amendment and eliminate the IRS. This amendment gives us a two-year window to come up with an alternative form of revenue," he said. Bridenstine says the proposed amendment does not dictate any specific replacement for the income tax, although he sees it coming down to a debate between the fair tax, would would essentially be a consumption tax and the flat tax, which assesses a simple percentage tax rate across the board. The congressman personally prefers the fair tax because no federal tax agency would be required to make sure revenues are collected. In addition to likening the personal information the IRS gathers from Americans to unreasonable search and seizure forbidden in the Fourth Amendment, Bridenstine sees several other reasons why the income tax needs to go. First on that list is the bureaucratic maze that requires many people to spend time and money to assure they are in compliance with federal law. The congressman cited a Mercatus Center report showing that Americans spend one trillion dollars per year in tax costs outside of what they pay into the U.S. Treasury. The same report shows six billion man hours are spent each year on tax preparation. "That's the same as a full-time workforce of 3.4 million people for a whole year, and 3.4 million people is larger than the city of Chicago, larger than the city of Chicago. It's larger than the city of Houston and it's larger than the city of Philadelphia. This is a huge drain," he said. Another frustration for Bridenstine and his allies is how the tax code is structured to benefit the well-connected at the expense of the American people. "From 2001-2010, there were 4,428 changes to the internal revenue code. That's more than one change per day," said Bridenstine. "The only people who are getting what they want in the tax code are lobbyists, who spend all their time coming and talking to me as a member of Congress, saying why their client is so important and we've got to change the tax code for this purpose. "The reality is that people that are listening to this broadcast, in many cases they don't have a lobbyist. They just have a member of Congress. And their member of Congress is turning over our tax policy to the lobbyists. It's disadvantaging some people and advantaging others," he said. Several members of Congress have championed tax reform to simplify the system and eliminate massive special interest loopholes. Bridenstine isn't buying that as a sincere effort, noting that as long as politicians need to be re-elected they will be giving special favors through the tax code. Passing a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the states. While admitting it's an uphill climb, Bridenstine says political winds can shift quickly, noting that no one expected passage of something like Obamacare just a few years before circumstances handed Democrats the White House and large majorities in the House and Senate. While on the subject of Obamacare, Bridenstine also explained his vote against the "Keep Your Health Plan Act" on Friday. The bill passed easily, but Bridenstine was one of four GOP members to oppose it. "We were going to pass a law that takes the president's law and it puts it on our shoulders, so that we are promising that if you like your health care you can keep it. The insurance companies cannot change these actuarial tables on a dime, which means in the coming days people are still going to lose their health care policies," said Bridenstine. "The last thing I want is Republicans owning that lie, because we can't keep that promise any more than the president," he said. |
| Obamacare's Marriage Penalty |
| Mon, 18 Nov 2013 15:58:26 EST While the Obama administration tries to douse political fires over a faulty federal exchange website, millions of Americans unable to keep health policies they like and others facing massive premium and deductible increases, experts now say the system also discourages marriage. At issue is eligibility for federal subsidies under the new laws and the wide discrepancy between eligibility for two individuals compared to a married couple. "The cut-off points under Obamacare would be $91,000 for two single people and $62,000 for a married couple. So it's about $30,000 less income where you can get the subsidy," said Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow David Burton, who says a quirk in federal tax law is responsible for this. "Subsidies are available to people up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level. The marriage penalty's really because of the way the poverty levels are calculated. If you have a one-person household, the poverty level is about $11,500. If you have a two-person household, the poverty level is $15,500. For those who don't want to do the math, that means that it's not twice as high," said Burton. "So the long and the short of it is that two individuals that get married don't get as much of a subsidy." "It very well may give people pause that are considering marriage," said Burton. "There are a lot of things discouraging people from getting married these days . This will be just one more. It'll be a financially significant thing. It could amount to several thousand dollars a year of lost subsidies." So was this intentional in the new health laws or are married couples simply taking a hit over the way the poverty levels are traditionally calculated? "If you actually read the PPACA as it's called, the law which I have had the misfortune of having done, it's very badly written. It was rushed through. I think it was probably a mistake but it's just one more of many mistakes where this law wasn't well thought out," said Burton. In addition to the financial disadvantage for married couples, Burton says all Americans are headed for a nightmare come tax time when they try to determine exactly how much subsidy assistance they should be getting. "The subsidies are administered by the insurance companies in cooperation with the IRS and show up as a lower premium in the exchanges. But then, every individual in the country is going to have to do the math on their tax return due in April 2015 and reconcile how much they got from the insurance company with how much they should have gotten," said Burton, who says Americans will "owe a lot of money" if calculations show their subsidies were too big. Burton expects Obamacare supporters to resist changing the marriage rules in the law unless political pressure becomes too much to ignore. He says adopting a whole new approach to health care reform is the best hope on this issue and for the system in general. "If we get to a point where there's a more reasoned approach to health care and it's not all so blatantly political then I would hope that this could get resolved," said Burton. |
| Welcome to the Party, Kay! |
| Fri, 15 Nov 2013 17:10:14 EST The House of Representatives passed legislation Friday that would allow Americans to keep their current health insurance policies for another year, even if they fail to comply with the the mandates of the Affordable Care Act. Sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, the "Keep Your Health Plan Act" would allow all Americans to keep their existing health plans for another year, whether they comply with the new law or not. The bill passed 261-157. Thirty-nine Democrats voted for the bill while four Republicans opposed it. The vote comes one day after President Obama unilaterally announced he was allowing a similar one-year extension on plans that fail to meet the new standards. Congressional Republicans say the change needs to come from Congress. North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger says he has great reservations about the authority Obama is trying to wield through this move and others related to changes in the health law. "I think it's very questionable. The bill has been enacted. It was passed in both houses. Of course it was a partisan vote, but nonetheless it has been codified and it's the law of the land. I think it's very questionable that he has the power to go back in and change it arbitrarily. He has used his executive authority to extremes. This would have to go to court and that's why we went ahead and passed this in the House by a bipartisan vote," said Pittenger. The night before the vote, the White House announced that Obama would veto the Upton bill, saying it was not a fix but rather a poison bill designed to gut the overall law. The main concern is that the legislation would not only allow insurance companies to resurrect canceled plans for those who just lost their coverage but also offer those old plans to anyone who prefers them to coverage available through the federal and state exchanges. Pittenger says the lackluster interest in the exchanges proves more people should have the chance to purchase coverage they actually like. "It's fair because look what's being sold. Premiums through Obamacare are going to be much higher and with coverage not as good. They don't want what's being offered. It's much more expensive. They'd rather go out into the open market like these other individuals who had plans they had already purchased. I think it's a matter of fairness to the American people," said Pittenger. "The only people who are motivated to buy into Obamacare are those who have a pre-existing condition. Those who do not have that and those who are younger really aren't motivated. So the numbers aren't working," said Pittenger. "Cigna, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield made it very clear to the administration already that they're deeply concerned about who is signing up and the capacity for these policies to be adequately funded." Pittenger says Republicans only went with a one-year extension of allowing Americans to keep their existing policies in an effort to be "reasonable". Senate Democratic leaders have already announced the Upton bill will not get a vote in the upper chamber. However, a handful of Democratic senators are trying to get a vote on their own bill. That coalition includes North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan, who is up for re-election this year. "They're running scared. Welcome to the party, Kay. You could have voiced your concern. She said the entire Obamacare bill needs to be totally evaluated. That's nice of her to say now," said Pittenger, referring to Hagan's unqualified support for Obamacare during the original debate over the legislation. "They're running for cover," he said of red state Democrats. "These folks are running for re-election and they're going to say and do whatever needs to be done to try to cover themselves." One of the major points of skepticism following Obama's proposed delay in canceling millions of policies is how the insurance industry could possibly shift away from compliance with Obamacare, re-create illegal policies and re-enroll millions of people within just a few weeks. The same questions persist as House Republicans try to pass their own extension. Pittenger admits the task would be daunting. "It's a tremendous challenge and the president has done everything he can to deflect any kind of blame and out blame on the insurance companies. He's pretty proficient in throwing blame to other people," said Pittenger, who says companies will have a tough job determining which policies can be brought back and which ones cannot. "We ought to give the free market the chance to prevail. Those folks who had those policies, they bought them because they wanted them," said Pittenger. "The American people have the right to buy what they need." Despite the bipartisan approach to Friday's vote, the margin is not enough to override a presidential veto even if the Senate were to pass the bill. So what comes next in the GOP strategy? Pittenger doesn't have a detailed agenda but he says the mindset of the party remains the same. "We're going to fight for the American people. We're going to fight to rid ourselves of Obamacare. It's wrong. The policy's wrong and each day that passes there's more evidence of the disaster that it is," said Pittenger. |
| Obamacare Login-In Woes |
| Fri, 15 Nov 2013 16:54:11 EST For over six weeks now, healthcare.gov has been one of the many roll-out headaches for the Obama administration. This week, the Capitol Steps capture the aggravation folks are experiencing while trying to see what sort of plans are on the exchanges. Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| 'An Incredible Mess' |
| Thu, 14 Nov 2013 16:25:14 EST President Obama announced Thursday that Americans could keep their health care plans for another year even if it has changed since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act or was purchased since then, after millions were informed their current policies are no longer legal under the new law. Anywhere from 3-5 million Americans have lost coverage as a result of the mandates within Obamacare, but Obama says he is now giving states and insurance companies the freedom to continue policies that don't comply with federal law. However, Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner says there are countless problems with Obama reversing course now. First of all, she says, Obama doesn't have the right to make this change unilaterally. "What the president is trying to do is once again rewrite the law through administrative fiat. He does not have the authority to do what he says he is going to do," said Turner, noting that some congressional Democrats facing tough re-election fights next year are still looking to cement these changes through legislation. She also doesn't expect insurance companies to jump at this shift in policy because they've already made decisions about coverage options in 2014 based on the new law. "They don't have a choice. These policies are not legal starting on January 1 of next year because they don't comply with all of the long list of Obamacare mandates and rules and regulations. The policies aren't legal," she said. "The president today has just waved a magic wand and said, 'Oh, we're going to sprinkle some fairy dust and allow those policies to continue,'" said Turner. "I think it's mostly for show because he's getting so much heat for this collapse of a law that they really can't fix. The house of cards is falling apart." Completely reworking coverage options in the next weeks would be a herculean task for insurance companies and Turner says part of the reason for today's announcement is to set up the insurance industry as the fall guy for consumer frustrations going forward. "They have spent the last three-and-a-half years re-engineering every aspect of the health care system. Companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with this law, to restructure themselves to offer these new policies and exchanges. And now, at the last minute, the president is changing the rules again and saying we're going to go back," said Turner. "That's not how our system works. You don't just willy nilly wave a wand and change a law. It has to go through a process," she said. Another reason for the administration's "desperation" is the calendar. Obama refused to reiterate his earlier promise that healthcare.gov would be fully operational by the end of November. If it is not, millions will be in violation of the individual mandate since anyone wanting to be covered come January need to be fully enrolled by December 15. Turner says that's not going to happen. "If people aren't signed up by the fifteenth of December, their coverage can't start on January 1 if they've lost their policy. That means even if everything works well that you have to funnel everybody who's been trying to sign up, all those paper applications, all the people who are waiting for the website to work, into two weeks. The website does not have the capacity to do that and, by the way, it's not going to be ready anyway," said Turner. |
| 'It Will Not Work' |
| Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:17:14 EST Healthcare.gov is a security nightmare, arbitrary deadlines were enforced for political purposes and changes to the law would be good but not as good as repeal, according to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan. Jordan is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which received few concrete answers Wednesday on how healthcare.gov was launched despite dire warnings of security holes and a glaring lack of testing. U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven Van Roekel, White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Healthcare.gov Chief Project Manager Henry Chao all said they were unaware of gaping security problems before the October 1 launch, did know testing had been rather limited and ducked any responsibility for pressing forward on the scheduled date instead of insisting upon a delay. Rep. Jordan says he knows exactly why the administration didn't change the timetable. "The reason they couldn't delay it is then Republicans would be right. We can't have that, not in the most politically-oriented administration in history, where everything is driven by politics and not about getting to the facts," said Jordan. "We have the Benghazi scandal and it's blamed on the video. We have the IRS scandal and it's just two rogue agents in Cincinnati. Here we have the roll-out of Obamacare. October 1 is not written into the law but politically we have to stick to that date because that's what we told everyone and we can't let Republicans be right because they were fighting the roll-out and wanting to delay this. "So people's information was put at risk for political reasons and that is just unacceptable," he said. A September 3 memo from another Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) official warned "the threat and risk potential to the system is limitless." Yet, Chao, Van Roekel and Park all stated they never saw that memo. "So the people who were designing it, the people who were responsible for making sure this system is safe, making sure this website works didn't even know about the report where the outside agency contracted to look into the confidentiality and whether this thing would work from end to end didn't even know that the report said it wouldn't work and that it had never been tested," said Jordan. Jordan and his colleagues are inundated by constituents stunned and furious over their suddenly cancelled health care policies. House Republicans plan to push the "Keep Your Health Plan Act" later this week. Sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton. It would allow all Americans to keep their current health plans for another year. The idea is facing resistance from the White House and from some conservatives. The arguments from the right suggest insurance companies cannot just flip a switch and reinstate policies that were cancelled in obedience to federal law. The strategy is also coming under fire from those who believe any temporary reprieve for Obamacare simply helps the law survive and gives political coverage for the administration on a law that initially passed zero GOP votes. Some conservatives also fear that Senate Democrats will gut the Upton bill, replace it with a Democratic bill and then put Republicans in the awkward position of supporting a Democratic bill or being blamed for the lack of any legislative fixes to the law. Jordan favors an all the above strategy. "I think it's a valid concern and I think it's something we'll look at. What we want to try to do is implement good policy that is in the best interests of the families and the individuals and the business that we get to represent. Those debates are going on. I'm not sure how that will play out and what exactly is the right move," said Jordan. "What I do know is this: this bill doesn't work, this bill I think will never work and the answer in the end is for this bill to be repealed. If we can delay it, if we can stall it, if we can suspend it, all those things are good. But ultimately this law needs to be repealed because it will not work. It is not going to allow families to keep the doctors that they want or keep the insurance plan they want. It's just not in the best interest of our country," said Jordan. Jordan believes it may be possible to convince enough Democrats to shelve the whole law for at least a year, although the administration is unlikely to give ground on its signature domestic issue. |
| 'Absolutely Incensed' |
| Tue, 12 Nov 2013 16:31:12 EST President Obama's new explanation of Obamacare is just as false as his original argument and the political consequences may be unavoidable, according to Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner. Turner believes it will be hard for Obama to regain the public's trust after violating the central promise behind the Affordable Care Act, that anyone who likes their health care plan and their doctor would be able to keep them. Millions of people in the individual market have already learned their policies will be terminated in the coming weeks. Millions more could face the same situation once business leaders have to make decisions on health care coverage next year. "I think the American people are absolutely incensed and you also see it through the mainstream media. They're finally starting to give the president four pinocchios, which is about as many as The Washington Post can give," said Turner. "A lie is when you say something that's false and you know it's false and you do it anyway. It wasn't like this was a misstep, like The New York Times says. He said it dozens of times off teleprompters and written speeches while his staff knew that millions of people were going to lose their health coverage." Obama subsequently tried to claim he always said only plans that didn't change after the legislation became law would be grandfathered in. He further asserts than anyone losing coverage because it doesn't meet Obamacare standards will be better off in the new system. Turner vehemently disagrees. "People are going to see for themselves once they ever do get on the website that the deductibles in the Obamacare exchange coverage is going to be several times higher," said Turner, noting that deductibles on average run about $1,000 now and on the most affordable Obamacare plans in California they average about $4,000. Turner says a major reason both premiums and deductibles are soaring is because of what Obamacare requires to be in every policy. "Chris Conover, an economist from Duke University, believes by the time 2014 is over that 129 million Americans will have lost their policies because they did not comply with this long list of expensive Obamacare mandates. If your policy doesn't cover drug addiction, rehabilitative care, habilitative care, pediatric dentistry, pregnancy testing, pregnancy care. If your policy does not cover all of those, it's not a legal policy. The insurance companies cannot sell it. And for the president to be saying it's the insurance companies' fault makes me crazy. They cannot sell an illegal policy," said Turner. Turner further asserts that Obama summoned Senate Democrats up for re-election next year to convince them not to support any measures designed to extend deadlines, implement delays or anything else as the flawed roll-out persists. However, Turner says those Democrats will eventually buck the White House in an effort to save their own political skin. |
| 'Wearing Down Our Will' |
| Mon, 11 Nov 2013 16:17:53 EST Six nations reportedly agree on the framework of a deal that would ease international sanctions on Iran in exchange for its verifiable compliance with steps to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons. Iran is rejecting the deal, but the the international discussions in Geneva, Switzerland, follow last last week's revelations that President Obama secretly eased U.S. sanctions aimed at Iran month ago. The framework adopted by the U.S., Great Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany would funnel billions in monetary assistance into Iran in exchange for promises to cease activities that could lead to nuclear weapons and allow a more open inspection process. Obama's overture reportedly came as a result of a new tone offered by new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani following years of inflammatory rhetoric from former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Retired U.S. Navy Captain Chuck Nash is an expert on the Iranian nuclear threat. He says even starting down the road to a diplomatic agreement is a fool's errand. "This is all about appearances. They will appear to be more open, but you cannot do a deal with the Iranians. They are totally untrustworthy. They have been since 1979. They are not changing. They are just wearing down our will," said Nash. Of the six nations, France seems to be driving the hardest bargain, demanding that Iran not enrich uranium beyond 20 percent. Nash says even that is giving away far too much. "They should not be enriching any uranium. Reactors that are used for nuclear power burn three-and-a-half percent enriched uranium. Twenty percent is for medical isotopes and that's what Iranians are claiming they need. Ninety percent and you're talking weapons grade," said Nash, who says despite Iran's insistence that the nuclear program is not for weapons the facts to the contrary are very clear. "They're building a plutonium reactor at the heavy water facility at Arak. You don't use plutonium in power plants. Plutonium is used for nuclear weapons. So the fact that we would allow them to do enrichment is against all the rules and treaties. Once you give into these people, they won't take an inch. They'll take a mile," said Nash. The talks come just a couple of weeks after an international experts reported that Iran could be within a month of having the enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon and Israel reiterated that it would do what is necessary to prevent a nuclear Iran from becoming a reality. So are the discussions timed to stall Israeli action? "It very well could be because Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu once said, 'Leadership in the absence of a threat is very difficult, but leadership in the presence of a clearly-defined threat is a no-brainer,'" said Nash. "He and the Israelis have been facing a direct, existential threat from Iran for many decades and now they are on the verge of being able to produce their own nuclear weapons. And what they are not producing and what they are conducting inside the borders of Iran, they are working with the North Koreans and their research programs. It's not just static inside Iran. We have to look at what's going on in North Korea, because they are joined at the hip in these development programs." Nash is especially incensed at Obama's secretive decision to ease U.S. sanctions against Iran earlier in the year. "I am, quite frankly, beside myself with this and I would hope that some of the senior leaders in the Congress would demand explanations because it does no good to show weakness in the face of a determined enemy. It only emboldens them," said Nash. "Did the president bother to consult with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and similar committees on the House side? Or did he just take it upon himself to loosen sanctions these bodies had put on? The whole thing is very much up in the air, but it's an imperial presidency. We've seen it with domestic issues," he said. In addition to the potential delay in any Israeli military action, Nash sees another political explanation behind the recent talks in Geneva. "We're tired. We once again have some domestic political issues here in the United States. The Europeans are dealing with a host of political issues there. I think the political class is looking for something they can write off as a victory," said Nash, citing a desire among all nations involved to avoid dismal economic news and mounting casualties in Afghanistan. Since Iran is rejecting the deal, further easing of international sanctions are on hold, but Nash sees only bad developments ahead. "If an agreement is reached, it will be an agreement that the West will adhere to, that the Iranians will cheat on and we will find out when they have a nuclear weapon when they set off their test device. And then it will be too late," he said. |
| Washington's Secret Six |
| Thu, 7 Nov 2013 15:10:36 EST Foreign and domestic espionage has been in the news a lot this year, but despite the latest technology and intense training, the best performance of American spies is still considered to be the work of six amateurs who were pivotal in winning the American Revolution. The amazing story of this indispensable group is outlined in "George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring that Saved the American Revolution," by Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. Far from highly trained operatives, six unassuming colonists, ranging from a merchant to a tavern owner to a New York socialite, risked life and limb and ultimately reversed the tide of the war. In fact, their work was so impressive that it is still the gold standard by which all future operatives are measured. "When I went to (CIA headquarters in) Langley, Virginia, to see how good they were, they told me, 'Not only were they good, we teach our men and women that we hire today what they learned in the middle of a war with no covert forces training," said Kilmeade. "They were able to able to stop Benedict Arnold from giving away West Point. They stopped a counterfeit ring that was going to make Washington's new country have their money worth nothing, therefore their forces weren't getting paid and they'd all leave. And they were also able to get the Battle of Yorktown ahead of time," he said. The "Culper Spy Ring" was so secretive that Washington never even knew who the leader was. Historians didn't figure out it was Robert Townsend until well into the 20th Century. There was one female spy, known as Agent 355, who is still unidentified but was critical in exposing the treachery of Benedict Arnold. "This woman infiltrated the social scene. We know that for sure. She found out where the parties were. She found out that there was a Patriot general about to turn sides and Washington was able to figure out it was Benedict Arnold," said Kilmeade. "If they were unable to unearth this, West Point would have gone to the British, the Hudson would have gone to the British and we don't win the war." One of the reasons the woman's identity remains a secret is because historians believe the British figured out her role in stopping Arnold and she was killed. The spy ring was created out of desperation in 1776. After chasing the British out of Boston, Washington's forces were routed badly on Long Island and barely survived to fight another day. At this point, Washington knew he needed more intelligence and needed it on Long Island and in New York City where the British were so heavily concentrated. The first recruit was Nathan Hale, but, as Kilmeade points out, that didn't end well. "Washington asked for volunteers to go there and tell them what's going on, to find out the structure of the forces and Nathan Hale put his hand up," said Kilmeade who says Washington and others were very skeptical of Hale because he had no covert training and didn't know the local area. Hale insisted he was the right man. "He said, 'I'm a schoolteacher from Yale. I'm a smart guy. I'll figure it out.' Within a day-and-a-half, he gets hanged on 66th and 3rd in New York City. He's dead," said Kilmeade. "And Washington says, 'I've got to do this right and I can't win without them.'" Washington then tapped an officer named Benjamin Talmadge to recruit this spy ring, ultimately comprised of Townsend, Agent 355, James Rivington, Abraham Woodhull, Austin Roe and Caleb Brewster. The genius of the network was finding people with plausible reasons for interacting with one or more fellow conspirators on a regular basis. "They needed someone who had a reason to go to Manhattan and Robert Townsend did. He had a family business there. his house was billeted by the British, so they wanted him out of his house in Oyster Bay anyway. He has a reason to be there, to conduct business and he went in there and did it, at which time he was also able to observe things and write them down," said Kilmeade. "He was also able to become a reporter for Rivington's newspaper and interview the very soldiers that were trying to dominate the colonies. He'd print those stories and it would go to Britain, but he would also be able to take that information and give it to Washington," said Kilmeade, who then related the chain of events that moved key intelligence back to Washington. "Amazingly, they'd be handed off to an agent named Austin Roe, who owned a tavern 55 miles from the city. He'd show up. He'd grab the papers. He had a reason to buy some commerce there because he owned a tavern. He'd buy something from Robert Townsend. In the materials would be this information, and he'd have that perilous ride of 55 miles back to his tavern and from there get it to Caleb Brewster who would row across the sound to get it to Washington on the other side," he said. The harrowing work was not without its consequences. In addition to the likely murder of Agent 355, Townsend himself was never the same after the war. "It looks like he had PTSD. He never got his life together afterwards. He never really accomplished anything significant. After this war was so nerve-racking for him, that he never really got his act together," said Kilmeade. The six spies kept a very low profile. Fellow patriots were stunned later on when Washington stopped at Rivington's newspaper offices to thank a man observers believed was a devout loyalist. Townsend was a no-show at his appointment with Washington. Kilmeade says that quality has carried over to the present generation of heroic Americans. "They remind me of Americans today when I talk to men and women who serve in war. They don't want the acclaim, even the Congressional Medals of Honor. They don't want to take because they don't want to single themselves out. They do it for their country. They do it for the cause," said Kilmeade. |
| What Next for Conservatives? |
| Wed, 6 Nov 2013 16:09:33 EST Utah Sen. Mike Lee says conservatives need to update their messaging to appeal to a new generation of voters, who can be won over once they see how conservative principles work best for them and their families. Speaking on Election Day, before voters knew about a Democratic win in Virginia and the margin of the GOP win in New Jersey, Lee reiterated key tenets from his recent Heritage Foundation address that aimed to chart the way forward for the GOP and a conservative movement wearied by the recent showdown over defunding Obamacare. Lee says the last Republican leader to effectively tailor conservative principles to the present-day concerns of Americans was Ronald Reagan. That was 33 years ago, and Lee points out by the time the next race for the White House concludes, the distance between that day and Reagan's 1980 landslide will be about the same length of time between Reagan's win and the D-Day landings in 1944. As a result, Lee says it's time for new messaging. He says the message can include many reform-minded ideas but needs to be anchored in timeless principles. "I think that agenda needs to form around two pillars of conservatism. The whole purpose of conservatism is to protect free markets and to protect the voluntary civil society in our country. Those are the two things that really give security, safety and meaning to community life in America, and those are the two principles that ought to animate all of what we do as conservatives to make sure that we protect those two key components of what our civilization is built around," said Lee. He says one of the greatest threats to those American cornerstones is the growth and intrusion of government into those organic institutions. "We can damage both free markets and the voluntary civil society through excessive government interference. There are a lot of things we can do to damage them, to weaken them, even to destroy them with government. And once you've destroyed them, you can't just flip a switch and recreate them because government lacks the capacity to do that," said Lee. "So a lot of the time, this means looking for ways to get government out of the way so that individuals can do what individuals do best in a free society, which is to form voluntary associations with others," he said. Lee is championing several specific reform policies, including greater choice in higher education, giving employees greater flexibility in trading overtime pay for time off and drastically reducing the federal gas tax while giving state and local authorities greater control over where new roads and lanes are built to bring parents home to their families sooner. But the hallmark of his agenda is tax reform. Lee would simplify the income tax code down to just two tax brackets. Individuals making less than $87, 850 and couples earning less than $175,700 would pay 15 percent in taxes. Americans above those income levels would pay 35 percent. He would also dramatically increase the child tax credit to $2,500 per child. Lee says the tax savings will help families but he says reforming the system will accomplish something even more important. "This also would undo a really pernicious aspect of the existing personal income tax system, which is to say it would get rid of the parent tax penalty that exists in current law," said Lee. "What I mean by that is working parents pay into our senior entitlement programs twice, first when they work and pay their taxes and then again as they raise their children and incur costs at an average of about $300,000 to raise a child to maturity." "Those children grow up and, in turn, will pay taxes that will fund their parents' generation as they enter these senior entitlement programs as beneficiaries. So my tax plan would offset this parent tax penalty and would make it easier for parents, as they're raising their children, to get along," he said. |
| We Had to Try |
| Tue, 5 Nov 2013 15:47:02 EST Utah Sen. Mike Lee has no regrets about the push he led to defund Obamacare, rejects accusations from the left and right that his group was responsible for the shutdown and says the past few weeks perfectly illustrate why he and other conservatives worked so hard to starve the law of money. "It was not Republicans who caused this shutdown. It was the president and the Senate Democrats who refused the government or any part of it to be funded unless everything, including Obamacare's implementation, was also simultaneously funded. That's not fair. That's not a good faith compromise effort," said Lee. "I understand the shutdown was unpopular. The shutdown was also unnecessary. It was never what I wanted. I went out of my way to make avoiding the shutdown a possibility. The shutdown was made a reality by virtue of the fact that the president and Harry Reid refused to negotiate and refused to allow us to fund anything in government unless we were willing to fund everything in government, including a law that they knew would be harming Americans as it now is," said Lee. Lee says he and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and others knew the defunding effort was an uphill climb given the balance of power in Congress, but he says there was no other choice than to fight as hard as possible against a law that he says has already been proven to be a nightmare. "We fought this, not because we were certain that we could win but because e knew that the consequences of Obamacare taking effect uninhibited, with the president free to rewrite it unconstitutionally and without statutory authorization, would be so dire that we couldn't let that happen without at least trying to stop it," said Lee. He says Republicans are unified in opposition to Obamacare and a month filled with exchange "glitches", Americans being dropped from plans they like and sticker shock on new health care premiums only validate what he, Cruz and other conservatives were trying to prevent. "We take no pleasure in being proven right, but at the very least the American people now know who is singularly responsible for making the health care system throughout America more expensive, complex and unfair than it was before. That's the president of the United States, who stands defiantly behind this law, notwithstanding the fact it's hurting people," said Lee. So while the initial verdict in opinion polls showed conservatives taking a big chunk of the blame for the shutdown, Lee believes more and more people will see that he and his allies were the ones truly standing up for the American people. "Ultimately, the verdict on what we did to resist it will be one that vindicates what we did. It vindicates that we had good reason to try to resist it, notwithstanding the fact we knew that victory was far from certain," he said. Many Republicans publicly and privately castigated Lee and Cruz as being responsible for a strategy that could not win and cost the party standing with the voters. Some reports even suggest establishment GOP figures in and out of the Utah GOP are trying to recruit a challenger to run again Lee in 2016. "First of all, that's not true about the Utah Republican Party. The Utah Republican Party stands behind me. Those who are suggesting otherwise are simply mistaken or they're lying," said Lee. The deal that ended the partial government shutdown and dodged a breaching of the debt ceiling only funds the government until January and staves off a debt ceiling showdown until February. So will we see this debate replayed in the next couple of months? Probably not. Lee says even if the individual mandate were delayed a year, people would still be dealing with a loss of coverage they liked, a major threat to their privacy security and exchanges that show no sign of being functional anytime soon. In short, he believes the showdown in October was the last best chance to derail Obamacare. "It's difficult to say exactly what we could do at this point. I still think that legislation just suspending the entire thing for a year at a minimum would be in order, but we've now lost our leverage to pass such a thing," said Lee. "Unless there is a big change of heart among a lot of members of the House and Senate, it looks like this law is going to take effect. That's really bad news for the American people, who continue to lose their jobs, lose their health care and have their wages and hours cut because of this law," he said. |
| Homeward Bound |
| Mon, 4 Nov 2013 16:23:10 EST While U.S. military action is over in Iraq and is scheduled to end in Afghanistan in 2014, a major battle continues to rage for countless veterans as they battle Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). On Sunday, the Military Channel will host a four-hour telethon designed to raise awareness about these conditions and money to help provide treatment. The event will run from 7-11 p.m. Eastern Time. Actors Joe Mantegna and Alan Alda will co-host the event. Mantegna, who has long been active in causes to help active duty forces and veterans, says this issue has plagued generations of service members but only now are we learning more about what they are dealing with. "Back in World War II, they used to call it 'shell shock'. These guys would come back from combat and obviously things weren't right about what was going on mentally with them. Now we found that 30 percent of our vets from Vietnam have had various degrees of it, which explained why we had so much homelessness, alcohol problems and drug abuse and all that among our returning vets," said Mantegna. He says the recent emphasis on proper diagnosis and treatment for concussions in football is a drop in the bucket compared to what returning veterans are confronting. "Extend this to people who have been in warfare. People ride around in Humvees that get blown up with bombs and people have suffered these kinds of traumatic injuries. You can start to understand that the brain, being the delicate thing that it is, has suffered in ways that we're only now beginning to understand the magnitude of it," said Mantegna, who says the grim numbers involving veterans with PTSC and TBI illustrate how serious these conditions are. "All you have to do is look at the statistics. It's not an accident why the suicide rate is going up among our returning military, to where it exceeds the deaths that are caused by direct action," he said. But it's not just data that motivates Mantegna. He knows from his interactions with veterans that they desperately need therapy. "All I can tell you is with my direct contact with the vets that I've had over the years, I've seen first hand just how pervasive and how horrible this can be, to drive these people to where suicide seems to be their only kind of outlet. This is not something that's just going to slip away in the night or just something you can gloss over and say, 'Well, they'll get over it,'" said Mantegna. In addition to Mantegna and Alda, the telethon will feature appearances from celebrities such as Connie Francis, Trace Adkins, Mark Harmon as well as some government officials. Mantegna urges Americans to devote just a few minutes to the telethon. "Do what you normally do on a Sunday. Enjoy your family, go to church, get ready for the workday on Monday. But tune into the telethon, even if it's for five minutes. See what it's about and support if you can. And know that you've done something really good," said Mantegna. For more information on the telethon, PTSD and TBI, Mantegna urges Americans to visit homewardboundtelethon.org. |
| The ENDA Employer Freedom? |
| Fri, 1 Nov 2013 16:00:29 EST The U.S. Senate will vote Monday on the "Employment Non-Discrimination Act", legislation which supporters say offers basic workplace protections for homosexuals and transgendered Americans but critics warn will force businesses to cater to bizarre behaviors and force anyone who disagrees with those lifestyles to keep their mouths shut. The legislation, also known as ENDA, would forbid employers from firing or refusing to hire anyone because of their sexual orientation or for asserting a different "gender identity" than their anatomy suggests. Supporters say protections in those areas are no different than longstanding bans on employment decisions made on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, religion or disability. However, critics contend there is a vast difference between judging a person on their skin color versus their sexual behavior. "There's a reason why we don't allow discrimination based on race, which is that it's a characteristic which is inborn, involuntary, immutable, innocuous and in the Constitution," said Peter Sprigg, senior fellow in policy studies at the Family Research Council. "All of those criteria apply to race. None of them applies to the choice to engage in homosexual conduct or in cross-dressing behavior, which is what gender identity deals with." Sprigg further asserts that ENDA would result in unwarranted government meddling into the freedom business owners ought to have in selecting their employees. "The general assumption should be that employers know best what is a relevant qualification for their employees. So any expansion of a list of restrictions like this constitutes further federal government intrusion into what normally is a free market decision. We need to approach the whole issue from that perspective," said Sprigg. Supporters of ENDA fiercely disagree with Sprigg's assertion that the legislation seeks to protect behaviors rather than immutable characteristics since they also claim sexual orientation is immutable. Sprigg says even if that were true, there's a huge difference. "I'm not saying that people choose to experience same-sex attractions but they do choose to engage in homosexual conduct. The bill makes no distinction between attractions and conduct in terms of the protection that it offers," said Sprigg, who says proclivities of prospective employees are important to faith-based employers as well as secular businesses that deal with children and other sensitive situations. As intense as the debate over homosexuality has become, Sprigg says accommodating the gender identity issue is far more complicated since sexual orientation is often imperceptible but transgender employees are quite obvious. He says Democrats wouldn't even touch transgender issues a decade ago but are moving full speed ahead since they believe national opinion has shifted in their direction. He also says that boldness is reflected in more aggressive policies in the bill. "It used to be that they put in an exemption for facilities in which appearing unclothed is unavoidable. in other words, for facilities like showers and locker rooms that you might find in some workplaces. But that exemption has been removed from the current version of ENDA," said Sprigg. "Because they don't require any sex change surgery to change your gender identity, a man who is biologically male but identifies as female would be allowed to appear nude before other females in the locker room or shower. That is perhaps a most extreme application of this, but there's nothing to prevent that in ENDA." So is this debate in the theoretical stage or are there jurisdictions that have already pursued these policies and have definable results? Sprigg says we do have enough data to spot a troubling pattern. "We see that these laws result in a form of reverse discrimination. When the homosexuals come out of the closet at work, the Christians are driven into the closet. People have been overtly punished, even fired, merely for exercising their free speech rights to express their personal opinion that it would be best to abstain from homosexual conduct or best not to redefine marriage as something other than the union of a man and a woman," said Sprigg. "This kind of reverse discrimination is one of the things you won't find in the text of ENDA but it's one of the inevitable implications of it," said Sprigg. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill Monday night. The dramatic vote will be to cut off debate and proceed to a final vote. That requires 60 votes. Sprigg says supporters may have 59 votes right now so anyone concerned about the legislation need to contact their senator. House passage would be unlikely, but Sprigg fears Senate passage could build momentum and backers might even try to mount a discharge petition, which would bring the Senate bill to a House vote without committee consideration or the consent of GOP House leaders. |
| They'll Be Watching You |
| Fri, 1 Nov 2013 15:47:32 EST It's been another week of tough questions and limited answers at the White House, as the Obamacare controversy grew from a malfunctioning website to broken promises about keeping insurance and more allegations of NSA spying abound. This time the NSA is in the news for spying on friendly foreign leaders rather than American citizens. That prompted the Capitol Steps to roll out their recent NSA parody, "I'll Be Watching You." Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| Whistling Past the Power Grid |
| Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:19:06 EST America's energy infrastructure is aging and vulnerable to devastation from countries that wish to do us harm as well as from our own sun, but Washington politicians and bureaucrats refuse to take simple, relatively inexpensive steps to solve the problem. The most devastating threat is posed by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and a former member of the congressional EMP commission says both the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs are focused on taking out our nation's power grids. "It is why Iran wants the bomb. We know that from the EMP commission because in their open source military writings, they describe using a nuclear weapon to eliminate the United States as an actor from the world stage by means of an EMP attack," said Dr. Peter Pry, who is also executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. "Let's not forget that earlier this year North Korea, which has the bomb and in fact we assess they probably have what are called super EMP nuclear weapons, which is a nuclear weapon specifically designed to make the EMP effect. That's why all three of their nuclear tests have been so low yield. They're designed to produce gamma rays, not a big explosion. It's the gamma rays that make the EMP effect. North Korea, in April, threatened to destroy the United States. The evidence is right there in the headlines if people would only pay attention to them," said Pry. The EMP debate has attracted skeptics who consider the threat to be little more than a conspiracy theory, but Dr. Pry says nature may pose an even greater threat than the nukes. "If you're not worried about Iran or North Korea, one does have to be worried about the sun, which cannot be deterred. The sun can cause a catastrophic natural EMP event by means of a solar flare that would strike the magnetosphere," said Pry. "In some ways it would be even worse than a nuclear EMP attack because something like the 1859 Carrington event, if it happened again today would be a worldwide phenomenon and collapse electric grids all across the planet and put billions of lives at risk." The Carrington event was a massive solar flare. It is considered to be the greatest explosion on the sun ever to be observed on earth. And Pry says we are way overdue for the next one. "They're supposed to happen about once a century so we're about 50 years overdue and we enter the solar maximum in December. The likelihood goes up of something like a Carrington happening during a solar maximum, which lasts a year. Over the next year, we'll be passing through this period where the sun puts out more coronal mass ejections and solar flares. It's a game of Russian roulette. It's just a matter of time before one of these big Carrington-class solar flares from the sun hits the earth," warned Pry. In addition, Pry contends there are plenty of other conventional threats that could also cripple our nation's energy grid. "If you protect the grid against EMP, you're also protecting it against all lesser threats, the kinds of things that hurricanes or tornadoes can do, sabotage and cyber attacks as well," said Pry, who says terrorists in Mexico successfully blacked out an entire Mexican province this past weekend, leaving well over 420,000 people in the dark and 13 people dead. Pry says the vulnerability of the nation's power grid is not alarmist or hypothetical. He says proof of that was seen in the massive 2003 blackout that extended throughout the northeast to parts of the midwest and Canada. "The reason the 2003 blackout happened was because of a falling tree branch. Our grid is so fragile that a falling tree branch, if it hits in the wrong place, can cause a multi-state blackout," he said. "The bad guys see that, by the way. They see that obviously if a falling tree branch can cause the 2003 northeast blackout, just imagine what a nuclear EMP attack could do." So how complicated and expensive will it be to successfully protect our energy infrastructure from these threats, regardless of their likelihood? Pry says the solutions are readily available and relatively cheap. "The technology has been around for 50 years because the Department of Defense developed technologies like Faraday cages, surge arresters and blocking devices to protect military systems from EMP. They're not very expensive. The commission estimated that for a one-time investment of two billion dollar, we could protect the whole national grid from EMP," said Pry, noting that's the same amount the nation gives to Pakistan each year in foreign aid. So why haven't steps already been taken after all sorts of promises were by government officials after the blackout? Pry says it's a result of foot dragging by both parties in Washington and the stubbornness of an organization that doesn't answer of anybody. "It brings us to the bad guy...It's called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation or NERC. They were the ones who were supposed to do something about that," said Pry. "NERC took 10 years. It wasn't until last year that they actually introduced a plan to improve their vegetation plan, to protect the power lines from tree branches. NERC doesn't answer to anybody. There's no government oversight over it. It answers to the industry and has an extremely bad track record about doing anything. And there is no legal authority among any part of the government to compel them to do anything. Because of that procrastination, Pry and his allies are urging states to address this issue on their own. Maine already has, and Pry says there are many advantages of this approach. "The solutions don't have to come from Washington. States can launch their own state initiatives. You can island the state grid so that it would be protected from EMP. This would not prevent the state from receiving power or exporting power to any other state. It would help neighboring states if one state were able to survive because nothing's harder than a black start. If you have one state with the lights still on, it can help bring everybody else back," said Pry. |
| Dumbing Down Education |
| Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:22:19 EST A national effort to unify education standards across America and help American children compete more effectively with students in better-performing nations is actually a dumbing down of America's schools, takes away local control, handcuffs good teachers and opens the door for ideological manipulation of our kids. Common Core was developed in recent years as a means of establishing nationwide learning standards, and the vast majority of states signed on, even before the standards were spelled out. And critics of the plan say that the emerging reality of Common Core is far different from what was promised. "It was sold to the states and the federal government on a series of slogans. The slogans were that it would be state-led, that the standards would be evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, that is on par with what other high-performing countries teach and that the standards would be rigorous," said Emmett McGroarty, education director at the Preserve Innocence Project. "All these governors of both parties and school chiefs signed on to this idea. The problem is they signed on to the idea before the standards were written and before the assessments were developed. The assessments, by the way, still haven't been developed. The ultimate product did not match up with the promise." Common Core will also mean even more standardized tests and an increased push to teach for the test since performance rates will carry all sorts of financial and other implications. McGroarty says educators have had enough of the standardized tests because they are taking good, creative teachers and forcing them to focus on one thing. "The anecdotal evidence that we've come across and we've heard is that teachers are really saddened and really feel alienated from the process. They feel like they're being made into administrators, not teachers. The passion of teaching is being squeezed out of the profession," he said. Despite being just two years away from its scheduled implementation, Common Core standards have only been established in math and in English language arts. But even those areas are raising red flags. McGroarty says the standards are shelving Euclidian geometry in favor of "transformational" geometry. He says students need to know Euclidian geometry to understand the transformational approach and embracing transformational geometry in K-12 is a proven failure in every foreign nation it's been tried. In English language arts, students will be steered away from the classics in favor of easier to read material, with Common Core examples including EPA papers, Federal Reserve statements and the Constitution. McGroarty and other experts believe this sort of approach in English, reading and possibly in history and government opens the door to pushing a liberal ideological agenda. Ultimately, McGroarty sees two fatal flaws with this program, one with the ultimate goals and one with how they were pursued. He says parents and their elected representatives were largely shut out of this process, leaving it up to bureaucrats and private interest groups to chart the course forward. He says the ultimate goal might even be more alarming. "From the get-go, the idea is that we really need to switch to a European philosophy of education, whereby people are educated for a predetermined slot in the economic machinery. This feeds into a managed economy. The administration has talked about in terms of needing to track people from cradle through the end of their careers through the educational system and the labor system," said McGroarty. |
| Worse than Ahmadinejad |
| Mon, 28 Oct 2013 16:15:35 EST Recent estimates that Iran may be just one month away from producing enough enriched uranium to facilitate a nuclear weapon are likely on target, and the likelihood of Iran achieving success is enhanced by an insincere charm offensive by new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani was touted as a surprise winner in Iran's recent presidential elections. Since then, he has projected a desire to soften the tone with the United States and open a new dialogue between the two nations. But the man who first warned the world of Iran's latest quest for nuclear weapons says this public relations campaign by Iran is just a giant smokescreen. "President Rouhani is actually more dangerous than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because he creates the perception as though he's going to be someone different, as though he's willing to talk to the West and come into some kind of an agreement meaning that he would abandon some aspects of the Iranian nuclear program and that he would come clean," said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which the formal name for the Iranian parliament in exile. "If we look at the whole structure of the Iranian regime, Rouhani is just the player that only carries out the mission of the supreme leader. All the issue related to national security, particularly the nuclear file, are totally in the control of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei," said Jafarzadeh, who also says Rouhani is no innocent newcomer to the international chess game over Iranian nukes. Rouhani was one of the first Iran negotiators once the NCRI exposed the nuclear program in 2002. Jafarzadeh says Rouhani's duplicity has been evident since the start of this impasse, "He later boasted about having the ability to basically beguile the West and cheat them by saying that they have actually frozen their program when in fact they hadn't," he said. "The issue is not whether he speaks over the phone with a western country leader or not. The issue is does the Iranian regime comply with a series of UN Security Council resolutions that has been in place since several years ago." Just last week the independent Institute for Science and International Security reported that Iran is on pace to produce enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon within the next month. Jafarzadeh finds that estimate wholly credible because the group had access to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency and had solid estimates on the number of active centrifuges and the number of centrifuges operating at specific enrichment levels. Jafarzadeh says the reality is sobering. "It's a scary situation because you never want to be in a situation that Iran, by any estimates, would be only months away from having the ability to build the bomb," said Jafarzadeh. He says there's not much time for the rest of the world to act, especially since the most effective measures of tighter economic sanctions and supporting internal opposition would be tough to ramp up fast enough to make a difference. Jafarzadeh is also not sure the U.S. is willing to do what's necessary to stop Iran from going nuclear. "We saw in 2009, when hundreds of thousands of thousands of people came to the streets, but unfortunately, the outside world was not prepared to stand with them. That's the kind of leverage that I think the United States can use. I don't know whether this administration is prepared to do that. I don't think that signs indicate that they will," said Jafarzadeh. Jafarzadeh and the NCRI is also imploring President Obama to get tough on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki when the two meet in Washington this week. Iranian exiles are outraged that Maliki authorized the murder of 52 Iranian dissidents at Camp Ashraf and the government took seven more activists hostage, six of whom are women. Maliki is know for his very close ties with Tehran and Jafarzadah says it's time for Obama to lay down the law. "He cannot be invited to the White House when he is a hostage-taker. He's a kidnapper. That sends the wrong message to all the allies in the region," said Jafarzadeh. The NCRI will lead a protest at the White House on Friday which will feature speakers ranging from Newt Gingrich to Tom Ridge to former Rep. Patrick Kennedy. |
| 'It's Gotta Be Scrapped' |
| Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:10:03 EST Obamacare is so deeply flawed that it cannot be salvaged, the White House is engaging in "smoke and mirrors" and the taxpayers are getting fleeced, according to Ohio Rep. Bill Johnson. "I think it's got to be scrapped and started over," said Johnson, who is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which heard testimony from healthcare.gov contractors on Thursday. He says a simply analogy explains why fixing the law isn't good enough. "If you order two eggs over medium and the server brings you two eggs scrambled. You've got two choices. You either eat the scrambled eggs which means you don't get what you want or you send 'em back and start over with fresh ingredients. But you can't add enough cooks or money to turn those scrambled eggs into over medium eggs. That's not how it works," he said. Johnson is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and also ran a successful business before getting elected to Congress in 2010. During both careers, Johnson oversaw major software development projects. "I did it for 30 years, both within the DoD and in the private sector. Often times the decisions that I made held the success and failure of multi-billion-dollar companies in the balance. You can't get this far down the road (in a project) and expect to go back and just patch and fix. These are not glitches. They're major failures," said Johnson. On the technical front alone, Johnson says the rollout is a complete mess. "The website doesn't work. Americans are struggling to enroll. The contractors can't tell us when it's going to be fixed or how it's going to be fixed. And there are major concerns about the security of private health care-related data on the part of the American people," said Johnson. The federal government announced on Friday that healthcare.gov should be operating flawlessly by late November. Johnson isn't so sure. "I'm very suspicious of that estimate and I'm very concerned that what we might get from the administration is more smoke and mirrors. In my experience, you cannot fix these kinds of catastrophic errors," said Johnson. "Once a software development project has gone this far and is experiencing these kind of errors, you can't add enough programmers or throw enough money at it to fix it. This thing is gonna have to be scrapped. It's gonna have to be started over again, and that's going to come at a phenomenal cost compared to the original development," said Johnson. If the online problems persist, lawmakers and even the president are likely to seek an extension in the open enrollment period, but the law specifically states that any extension must be approved by Congress. That gives Republicans a considerable amount of leverage. "We've made it very, very clear to the president that we would like him to delay the individual mandate. I think giving the American people the same break that he gave to big business is a good thing," said Johnson. The congressman also says he's looking out for the taxpayer after a massive price tag for the original contracting work on the exchanges and the nation now looks at an expensive and costly repair job. "He should not be able to spend a penny of taxpayer dollars on fixing, repairing or replacing this website without finding spending cuts to go along with it that would offset them," said Johnson. "This has been money wasted. It's very, very clear to me that not only has (the Center for Medicare Services) not done their job, but they haven't mandated and overseen this project to make sure these contractors are doing their job either." The Obama administration and its allies are doing their best to separate the rough start of the exchanges to the content of the new laws, admitting the websites have been deeply flawed but insisting the eventual reality of millions of Americans receiving affordable, quality health care is just around the corner. Johnson strongly disagrees. "They cannot say that the law is not the problem because the law is what is mandating that Americans get on the website and comply. And they can't comply with the law," said Johnson. "They've got a big problem on their hands right now because this is not fair what is happening to the American people. The president has given a break to big businesses from having to comply with the employer mandate. He's given waivers to his friends. He's got an exemption for himself, for his cabinet, members of Congress and their staff." "My goodness, when it the president going to start looking out for the best interests of the American people," said Johnson. Johnson says the soaring premiums are crippling families in his district as well. He says the average family in southeastern Ohio makes about $35,000 per year and simply cannot absorb the hiked premiums that are now a reality as a reality of the law. "They cannot afford this health care law," he stated. |
| Immigration Medley |
| Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:01:50 EST As the Obamacare rollout continues to flop, President Obama is trying to shift the focus back to immigration reform. The Capitol Steps comply, rolling out their immigration medley, featuring Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| 'We're Extremely Vulnerable' |
| Wed, 23 Oct 2013 16:49:21 EST U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno shocked many on Tuesday, when he stated that just two Army brigades were currently combat-ready as a result of the financial toll taken by sequestration and other cuts in military spending, but a retired U.S. Air Force general says the problems can be seen throughout all service branches. "The Air Force, at one time, grounded a third of all their squadrons because of the cost savings driven by sequestration. That means their readiness is declining in almost dramatic terms," said retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Tom McInerney, who served as both assistant vice chief of staff and commander-in-chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe during his time in uniform. "The Navy is cutting down their steaming hours or flying hours and the Marine Corps the same thing. They're all about a third in decreased readiness, which permeates the whole force and you atrophy gradually. Without a doubt, the sequestration has had a huge impact, negative impact, on U.S. military readiness." Sequestration was the default result of the 2011 Budget Control Act that was passed to resolve that summer's debt ceiling showdown. Lawmakers were supposed to come up with areas to trim spending but failed to reach any consensus. As a result, sequestration kicked in, with President Obama and Democrats demanding half of the cuts come from military spending in exchange for some trimming in entitlement spending. The military's sequestration cuts followed closely on the heels of another major drop in funding. The combination of actual cuts and reductions in planned spending increases totals roughly one trillion dollars over 10 years. The Defense Department, like all government agencies, have been known for extravagant spending at times, but McInerney says the rules of sequestration prevent officials from prioritizing the spending reductions so critical programs are suffering. "It doesn't give the Department of Defense the reprogramming authority that they would like, so much of it cuts across the board. It's a straight line salami slice. If you're able to go into certain areas where you can delay certain modernization or do certain things, that enables them to keep their readiness up. They don't have that tool right now but that's what they need," said McInerney. If the military cuts from sequestration are not restored, McInerney says readiness will be at historically low levels. "We will have the least ready military since the end of World War II, the 1948-49 time period. We (also) had that dropdown under President Carter, but this will go below the Carter readiness problems," said McInerney. "This administration will have the lowest since 1948." But McInerney asserts that even at today's readiness levels, our national security is compromised. "We're extremely vulnerable. Look what's going on in Syria. Look what's going on in the Middle East. The Saudis are breaking diplomatic relations with us," said McInerney, who contends the Obama administration is standing by while Russia and Iran are running roughshod throughout the Middle East. "We are doing all the wrong things. We are not helping Gen. al-Sisi in Egypt. That's one of the reasons why the Saudi Arabians, who are really one of our closest and most influential allies in the region, have just broken off diplomatic relations. Our military readiness is having an impact on that. We do not have the influence let alone the diplomacy to carry to leadership role that we should be carrying," said McInerney, who says adversarial nations are keenly aware of our weakened position right now. "Our enemies see that so they are just being emboldened. That's one of the dangerous things that's going on and it's going to have very far-reaching repercussions," said McInerney. The general says the smart thing for the government to do would be to replace the military funds cut by sequestration and start providing help to places like Egypt. However, he doesn't expect the cuts to be reversed anytime soon because the other half of the equation would require some entitlement reform and he doesn't believe the Obama administration is serious about addressing that. "I don't see sequestration going away until the administration is willing to get into the entitlement area and start going into those areas, which are all going broke as it is, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and all that. The administration has not been willing to make what I think are balanced cuts, because in the final analysis they're going to go broke anyhow," said McInerney. |
| 'Absolutely Appalling' |
| Tue, 22 Oct 2013 16:10:21 EST Outspoken Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson is facing considerable outrage after comparing the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan in a new fundraising email. In the final days of the government shutdown, Grayson told MSNBC's Al Sharpton he believes the Tea Party is about as popular as the KKK. He is not circulating a fundraising email that shows a burning cross and two klansmen in the background. The graphic uses the cross to begin spelling out "Tea Party", and the caption reads, "Now You Know What the 'T' Stands For." "I find it absolutely appalling, not only as a black Tea Party activist, but as a human being and as a former teacher because he's totally distorting history and what the Constitution stands for," said Jennifer Burke, national outreach director for theteaparty.net which is the largest grassroots tea party group in the nation. "He's taken the history of the Democrat Party, because they were the party of the KKK. They were the ones that were burning crosses and lynching black people and shooting them because they were the wrong color. He's applying that horrible time in our history to a group of people who simply want constitutionally limited government and who want the government to respect the freedoms that the Constitution grants us in our God-given rights," said Burke. Grayson is not backing down. The man who once said the GOP health care plan was for people to die quickly and once called an opponent a member of the Taliban, doubled down when questioned about the fundraising message. In a response to foxnews.com, Grayson says Tea Party activists repeatedly raise questions about President Obama's eligibility and religion. "One could go on and on, because there is overwhelming evidence that the Tea Party is the home of bigotry and discrimination in America today, just as the KKK was for an earlier generation. If the shoe fits, wear it," said Grayson in the statement. Burke says those remarks disgust her even more. "One thing that Alan Grayson is not known for, if you ask me, is just being of sound mind," said Burke. "I've spoken at many Tea Party rallies. I've interacted with Tea Party people around the country. The only time I've experienced racism was in the left's response to me, calling me an Uncle Tom or an Aunt Thomasina or telling me I hate my race, what kind of a black person am I to stand with the Tea Party. That is the only time I've experienced an attack." Burke says it's possible some outrageous remarks made it into the comment section on some Tea Party sites or an offensive sign appeared at a rally somewhere, but she says that is not in any way indicative of the movement and liberals know it. "To apply that to the millions of Americans who simply want a constitutionally-limited government is disgusting. I've said it before and I will continue to say it. Hurling that racist accusation against the Tea Party has been an effort to shut us up," she said. "Historically, in the past, you shift the conversation and instead of them making their point, which is typically based on fact, which is what we on the right do, they shift and make you defend how you're not a racist. Well, it hasn't shut us up and so you see people like Alan Grayson heightening this incendiary attack against the good men and women of the Tea Party movement," said Burke. Grayson was elected to the House in 2008. His controversial rhetoric and a strong Tea Party tide led to his sound defeat in 2010, but he was sent back to Congress from a more liberal district in 2012. Grayson received 63 percent of the vote last year, but Burke says Grayson's actions should disgust people on both sides of the aisle. "People need to start seeing beyond what letter is next to a person's name and look instead to what that person stands for and what that person is saying. No sitting congressman should have this level of incendiary defamation against Americans who simply want a constitutionally-limited government. I hope the people of Florida, instead of sitting there cheering for this kind of thing, are sitting there embarrassed and thinking, 'We've got to get this man out. He's a horrible representative for this state and this nation,'" said Burke. The Tea Party has been taking shots from both sides of the aisle. Both Democrats and Republicans who disagreed with the party's fiscal strategy in recent weeks point blame at the Tea Party. Nonetheless, Burke says the movement remains rock solid. "I think the Tea Party movement stands stronger actually. We have a few people who have emerged in DC as standing on principle and standing for the Constitution despite being fought from both sides of the aisle," said Burke, who says President Obama and Democrats accused conservatives of demanding everything they wanted before reopening the government when it was actually Obama and his allies who insisted on 100 percent of what they wanted. "The American people are tired of this tyranny that we're seeing rising in America and we will fight for our Constitution. I don't care what the name-calling is," she said. |
| 'Dereliction of Duty' |
| Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:32:10 EST Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver is accusing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie of 'dereliction of duty' for dropping his appeal to a state court decision and effectively allowing gay marriage to be enshrined in the Garden State. "For Governor Chris Christie just to allow a lower court to ultimately decide this for the people is a dereliction of duty," said Staver, who has argued in defense of traditional marriage in many states and says this change in New Jersey is not some minor matter. "We're talking about the redefinition of marriage. We're talking about a policy that essentially says boys don't need fathers, that girls don't need mothers, that two people of the same sex are just as good as mom and dad who are male and female. "This has long term significant effects on the family, on children and when we destabilize the very structure of the family, we impact the structure and stability of government," he said. A lower state court ruled that forbidding same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and the New Jersey Supreme Court refused to delay the enforcement of that decision. The chief justice advised Christie to drop the appeal altogether, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act as reason for why the state's appeal had little to no chance of succeeding. "I think the chief justice is speaking out of turn before this matter was fully briefed and argued. I don't think the chief justice has the benefit of looking at the full issue and I think it was another example of judicial activism," said Staver. "We're talking about marriage. We're not talking about some kind of other benefit. We're talking about marriage, the full redefinition of marriage. That's the problem and that's a significant difference." With Christie seen as a major candidate for the GOP nomination in 2016, this decision could make marriage an issue of greater debate within the party. Staver says the Republicans know better than to abandon traditional marriage because the impact at the ballot box would be a disaster for the party. "If the Republican Party were to move away from marriage as one man and one woman and to adopt some kind of alternative system or, even worse, same-sex marriage, the Republican Party would lose much of its membership. They would destroy themselves as a party, and the quickest thing to start a third party would be for the Republican Party to move away from marriage as one man and one woman," said Staver. But Staver is quick to stress that he does not believe Christie's decision is any sort of indication that the GOP plans to change on this issue. He believes Republicans will continue to defend the traditional family. "I don't think it's going that way. I think there's enough people in the grassroots that are holding some of the leaders' feet to the fire. I think there's a number of leaders who are very strong on this issue and there are obviously some Republicans who are a little week. That's what the purpose of elections are and I think some of those people will ultimately be finding new jobs," said Staver. New Jersey is just one state where same-sex marriage advocates are challenging state laws and in some cases a state constitutional amendment. That's what is happening in Michigan, where a federal judge has invited activists to challenge the state's traditional marriage amendment in his courtroom. Staver says repeated episodes of judicial activism could ultimately erode the credibility of the American judiciary. "If they continue to go down a road of judicial activism where they just have their own ideology that does not conform to the Constitution to common sense or to history and research, I think the courts could ultimately make themselves illegitimate and delegitimize their entire structure. Once people lose confidence in the court system, we ultimately have a real problem within the judiciary. I think that's potentially where we may be going if this continues to go down that same path," said Staver. |
| 'Won't Work Because It Can't Work' |
| Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:23:33 EST President Obama admitted the recently unveiled online health insurance exchanges have been a technological headache. He also insists once those problems are fixed people will discover that the exchanges offer wonderful health plans at affordable prices, but a prominent congressman says the facts are not on the president's side. "They're still trying to sell a program that the American people know won't work. And it won't work because the same things that are wrong with the website, that is the challenge of getting into it and having it work are the same things that are going to be wrong throughout the entire healthcare system when Washington is running it," said Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a former physician who authored a free-market version of health care reform that is still awaiting House consideration. The exchange woes are very real in Price's district as well. At a town hall on Monday, many constituents had tried to navigate the website with no success. Price stresses that whenever the online problems are fixed, the biggest problems will just be starting. "The real problem is not that the website won't work, it's that the program won't work because it puts Washington in charge and that's not what people want," said Price. On Monday, Obama vowed swift attention to the exchange problems but spent most of his address touting 20 million hits on the healthcare.gov site and almost half a million Americans accounts created on the exchange. But Price says the lack of any actual enrollment numbers is a major red flag. "It's a complete lack of transparency by this administration that touted itself as the most transparent ever. I'm not certain if they won't tell us how many have signed up because it's such a paltry number or whether they don't know. Both of them are awful problems to have by an administration that is trying to run one-sixth of our economy and all of our health care," said Price. Stopping Obamacare through defunding or delay was the goal of congressional conservatives during the recent standoff over government funding and the debt ceiling. And while Price supported those efforts, he says the wall-to-wall coverage of the shutdown obscured just how terrible the Obamacare exchange rollout really was. "That's because the mainstream media tend to focus on one big story at a time and they can't handle more than that's because the American people's attention is difficult to have focused on more than one thing," said Price. Despite the failure of the GOP to slow down or derail Obamacare in recent weeks, Price believes its fate is sealed by its own massive flaws. "This system won't work because it can't work. It doesn't work for patients. It doesn't work for families, doesn't work for doctors and certainly doesn't work for employers or employees. At this point, we're seeing how it doesn't work for states from an exchange standpoint or the federal government from a financing standpoint. I think the whole thing will implode. The sad thing about all this is there will be real people who will be harmed from a quality health care or accessibility aspect that wouldn't have otherwise," he said. |
| Bathroom Wars |
| Fri, 18 Oct 2013 15:19:07 EST Girls at a Colorado high school are being forced to allow an older boy to use their bathrooms as the result of a policy of transgender accommodation and the girls are being threatened with punishment if their complaints don't stop. The debate is happening in Florence, Colorado, located near Colorado Springs. Parents of several girls are seeking a legal remedy after their daughters were required to share bathrooms with a male who maintains his true gender identity is that of a woman. "First of all, it's our position that a teenage boy's presence into the bathroom for teenage girls is inherently harassing. It's inherently violative of their privacy rights. It's also intimidating when you have a boy like this, who is not a freshman, going in there with younger freshman girls. They feel violated. They feel intimidated, and that's been expressed to us," said Matthew McReynolds, staff attorney at the Pacific Justice Institute, who is representing the families of the girls involved. The girls further allege the boy has made sexually harassing comments in that setting. "Details continue to emerge on this in terms of what what kind of comments may have been made. We've heard some reports that he's commented on what girls are wearing or their figure while in the bathroom. If you can imagine that scenario from the reference and framework of a teenage girl, I think that's pretty harassing," said McReynolds, who reiterated that a boy simply being in the girls' restroom is ample harassment in itself. Also galling to the female students and their parents is the backlash the girls have suffered from their own school administrators, who have vowed to punish the students if their protests persist. "Some of the students have been warned that they need to stop talking about this. They need to stop talking about their constitutional privacy rights, more or less, or they may face repercussions in areas such as participation on school athletic teams," said McReynolds, who detailed the legal efforts to rectify the problem. "What we're really going for is a solution that can be workable for everybody involved. That's what we don't have right now. Our students are in a scenario where they're being told, 'If you don't want to be in this situation where this guy walks in while you're in the bathroom, then you've got to confine yourself to one staff bathroom that is very inconvenient, that's not even open all the time that they're on campus for athletic activities and things like that. You just have to give up your right to use the other dozen or so bathrooms on campus. You just have to clear out so that this one other student can do whatever he wants,'" said McReynolds. "There are workable solutions short of litigation that are available. We hope the school will go that direction. They haven't given us much indication yet of what they are going to do. There can be solutions that can be acceptable if not perfect to both sides," he said. McReynolds and the Pacific Justice Institute were actively involved in unsuccessful opposition to California's AB 1266, legislation passed earlier this year to allow self-identifying transgender students to use restrooms designated for the opposite sex. it is scheduled to take effect in January. He says one of many problems with this movement is the lack of a threshold for some to receive transgender recognition. "That's one of the really troubling aspects to this. It depends on who you ask and it depends on where you go. Here in California, the new law we have really has no standards for how you determine gender identity. That's fairly consistent as you look around the country and seems to be the case in Colorado as well," said McReynolds. "Colorado has some specific regulations that refer to situations where students will be in a state of undress, which is obviously one of the big concerns here. It says that reasonable accommodations have to be made for transgender students. There's a lot of vagueness and haziness in there but that's what we're plowing through in this scenario," he said. But he says the goal of the transgender activists is very clear. "They would insist that every school district in America is subject to these same kinds of situations and scenarios because of the way that they would interpret federal laws like Title IX and just general definitions of gender," said McReynolds. "We're starting to see it all over the place. If you do the math, experts tell us transgender individuals make up about .3 percent of the population. So if you have a high school campus with a couple thousand kids on it as is the case in a lot of places, there's a pretty good likelihood that within that school or within that district, and especially as these kinds of behavior become more bold, you're going to be seeing more and more of these," said McReynolds. Transgender activists are largely dismissing this story, claiming the girls are likely either trying to get the male student in trouble because they don't like him or concocting stories of harassment because of opposition to the policy. McReynolds is not buying the argument that this is much ado about nothing. "If there were nothing to this, I don't think the school district would be currently conducting a law enforcement investigation, which is what they're doing. Beyond that, you've got to ask yourself, when you have somebody who is acting very peculiarly to say the least, sometimes dressing as a girl and sometimes dressing as a boy, why are we indulging that and making everybody else pretend like that is normal, when clearly it's not," said McReynolds. The speed with which issues like this have emerged throughout our culture even surprises McReynolds, but he says the warnings against enabling this movement are already coming true. "Just a few years ago, this wasn't on much of anybody's radar. Now we find ourselves right in the middle of it. Just a few months ago, I testified before the California legislature on AB 1266 on this same issue and it was just astounding for me to listen to the things being said on the other side. Again and again, we heard there would be no problems with this legislation, that we were just being 'transphobic' for suggesting that there might be problems resulting from these kinds of policies," said McReynolds. "Now, unfortunately, what we predicted is coming true in a number of different locations," he said. |
| 'Shooting at their Own' |
| Thu, 17 Oct 2013 16:11:29 EST By all accounts, Republicans came out on the losing end of the final deal to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling, but the leader of one of the most influential conservative organizations says it only happened because establishment Republicans deliberately and publicly undermined their more conservative colleagues. "The problem from the very beginning of this process is you had a divide within the GOP, between those that were willing to avoid any confrontation on the budget at any cost and those like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and a growing number of Republicans that wanted to fight for something meaningful, wanted to do what they said they were going to do in their last election," said Freedomworks President and CEO Matt Kibbe. "That was our Achille's heel from day one because more establishmentarian types like John McCain and John Cornyn started shooting at their own instead of all of us focusing our message on the Democrats and the huge liability that is Obamacare." Twenty-seven Senate Republicans voted for the final deal while 18 opposed it. Many long-serving GOP members publicly slammed Cruz and Lee for waging a battle they didn't have the votes to win. McCain and others repeatedly asserted that Obamacare cannot realistically be addressed until the party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House. Kibbe has no patience for that argument. "I've been in Washington long enough that I've noticed this pattern where politicians tell you that we have to wait until after the next election to do what we said we were going to do. There's always another election and they always it's too hard to take on entitlements, it's too hard to take on Obamacare," said Kibbe, who notes that Cornyn, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee argued in 2010 that fighting Obamacare was a a losing strategy. "There's an upside to fighting. Tip O'Neill, the famous Democratic speaker, proved that when he shut down the government some 12 times to challenge both President Carter and Reagan on his budget priorities. We've lost that willingness to fight. It's not easy reining in government, but the question is if you don't like the strategy that Lee and Cruz came up with, I didn't see another one on the table. And not fighting is not an option," said Kibbe. On Thursday, Kibbe authored a foxnews.com column entitled, "Establishment Republicans have given up -- it's time for the rest of us to do their job." The piece is more of a diagnosis than a prescription, but Kibbe says the simplest path to progress is bringing more conservatives to Washington who will fight for the principles they run on. "We need to look for upgrades in both the Democratic and Republican Party. If you look at the electoral map in 2014, you're definitely going to see some establishment Republicans challenged like we did in 2012 and 2010. You're also going to see upgrades in open seats and pickup seats with Democrats," said Kibbe. So which GOP members would Kibbe like to see defeated in primaries next year? South Carolina's Lindsey Graham and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are at the top of his list. "I think there's a real opportunity there," said Kibbe of the possibility of defeating Sen. Graham. "I think Mitch McConnell's in trouble, particularly after the last couple of days and this special sweetheart deal that was tucked into the bill and earmarked for Kentucky." Kibbe says it's far too early to determine which primaries Freedomworks might target. He says making sure a solid, grassroots conservative is running and can be competitive are major keys to determining which races to influence. And while Democrats, some Republicans and the media disparage Sen. Lee and Sen. Cruz, Kibbe says their argument will gain many more supporters as the facts about Obamacare continue to emerge. "As we see the actual implementation of Obamacare hurt actual people, people that are herded into the exchanges even though they were promised they could keep the health care that they had, young people that will be forced to buy something they can't afford and others that will see their jobs cut or their premiums increase, all of those real factors are going to prove us right and the Democrats wrong as we head into 2014," said Kibbe. |
| Affirmative Action & the Supremes |
| Wed, 16 Oct 2013 17:26:50 EST The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday surrounding the constitutionality of a 2006 Michigan law banning racial preferences at universities and other institutions, and a coalition of black conservatives says it's beyond time for all Americans to realize that showing favoritism to minorities is not the answer to the discrimination of years past or the way to balance opportunity today. The Project 21 Black Leadership Network also asserts that government is the greatest stumbling block to achieving the goal of a color-blind society. The case before the Supreme Court, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, centers on a 2006 ballot initiative in Michigan to scrap racial preferences at public universities, in hiring for government jobs or awarding government contracts. Voters approved the referendum by a 58-42 percent margin. The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unconstitutional. "This is a very common sense concept and this is the reason why in that 58 percent of Michiganders who supported this, there were a significant number of blacks, significant number of Latinos as well as women, all who could be identified as minorities but they recognized that this equality principle is one that's important for everybody," said Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper, a former constitutional law professor. Cooper says in the 2006 vote, the initiative to ban racial preferences received 50 percent more votes in the heavily Democratic city of Detroit than Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Bouchard. "Very, very revealing that people understand the equality principle and even if they're partisans, even if they are people who live in certain enclaves and communities, they get this concept. Equality is what's important," he said. Supporters of affirmative action claim the effect of states like Michigan removing racial components in university admissions can already be seen in declining enrollment numbers for minority applicants. Cooper says there's much more to the story. "It's been a mixed bag, but the truth is this: there are more schools that have eliminated their race-based admissions programs and have been able to retain significant minority presence than there are schools that have eliminated it and resulted in a drop," said Cooper, who also says enrollment numbers are not the proper gauge for whether an admissions program is operating impartially. "It isn't clear to me that the only test for whether a racially neutral admissions program can operate is that you guarantee x number of people of a certain race are going to come. That's the exact opposite of a race-neutral program," said Cooper. Regardless of the intentions behind affirmative action, Cooper says government-imposed racial preferences are one of the greatest hindrances to a truly color-blind culture. "The truth of the matter is, government is probably the last place where we still have this kind of mindset that you need to judge people by their skin color rather than their achievements and the content of their character," said Cooper. "If I discriminated against you, you don't get to come back and discriminate against me. We don't defeat racism with more racism. We don't defeat bigotry with more bigotry." Justice Elena Kagan recused herself in this case. Cooper believes Justice Anthony Kennedy will end up writing a majority opinion bolstered by the four conservatives on the court to uphold the 2006 Michigan initiative. |
| Army Targets Pro-Family Groups |
| Tue, 15 Oct 2013 16:31:05 EST The American Family Association is fighting back after the U.S. Army used taxpayer funds to classify pro-family organizations as "hate groups" and ordered uniformed personnel to avoid any affiliation with them. The AFA says the government's hostility is rooted entirely in the groups' opposition to same-sex marriage and open homosexuality in the military. They also assert that the Obama administration is using the list of "hate groups" compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The reason we've been tagged as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center is that we simply have a disagreement with them over whether homosexual behavior should be normalized. We believe it should not be. We believe there are health risks associated with homosexual behavior for the obvious reasons. We love homosexuals enough to tell them the truth. We don't hate them. We love them. We want them to live healthy, long lives. We want them to enjoy eternal life. So we love them enough to tell them the truth," said AFA Issue Analysis Director Bryan Fischer, who also AFA's Focal Point Radio. "Disagreement is not hatred. Disagreement is just disagreement. So it's appalling that they've taken this slanderous accusation and are now using it in official military training. We're in contact with the Pentagon right now through our elected officials to get to the bottom of this and bring this to an end," said Fischer. AFA is also furious that the U.S. Army presentation commanding all personnel to avoid affiliation with pro-family groups deliberately linked it with Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, whose few members routinely picket the funerals of service members and carry placards declaring that God hates gay people. Fischer says the false association is also slanderous and the differences couldn't be clearer between his organization and Westboro. "That was particularly offensive that they would link us with Fred Phelps. He protests at the funerals of soldiers. You're not going to find a stronger supporter of the American military than the American Family Association," said Fischer, who explained how the two views on homosexuality are worlds apart as well. "He actually believes that God hates homosexuals...We know that he doesn't because the Bible says that God loves the whole world. He loved everybody in the world. That's why he gave his son to die. So we believe that God loves homosexuals, that Christ died for homosexual sinners just like he died for heterosexual sinners, that the offer of forgiveness and eternal life in the person of Jesus Christ. That's the message that we want to communicate," said Fischer. Fischer says he's also heard from various sources that many Christian members of the military do not plan to re-enlist because of the crackdown on religious freedom by the federal government. "Those that are strong in their faith, strong believers in Christ and in Christianity and in the values that made America great, they are the heart and soul of the American military. If we start losing them, that really is going to weaken our military and that will ultimately be the biggest threat to our national security," said Fischer. |
| No Debt Ceiling Hike? No Problem! |
| Tue, 15 Oct 2013 15:45:57 EST A former chief economist for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress says conservative Republicans are smart to fight for less spending and more debt reduction because waiting even longer will be much more painful, and he says not raising the debt ceiling will not be the financial calamity that most lawmakers in both parties suggest. Brian Wesbury served as chief economist to the Joint Economic Committee from 1995-96, just after Republicans gained control of Congress. He's now chief economist at First Trust Advisors in Illinois and been repeatedly listed as one of the best economic forecasters in America. He says having this fierce debate over America's debt now may be ugly, but it's nothing compared to the crisis awaiting us in about a decade if we do nothing. "The real problem comes 10-15 years from now. Everyone in Washington knows this. There's been some members of Congress elected who want to deal with this now. We always call it the 'third rail' of politics. Why deal with something if it doesn't matter for my election in two years. So that's the whole reason we're having all this. As a private sector guy, 'Do we want to jump out of a two-story building today or wait and jump out of a 10-story building 10-15 years from now?'" said Wesbury, who says America has a history of doing temporarily painful things to get back on solid economic footing. He cites Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker raising interest rates to 20 percent for a few years to combat the brutal impact of inflation. While the combination of high interest rates, lackluster economic output and high unemployment did trigger two recessions, Wesbury says once inflation was tamed and interest rates came back down, the stage was set for the economic recovery of the 1980s and beyond. As for the looming debt ceiling, Wesbury says while markets might not like the perceived instability if the debt ceiling is reached, there is no chance of an actual default and America can still pay its more important bills. "I'm very worried about this if there was something to worry about. The United States will not default, and I call a default not paying the interest or principle on debt. We have more than enough tax revenue. In fact, it's 10-12 times the coverage of our debt. What would happen if we're not allowed to borrow, we would not be able to pay all of our bills, whether it's the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Commerce or possibly even a Social Security check or Medicare payment to a hospital. It all depends on how they prioritize payments, what they decide to keep open and what they don't," said Wesbury. "If we put ourselves on a path toward a balanced budget, I think markets would be OK. There would definitely be pain. There would be $600 billion less in government spending, but that would also be $600 billion we would not be borrowing from the private sector, from the Chinese," he said. "If the Chinese were not buying our Treasury Bonds, they would have to buy corporate bonds or stocks or they would buy oil or they would buy something else from us. So it's not a net loss completely. It would cause mayhem. There would be orange cones out on the highways that nobody would be there to take down for awhile until they figured it out. But I do not think it would cause a financial catastrophe for the world. I think it's a red herring. I think it's propaganda to bring people to the negotiating table." Wesbury served on Capitol Hill during the last partial government shutdown. He says there are two main differences that help conservatives this time around. First, he says a much greater number of media outlets helps to balance the coverage. "The only cable news network at that time was CNN. We now have Fox News that was started in the middle of 1996. There's also a very big internet presence and Twitter. As a result, the news that gets out is kind of all across the political spectrum rather than focused in one area," said Wesbury, who says the second big difference is the Tea Party movement which is a thorn in the side of both parties. "They're mad at Republicans too. It's not just Democrats. They're mad at Republicans because the last time Republicans controlled the House, the Senate and the White House between 2003-2007, they spent. They put in new government programs and they ran up the deficit," said Wesbury, noting GOP approval of the Medicare expansion for prescription drug coverage, No Child Left Behind and other big government programs. "All of those things, that's the reason for the Tea Party. There's this third group now, which makes this even more complicated," said Wesbury. "They're saying, 'We want to stop this now. This is the time. Let's do it.' And that's how the battle lines are being drawn." |
| We Had to Stare Down the President |
| Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:52:28 EST The Million Vets March had to be done to let President Obama know his efforts to block all Americans, including veterans, from America's national parks and memorials would not be tolerated and that veterans themselves are willing to fight to keep them open, according to the thousand-member strong Special Operations Speaks. The group is also incensed that CNN characterized the march as a Tea Party event and used one Confederate flag and one controversial comment to define the march. The issue of veterans' access to memorials arose on the very first day of the partial government shutdown. An Honor Flight of World War II veterans from Mississippi were blocked from seeing the World War II Memorial by the National Park Service (NPS). Barricades were placed in strategic locations and NPS rangers were stationed at key points to block entry, even though no such security measures are in place at open-air memorials during normal government operations. Similar confrontations followed and veterans were physically removed from other memorials along the National Mall. As a result, organizers declared Sunday as the Million Vets March as an act of civil disobedience to reopen the memorials. "We had to stare down the president. The President of the United States, for the past five years, really not treated veterans any good, going back to the 2009 (Department of Homeland Security) report where it called returning veterans potential terror threats to trying to take their guns away if they go to see a doctor," said Special Operations Speaks Political Director Larry Ward. "It was a bad start and it's gotten worse and worse. To use the government slimdown as a means to punish the American people, to inflict maximum pain, is deplorable. To do so to our American veterans, to our World War II vets is absolutely unacceptable." The political debate over government funding and whether and how to raise the debt ceiling have both sides pointing the finger of blame across the political aisle. Ward says his group would spread the blame around it it was warranted, but he says President Obama and the Democrats are responsible for the memorials being shuttered. "We would have been focusing on the Republicans and the Democrats had the House of Representatives not passed a bill to open all the parks. And the president, what he did was he signed a veto threat for any bill that came to his desk that reopened the parks," said Ward. That being said, Ward says the group makes no secret that there is a political element to their involvement in the march and criticism of the president. "It is a political fight. There's no question it's a political fight. The President of the United States is using our veterans as political pawns. We had to make a statement and tell him that's unacceptable. So we didn't start the political fight but we stood up for it and we're going to continue to stand up for it. Those barricades are going to continue to be taken down across the country and our veterans are going to get access to the memorials without having to ask permission from a park ranger to enter," said Ward. Ward says crowds started to gather around 7 a.m. Sunday morning and a little more than an hour later the barricades started coming down. He says the vast majority of the people on hand were veterans but they were joined by conservative politicians like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as well as the Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Express. After the barricades were removed, a group of veterans carried them a short distance to the southern fence of the White House. Ward says that was a powerful moment. "This is, in my opinion, one of the most historic and captivating moments in our nation's history, when our veterans took the initiative (through) civil disobedience brought these barricades, dropped them on Obama's doorstep. One of them had a sign on it that said, 'Return to Sender.' It was a fantastic moment in our history and it made me very proud of these folks who stood up," said Ward. It was near the White House that veterans encountered city police forces dressed in riot gear. Ward was not a witness to the confrontation but he says there is plenty of video that will show the veterans acted peacefully and lawfully and the police instigated the tension. Special Operations Speaks is also lashing out at CNN for what it considers deliberately false reporting on the event, even issuing an open letter in criticism of the coverage. A CNN.com report gave considerable attention to the one Confederate flag at the event and to one speaker, Larry Klayman, who asserted on multiple occasions that President Obama is a practicing Muslim. Ward says to allow those incidents to represent the event and the message is a clear-cut case of journalistic malpractice. "What CNN tried to do was to mute the national enthusiasm for this event by picking out these one or two isolated incidents and also by trying to say that it was a Tea Party event. Of course, the left has done such a great job of demonizing the Tea Party, not that we're distancing ourselves from the Tea Party," said Ward, noting that not a single liberal organization or elected official showed up to support the veterans. "The make-up of the crowd was 80-90 percent veterans. For them to call it a Tea Party event just because there were some Gadsden flags flying is ridiculous," said Ward. "I pointed out in the letter that calling it a Tea Party event just because the Tea Party showed is akin to calling CNN a communist news network just because their reporters are so far left-leaning." Ward also vows that we haven't heard the last of efforts to help veterans gain access to their memorials. "It's not going to stop. I've heard of a number of individual local protests that are going to go out and continue to cut those wires, continue to practice civil disobedience. We are in the era now of civil disobedience and it will not stop. We will peacefully gather. We will peacefully make our protests, but we will not be obedient to these unconstitutional, deplorable acts of barricading our veterans outside of their memorials that are there to honor them," said Ward. |
| Negotiating on Negotiating |
| Fri, 11 Oct 2013 16:33:06 EST Successful attempts to restore government funding and raise the debt ceiling are still a way off, but Louisiana Rep. John Fleming Republicans are getting closer to defining the terms by which President Obama and the Democrats will hold serious talks. "What we have achieved and it doesn't sound like much, but with President Obama this is quite a breakthrough. We've achieved the goal...to get the president to negotiate on negotiating," said Louisiana Rep. John Fleming. Fleming stresses that firm details on any common ground are very premature, but he did offer some educated guesses on where the two sides could be headed. "We could perhaps have a temporary increase in the debt limit, which would give us time to have more substantive negotiations. Hopefully, in exchange for a year-long increase in the debt ceiling, we would also get reforms in our entitlement programs and other savings and maybe even get some relief in sequester," said Fleming. Asked what he would like to see in those areas, Fleming says means testing for programs like Medicare could be involved. "I believe what they're looking at is charging wealthier Medicare recipients higher premiums. There's also a discussion about using 'chained CPI' for Social Security," he said. Fleming says those are two ideas Obama has proposed in previous budgets that Republicans embrace and could well be the foundation for a deal. On sequestration, Democrats want to roll back all the cuts while Fleming wants to rescind the reductions in military spending. "Even before sequestration, leading up to it, there was already a $500 billion over 10 years cut to the military. So this was a cut on top of a cut and it hurt our readiness and training," said Fleming. The congressman remains a fierce critic of Obamacare and backed efforts to defund and delay the new law. Even though that strategy appears to be a non-starter with Democrats, Fleming urges House Speaker John Boehner and other negotiators to keep pushing for a delay. "My primary desire would be a delay of full implementation of Obamacare for one year," said Fleming, so said the massive problems with the Obamacare exchanges only adds more sense to that idea. Moderate Republicans like Maine Sen. Susan Collins are trying to find common ground by giving up on defunding or delay but agreeing to scrap the Medical Device Tax contained within the new laws. Fleming hates the tax but isn't sure that's a great legislative plan. "Many of us conservatives are concerned that we don't want to be nibbling around the edges improving a terrible law, a law that is structurally flawed," said Fleming. |
| Defund, Fund, Fund |
| Fri, 11 Oct 2013 15:53:35 EST As the partial government shutdown continues, the Capitol Steps take some time to lampoon the Tea Party position in this debate with their new song, "Fund, Fund, Fund" set to a popular Beach Boys hit. Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| Obamacare Debacle No Surprise |
| Thu, 10 Oct 2013 16:00:31 EST The technical problems with the Obamacare insurance exchanges are no surprise, are further evidence the whole program should be delayed or scrapped and Americans will be even more horrified when they can get somewhere on the website, according to health care policy expert Grace-Marie Turner. The first 10 days of the Obamacare insurance exchanges have been a technological and public relations mess for the administration. Many Americans have suffered through hours of stalled or crashed websites, no reporter has yet been able to navigate the site and many people have entered personal information that online security experts believe could make them targets for identity theft. None of this comes as a shock to Turner, who heads the highly-respected Galen Institute. "I am absolutely not surprised. Of course, we know the federal government is running the exchanges for about 35 of the states and the other states were setting up their own exchanges. All of them basically have to do the same thing. it is just a gargantuan undertaking to not only figure out how to set up a new website that gathers a tremendous amount of information from individuals; their name, their birth date, where they work, their Social Security number, the names and birth dates of their children, how much they earn, their health habits. All of this has to be gathered just for people to be able to apply to see if they are eligible for coverage and then to pick a plan," said Turner. "Then all that has to be assimilated with federal databases, with the IRS, with Treasury, with Health and Human Services, with state databases to see if you're eligible or on Medicaid, with Homeland Security to see if they're actually a citizen, with the Peace Corps for some reason," she said, noting the administration engaged in a massive rush job to get the exchanges up by the start of October. "They were still letting contracts for this this July. This law was passed three-and-a-half years ago. They were just getting around to letting the contracts. Even some of the physical equipment like switches to let all these computers talk to each other, were not ordered until this summer," said Turner. "It's an example of when the federal government tries to run something. They try to re-engineer one-sixth of our economy. They just can't do it." The exchange problems are only the start of the misery, according to Turner. She says once people get to check out different plans on the exchanges, the stark realities of this new system will kick in. "I think a lot of people think they're going to get free insurance. This is not just some online shopping, you're required by the federal government to buy this insurance and it's going to be very expensive, even with the subsidies. People are not expecting to have to spend $100, $200, $300, $400 a month for health insurance for the rest of our lives, even for some of these policies that seem to be what the government considers to be the more affordable ones," said Turner. "Then on top of that, they're very likely to have deductibles of several thousand dollars as well as co-payments on top of the premiums. Once people start to see the cost of this, there are going to be a lot of second thoughts," Turner said. "I think there's going to be a lot of sticker shock." President Obama and Democrats in Congress are not only blaming Republican opposition to Obamacare for the current fiscal divides but also blame the GOP for the very rocky rollout of the exchanges because of staunch opposition every step of the way. Turner says the GOP has nothing to do with the problems. "It's ludicrous. The administration has well over a trillion dollars to spend on this program and has had all sorts of slush funds. It's given out money right and left. For them to blame the Republican Congress for the fact that they didn't get around to letting the contracts for the switching equipment for the exchanges until July, how on earth is that the fault of a Republican Congress?" said Turner. By all accounts, web traffic has been in the millions, but the actual application and enrollment numbers appear to be exceptionally low. Turner is curious not only to see the enrollment numbers in the coming months but what type of patients are enrolling. "What really is going to matter in the sustainability of these exchanges is who is enrolling. The people who are most likely to enroll and pay these high prices are those with a lot of health problems. If that happens then I think you're going to start to see a death spiral for these exchanges," said Turner, who says the administration has to have young, healthy people buy coverage to prevent premium costs from shooting through the roof. "Young people are already being required to pay a much higher premium than their health status would suggest they should and than they would in an open, competitive market. Those are the very people you most want to get in and they're the ones who are going to have to pay the highest relative premium to their health status," said Turner. "They're penalizing the very people that they need to get into these. I think that over the long term, that the way this is set up is designed not to work," she said. |
| Fired for Defending Marriage |
| Wed, 9 Oct 2013 15:48:56 EST Football star-turned-broadcaster Craig James is suing to get his job back at Fox Sports, alleging network executives fired him after one appearance because of support for traditional marriage that he expressed while running for U.S. Senate in 2012. James was a member of the famous 'Pony Express' backfield at Southern Methodist University in the early 1980s. He went on to a successful NFL career and then transitioned into a broadcasting career for the next 20 years. He left ESPN in 2011 to run for an open U.S. Senate seat in Texas. He lost in the Republican primary in a race eventually won by Ted Cruz. During one of the primary debates last year, the candidates were asked whether they support benefits for same-sex couples in civil unions that would be similar to those afforded traditionally married couples. In addition to stating he believed engaging in a homosexual lifestyle was a choice, he firmly opposed offering special benefits to gay couples and said their decisions would result in consequences. "They are going to have to answer to the Lord for their actions," said James, a devout Christian. In August of this year, James was sought out and hired by Fox Sports Southwest to do postgame commentary for an hour each Saturday night. The next day, he received a call informing him his employment had been terminated. A subsequent Dallas Morning News report on the firing quoted an unnamed Fox Sports source as saying, "We just asked ourselves how Craig's statements would play in our human resources department. He couldn't say those things here." "Fox Sports did fire me and they did issue a statement to the Dallas Morning News that said that my comments and my biblical belief on the definition of marriage would not fly in their HR department," said James, who says even though the "comments" referenced by Fox Sports did not specifically refer to his stand on marriage, it's clear his marriage comments were at issue. "It has to be. When I gave that answer, that was 15 months before I took this job. Clearly I'm being punished for that and that's just something that's not right. That's why I'm taking the time to make sure people understand the seriousness of this matter. This isn't about me, Craig James. This is about an American who was fired from a major corporation, one that we've really come to trust, the irony of this thing it being in the Fox family. (I was) fired because I have a biblical belief and I have that right in this country," said James. In a subsequent statement issued several days later, Fox Sports moved away from its original rationale. "At Fox Sports we respect all points of view, and despite reports to the contrary, the decision to no longer use Craig James in our college football coverage was simply because he was not a good fit for Fox Sports," the statement said. "Mr. James, while both experienced and knowledgeable, is a polarizing figure in the college sports community. Regrettably, the decision to use him was not properly vetted, and as a result he will no longer provide commentary on Fox Sports Southwest's college football coverage." James says that explanation is rendered toothless by the first statement and the way Fox Sports enthusiastically announced his addition to their team. "After the storm hit and they've now since tried to cover this up and rewrite history, they're saying I'm polarizing. That doesn't hold water because the Friday before I went on the air, Fox issued a national press release that was very complimentary, flattering of me and my talents and said I would be an asset to their coverage. It's a classic case of, 'Let's cloud and distort what really happened here to take away from the heat that's going to come our way,'" said James. James stands behind the comments on marriage that he stated in last year's debate and says the state of Texas clearly agrees with him. "We have a law here in Texas. A few years ago, we voted on it, where the definition of marriage is between a man and a woman and it was nearly 75-76 percent who support that belief, so it's not like I have some unique feeling or belief on what marriage is in this country," said James. "I also said during that debate and on that issue that this is a choice. We all have choices to make in life. The choices that I choose to do, I will be judged for those by God. That's my belief. That's based on the Lord that I worship. Everyone, all of us will be judged on Judgment Day according to their choices and things that they've done in their life. That's not my business, not to judge, because the Bible tells me, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged,'" said James, quoting Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:1. "I think the blowback on (his comments) have come because we're at a fork in the road right now in this country. I really believe the message I'm trying to get out to like-minded believers or for those who enjoy having a faith, regardless of your faith, is to stand up and be heard. Be bold and be passionate because the other side's being bold and passionate about their positions in life," he said. In his suit, James is seeking to be reinstated as part of the Fox Sports Southwest team. He admits returning now is highly unlikely and would be rather awkward, but says he's ready to honor the contract that he signed. "The reason I would go back is because it would be the right thing to do. I agreed to do a job for Fox Sports and I was prepared to do it and I am prepared to do it. We are looking for Fox to own up to what they've done, admit they made a mistake and that you can't punish someone in this country for their religious beliefs. So put me back on the air and let's move on," said James. James is represented in this religious discrimination case by Liberty Institute. Attorney Justin Butterfield says this case is in the early stages. The legal team is gathering evidence and will soon determine what claims to file. "What we're doing at this stage is we're just seeking depositions from Fox Sports personnel we believe to have been involved in firing Craig James to find out exactly what claims we need to bring," said Butterfield, who says he cannot estimate the burden of proof necessary to win until they determine exactly how the case will proceed. He does say that this sort of religious discrimination is on the rise in America. "We definitely do see more and more religious persecution in the United States. At Liberty Institute, we created a document called "The Survey of Religious Hostility in America." It is a catalog of all the instances of religious hostility, people who are persecuted, fired, imprisoned because of their religious beliefs. We have seen just a drastic increase in this type of persecution in the United States," said Butterfield. James insists the battle for religious freedom is more important than what this public fight might mean for his future job prospects. Nonetheless, he says he is concerned that he will be branded in a negative light because of all this. "Unfortunately, Fox and their actions, their careless and reckless behavior in how they handled my exit, my firing, has really put a burden on me. If you talk about polarizing, now I've got people who have painted me in a position of being anti-gay and being a judgmental person. I'm not that, and my life and its history has proven that out through my actions," said James, who notes he never had an issue with a teammate or media colleague because of differing beliefs. "I don't know if I can go get another job. It's going to be difficult, but I have a secondary purpose for that. My initial goal here is to get out and make sure folks understand what happened to me, that we all rally together so it doesn't happen to them. This is like a slippery slope. If we were to brush it under the rug, it becomes an issue that some people might forget, but then all of a sudden you get a collection of these things and the slope is so slippery that that slope becomes policy and a change in the law and the the way things are handled here in this country. We can't allow that to happen," said James. Despite being embroiled in a very visible legal fight and cultural battle, James says his Christian faith is sustaining him well. "My faith is awesome right now and I have great peace. I know that peace is what comes from the Lord. So I'm going to keep on speaking out about this. Where it takes me we do not know, but I'm not going away and Fox isn't going to get away with this," he said. |
| Shutdown Theater |
| Tue, 8 Oct 2013 16:06:15 EST President Obama is deliberately inflicting pain upon the American people during the partial government shutdown and the matter may end up in the legal system, according to Iowa Rep. Steve King. He also says Republicans are offering to fund the government over and over with no support from Democrats and claims that Obama would get his way if the House would vote simply isn't true. King is one of the most visible GOP members to help World War II veterans gain access to their memorial on the National Mall in Washington. Just this week, he again demanded the National Park Service remove the barricades, not just for veterans but the public at large. The effort was successful until heavy rains forced everyone away. But King says Obama's actions during the shutdown are deplorable. "I think it's the most spiteful act by a commander-in-chief in the history of this country," said King. "So what has happened is the president, I believe, ordered this out of the oval office because he wouldn't take this kind of embarrassment if some subordinate did it. So here's what happened. They borrow money from the Chinese to rent barricades brought in on forklifts and he called rangers off of furlough to put up barricades and to be there to guard the memorials." "This government shutdown is defined by Congress and not the president. It says essential services shall stay open. Non-essential services shall not. There's never been a service there at the memorial for the purposes of blocking people out. The president has created a new function for the park service and that's to keep Americans out of the memorials. That's not what you do with essential services and he has no lawful authority to do that. That's why we're opening it up and this time he can take us to court," said King. As for the shutdown standoff, King says it's hard to find common ground when the Democratic offer is to hold negotiations after Republicans relent on funding the government and raising the debt ceiling. "It's so hard to take that seriously when they say, 'Well, give us what we demand and then we'll negotiate with you afterwards.' Why would anybody take people seriously who take that position?" asked King. "He's almost in a ludicrous position to be asserting that he refuses to negotiate with the House and he refuses to negotiate on the continuing resolution and he refuses to negotiate on the debt ceiling." "He'll negotiate with Syria and Dictator Assad through Putin and using him as his intermediary. At the same time he'll open up negotiations with Iran, who we haven't had diplomatic relations with since 1979. But there are no diplomatic relations between the White House and the Congress," he said. King wasn't specific about what Republicans would find acceptable in bipartisan negotiations, but he did speculate on how the impasse might end. "I think you have to let the pressure build a little bit and pass these individual pieces of legislation to fund the components of government individually and force them to vote on it, if they have to do that long enough they're going to start to feel the pressure and decide to get an agreement," said King. King is also firing back at falsehoods that he says are passing for truth in most of the media. He says not only are there not enough votes in the House to pass the Democratic continuing resolution but previous votes show exactly what the House wants. "They're trying to run the government by polling or by opinion. We actually have votes on the floor of the House of Representatives and the votes have said no funding for Obamacare over and over again," said King. "To repeal Obamacare fully, to cut off all funding for Obamacare fully, that's the votes that win the majority in the House of Representatives." The congressman says House Republicans have voted to fund the government in every recent vote, with the exception of Obamacare and sometimes just a portion of Obamacare. He says the notion that Republicans shut down the government is dead wrong. "It's an unbelievable, bald-face lie. There is no vote they can point their finger to that could be such a thing. We have always voted to fund it all except Obamacare. But they make it up as they go along and the Sunday shows let them get away with it. I was on one. There's so much misinformation out there, there was not time for me to correct it all," said King. |
| No Respect, No Credibility |
| Fri, 4 Oct 2013 15:43:11 EST Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely says the United States is making a major mistake by cutting off military assistance to Egypt in the wake of the military's removal of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from power and the decision to reverse our policy is another devastating blow to America's reputation in the region. Vallely was a key participant in a Westminster Institute delegation that visited Egypt at the end of September and met with key officials ranging from the head of the new constitutional committee to the commander of the Egyptian military to the head of the Coptic Christian Church. American military assistance to Egypt was at least temporarily cut off following the military's removal of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in July. Vallely says the United States was wrong to back the Muslim Brotherhood in the first place and removing military aid is hurting our ally at a critical time. "It's a great impact. Number one, they're very disgusted, very disturbed at being an ally with the United States over 40 years and basically have Ambassador Jane Patterson completely misread what was going on in Egypt and outright support the Muslim Brotherhood. She works for Obama and Obama ended up supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against the wishes and desires of the vast majority of the Egyptian people," said Vallely. "We held up aid in their modernization program and why that's critical (is) they have to keep that Suez Canal open. They need spare parts for their aircraft. They need the new Apaches that were promised them in order to be able to take on any actions, the surveillance as well as direct actions against Al Qaeda that are building up in the Sinai Peninsula," said Vallely. "So when you look at the Mediterranean, you look at southern Libya with training camps for Al Qaeda, shipping of arms and Al Qaeda up to Syria now, Egypt is not only faced with an external threat but internal threats as well. That's why the military assistance program is very important to them." According to Vallely, the stopping of U.S. military assistance serves as another major blow to America's reputation in the region. "We need to work out a strategy to support this long-existing ally, but we seem to be so incompetent in Washington now. I'm not optimistic about this government doing anything right when it comes to international affairs," said Vallely. "I was over in Syria and Turkey six weeks ago. We have no respect anymore, no credibility. That is a tremendous setback for us throughout the world and particularly in the Middle East. We need new leadership in Washington across the board. There's no doubt about that," he said. The United States has rarely been very popular in the Middle East, but Vallely says our reputation has diminished greatly there during the Obama presidency. "Oh, a tremendous drop-off (in) the lack of leadership, the lack of a forward strategy of dealing with the countries over there. They see Putin in Russia and Iran completely out-maneuvering the United States diplomatically. We're known as a declining superpower over there that can't come to the aid or support of allies or future democratic processes. And they see Obama basically supporting terrorists in the Muslim Brotherhood. That's through their eyes," said Vallely. One of the reasons for the suspension of U.S. military assistance to Egypt is because of a law that automatically stop funds to any nation that undergoes a coup. But the number one conclusion of the Westminster Institute delegation is that the military ouster of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood did not constitute a coup because the the military was clearly carrying out the will of the people. "I think the Egyptian people got hoodwinked by the Muslim Brotherhood portraying themselves as just a political party, when in fact there are three legs to the Muslim Brotherhood and the population finally found that out, as Dr. Morsi tried to take away their civil rights, support Al Qaeda in the Sinai and support Al Qaeda and their military arm in Egypt. And the third was to very openly discuss the global caliphate ," said Vallely. The Egyptian people rejected the authoritarian tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood and passes a referendum ordering Morsi to rule under the existing constitution. When he refused to respond to those demands within the 30 days provided, the military asked the people what the next step should be. Tens of thousands took to the streets to demand the ouster of Morsi and the military complied in order to prevent a civil war. Vallely says the will of the people is critical in defining what the military did and he says the actions taken since then are also very telling. "The military junta or military takeover would usually be in place as the leadership, but they didn't. They stood back, put in an interim civilian leadership and continued to work out a road map for a new constitution. So it was not a military coup. It was a classic change of government because they didn't have impeachment as part of their constitution so they had to use the military to prevent civil war and replace the government," said Vallely. |
| Inside the Honor Flight Fight |
| Thu, 3 Oct 2013 16:11:02 EST A government shutdown nearly prevented World War II veterans from visiting the Washington memorial built in their honor, but Mississippi Rep. Steven Palazzo and several of his colleagues removed the barricades. Their actions allowed the veterans to experience the memorial and instantly made the site a focal point of the shutdown debate. Palazzo became a leading figure in this debate because an Honor Flight from his home state happened to be planning a visit to the World War II Memorial the morning of October 1. Palazzo says he and the rest of the Mississippi delegation routinely meet Honor Flight passengers from their state when they come to Washington. He says it was clear ahead of Tuesday's scheduled visit that there could be a problem if a government funding compromise could not be reached. "The concern was will the memorial be open and we couldn't answer that. So we reached out to the Park Service and Interior. They said, 'If there's a shutdown, they will be barricaded and there will be no admittance. So of course the government went into a shutdown. We contacted the Park Service again and said, 'Can you not make an exception for members of the Greatest Generation, our World War II heroes?' They said, government is shut down,barricades will be up, no admittance," said Palazzo. "We then wrote a letter to the president, asking him to make an exception for these World War II men and women, many who have waited 50-60 years to see this memorial that was erected in their honor for their courage, for their sacrifices, their commitment and their patriotism to this country. The White House liaison was not cooperative and pretty much stuck to the guns, 'Hey, what do you expect in a government shutdown?'" he said. When he learned the Honor Flight had landed and the veterans would not be granted access to the memorial, Palazzo rallied the rest of the Mississippi delegation and recruited other House members to head down the National Mall to meet the vets and thank them for their service to the nation. After arriving, however, it was clear that wouldn't be enough. "It was a heartbreaking feeling when these veterans were lined up and what they saw was a steel barricade with a yellow ribbon that said, 'Police Line Do Not Cross.' We huddled together and we just decided to take the matters into our own hands. We physically pushed the barricades back and we allowed the veterans to march in and enjoy their memorial," said Palazzo. The congressman says, regardless of the shutdown, open-air memorials that usually remain open to the public at all hours should not be blocked off since no government personnel are needed for people to experience them. Palazzo says he eventually concluded this challenge was purely political. "At first, I thought this was a bureaucratic oversight. Someone's not reading the shutdown memo correctly. The more that we worked with these federal agencies, the more we felt like there was definitely petty politics involved in their decision to barricade our veterans from entering their memorial," said Palazzo. On Wednesday, the same scenario played out with Palazzo playing a supporting role as an Honor Flight from a different state came to see the memorial and even more barricades were in place. This time he watched as lawmakers from the same state as the second group of veterans moved the barriers. The congressman says the National Park Service will now allow all World War II veterans to see the memorial. The rest of the public will not be given permission to enter. Palazzo says that's a step in the right direction but not good enough. "What about our Vietnam Veterans? What about our Korean Veterans? Are they going to barricade them out as well?" asked Palazzo, noting that the monuments were never blocked off during the 1995 government shutdown. Some critics of the GOP suggest members like Palazzo only leaped into action to score political points, but he strongly rejects that allegation. "This is all about the veterans. It's not about us. It's not about the president. It's showing our appreciation for them," said Palazzo. "We tried to bring as little attention to what we were there for, but typically we're there anyway - when there's no cameras, there's no lights - thanking our veterans for their sacrifice, their courage and their service." |
| Obama's Charm Offensive |
| Wed, 2 Oct 2013 16:35:45 EST Longtime Middle East expert Dr. Mike Evans says Iran is not directing a charm offense at President Obama, but the U.S. is deliberately making nice with Iran in a move that will only assure the mullahs there that the U.S. has no intention of doing anything to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons. New Iranian President Hassan Rouhani uses much less incendiary language than former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The change in tone even prompted the Obama administration to seek a public handshake at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly last week. The Iranians refused, but Obama subsequently spoke by phone with Rouhani. Most experts see all this as an effort by the Iranians to convince the U.S. and other critics of its nuclear program that it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons and get the western powers to lift crippling economic sanctions. Evans says that conventional wisdom is wrong. "I don't really see this as a charm offensive by Iran. I see this is a charm offensive by President Obama," said Evans, a longtime personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He believes Obama never had any intention of attacking Syria over allegedly using chemical weapons. "Obama did this to try to send a signal to Iran that he was serious and also to send a signal to Netanyahu to get Netanyahu to back down from attacking Iran. He knew Netanyahu was ready. He knew the window was open and he didn't want him to do it. So this was more saber-rattling for Iran and Netanyahu's benefit than for the Syrians," he said. "President Obama's not going to do a thing against Iran. He's going to let Iran go nuclear. The reason he's going to let them is he wants a quid pro quo. He wants to be an anti-war president. He wants to get out of the Middle East. In order to do it, he needs the world's largest terrorist organization to give him a free pass to quit attacking in Iraq, to quit attacking in Afghanistan and back off a little bit. That's what he's going for. Nothing else. He could care less if Iran goes nuclear or not," said Evans. Evans met with Iranian diplomats last week while they were at the United Nations. Those diplomats reportedly divulged a two-headed diplomatic strategy of the Iranian regime. "They said they propose to the president that they be the intermediary between the U.S. and Syria. I'm thinking, 'What did you just say? You want to be the mediator to solve the Syrian crisis?' That's the fox solving the crisis with the chickens. That's number one," said Evans. "Number two, they told me that they anticipate to begin negotiations (over the nuclear program) in three to six months with Obama. Well why three to six months? In three to six months, Iran will pass the threshold if they continue with enough enriched uranium to build a bomb," said Evans. "Their plan is to stall and delay this thing and try to checkmate Netanyahu so he can't do anything. Listen it worked." Evans says the softer diplomatic tone from Iran succeeded in attracting all the coverage at the UN and Netanyahu's address was ignored by the media as a result of the Iran angle and coverage of the partial government shutdown in the U.S. He also says Israeli officials are very concerned about America's apparent unwillingness to confront Iran and intent to prevent an Israeli strike. "They're absolutely horrified. I just came from Israel. They know what's going on. They know the game they're playing," said Evans. "They're not going to have a partner with Obama. Obama's got his eyes on being a historical anti-war president. He's never going to confront Iran. It's just never going to happen. Period." "Israel is alone right now. They're alone and they know it. Netanyahu knows it too. I don't believe Netanyahu's message that he gave at the UN was to the Iranians, to the world or to the American people. I believe his message was to the Israelis. He was speaking to his base, supporting and strengthening his base for what he's staring squarely in the face and knows he has to do," said Evans. Much attention was given to last week's offer from the Obama administration for a public handshake between Obama and Rouhani at the UN. Iran rejected the offer and Obama later called Rouhani for a brief phone conversation. Evans says those gestures were very telling and emboldened Iranian leaders. "What they saw is the president bowing down. By the president calling Iran's new (president), the former head of security that was over the Khobar Towers bombing and the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center bombing, by calling this mad mullah and congratulating him on his fraudulent election and all the other stuff he said was basically showing the weakness of the American president and empowering them and letting them know they have another Jimmy Carter in office on steroids," said Evans. "When Jimmy Carter was in office, he wire-transferred $7.9 billion from the Federal Reserve with 20 cooperating banks to the Bank of England to buy back the hostages. So why should Iran do anything except be rewarded for misbehavior. That's what happened the last time," he said. |
| 'These Are Not Small Issues' |
| Tue, 1 Oct 2013 16:10:18 EST House Republicans and Senate Democrats remain at an impasse over government funding as Democrats refuse to consider any conditions for funding the government for the next several weeks and Republicans insist on changes to what they see as a deeply flawed health bill. Thus far, House Republicans have put forward multiple bills calling for a complete funding of the federal government at existing rates. In exchange, the various plans have also demanded a complete defunding of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), a one-year delay in implementation of Obamacare, a one-year delay for the individual mandate, a repeal of the medical device tax and a demand that members of Congress and their staffers follow the same rules as everyone else with respect to the new health laws. The final offer, passed early Tuesday morning, would have created a House-Senate Conference Committee to hammer out an agreement. All of those bills passed the House but all have died in the Senate along party line votes. "We worked late into the morning trying to come up with something that would be suitable for Harry Reid and the Senate Dems and unfortunately they didn't want to negotiate so we're in the situation we find ourselves in," said Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, a member of the House Appropriations Committee and a key player in the GOP strategy. "The responsible thing for the Senate to do is to appoint conferees who will negotiate and come up with ideas. I think John Kennedy was the one who said compromise is the concrete of democracy and here we have a president who was playing golf on Saturday and a Senate that adjourned and then they come back to say, 'We're not compromising. We're not going to negotiate'. I think it's a very irresponsible decision," said Kingston. Democrats in the Senate are insisting that House Republicans only pass a continuing resolution at existing spending rates through mid-November. Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski insists that would pass the House of Republican leaders would simply allow a vote on the "clean" resolution. "That's not accurate because if that was the case, then these other three versions of compromises would've been voted down and people would have said, 'We want to have that'. She's not a member of the House. She's not on the whip team. She basically doesn't know what she's talking about," said Kingston. Kingston says the Hastert Rule is largely in effect as the House GOP plots strategy. The Hastert Rule refers to a practice generally followed by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert that requires a majority of Republicans to support legislation before moving forward. "I'd say yes and no. It's not necessarily a rule as much as it is a practice and a political courtesy because what the Speaker wants to do is make sure he has a unified Republican conference," said Kingston. "We've been meeting every day, hammering out all kinds of ideas that we think could be acceptable to Democrats. We've stayed unified. Certainly there are degrees of unity. Not everyone likes everything. "The reality is we are largely unified and what we are unified about is the national debt being 100 percent of the GDP and for every dollar we spend 42 cents is borrowed. And we're unified by the fact that Obamacare is a disaster. It was supposed to bring down the cost of health care and it has not. It was supposed to increase the access and it has not. This is a principles argument based on the fact that America is going broke and the fact that this president wants to add to that a $1.7 trillion piece of legislation called Obamacare that socializes one-sixth of the economy," said Kingston. "These are not small issues. This is deep philosophical division." While Kingston is not happy to see a partial government shutdown, he says the last time this happened the result was ultimately very good for the nation because Congress and President Clinton worked to balance the budget and put the nation on a path to major economic growth. The need for a continuing resolution reveals the fact Congress failed to pass the 13 individual appropriations bills in the normal process. In fact, none of them were passed, but Kingston says that's not because Republicans didn't do their jobs. "We actually have them all ready to go to the floor, but we had passed five on the floor and the Senate had not passed a single one. We were just letting it pile up on the Senate steps so we quit. Last year, we passed seven and the Senate only passed one," said Kingston. "I am a firm believer in regular order. I've worked on a bill for 10 months that I'm not allowed to introduce right now and this is a bill that defunds Obamacare and brings spending levels back to 2002." "The leadership is saying if the Senate isn't going to pass a bill, do we really need to bring it to the floor and spend all that time and put our members through very tough votes that are just academic. That's a breakdown in the system. I really strongly believe that these fiscal cliffs should not be the way to do business," he said. |
| Cooked Up Climate Change |
| Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:57:01 EST Far from being the final word on climate change, last week's United Nations report suggesting near certainty that human activity is causing a rise in earth's temperatures is actually further proof that the conventional wisdom is dead wrong and the earth is cooling right on schedule, according to one of the leading scientists who is skeptical of the climate change premise. Last week, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported it was 95 percent certain that climate change was the result of human activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels that emit "greenhouse gases". "That's the result that they get when you premeditate your science," said Dr. Tim Ball, former professor of climatology at the University of Winnepeg. "When you set out to establish a certain scientific outcome and you program your computers to do that, you shouldn't be surprised if that's the result you get. The problem is what they're getting out of their computers is not fitting with what's actually happening. Of course, that's been the problem with the IPCC all along." Ball says the deception of the IPCC and its allies can be seen in how the reports are released, with the policy statement drawing headlines while the scientific information comes later and is largely ignored. "(The summary for policymakers) is a document written to scare to public and scare the politicians into providing more funding for their own research and their own political agenda. The actual science report, which it supposedly is based on isn't going to be released right away," said Ball. "They've always done it his way because the summary for policymakers completely disagrees with what the science report is saying. They know that the media and the public are not going to read the science report. And they also know that if any of them get into it, they won't understand it anyway." The latest data actually show temperatures have dropped in recent years. The IPCC and other scientists have branded this as a "pause" in climate change. Ball says that characterization implies that temperatures are temporarily holding steady and will inevitably rise again soon. He says that conclusion is dead wrong. "The temperature is going down and has for 17 years while carbon dioxide increases. According to their hypothesis and model, that's simply not supposed to happen," said Ball. "Rather than doing what they should do and coming out and saying, 'Our science is wrong, our models are wrong and we apologize for all the inconvenience we've caused you,' they're just plowing ahead." The long-held contention of those who warn of climate catastrophe is that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere lead to higher temperatures. So if that belief is incorrect, why are temperatures getting cooler? "The sun is causing the cooling that's going on. The sun reached a peak of activity around 2000 and has been declining ever since," said Ball, who says the cooling trend will continue for years to come. "We're heading toward what occurred around the year 1800. It was called the Dalton Minimum of low sunspot activities. We certainly are down to that in number of sunspots this year. That means the cooling will continue at least until 2030 and yet the government is preparing for warming which is outrageous," said Ball. "Some people think that this cycle of sunspot activity and global cooling will take us down to as cold as it was around 1680, which was the nadir of the Little Ice Age." More evidence backing up Ball's position comes from the polar regions. New reports from the National Snow and Ice Data Center suggest Antarctic ice levels are at record highs. Ball says the southern hemisphere has been cooling for some time. He believes the clinching evidence comes from the Arctic Circle. "This was the year that even one scientist at NASA predicted that the Arctic ice in the summer would be gone completely. Well, there's 60 percent more ice this year than last year and the reason is because of the cooling sun and the cooling temperatures," said Ball. Ball also rejects the contention that climate change brings on more extreme weather events, not just higher temperatures. Ball says hurricane season was very quiet this year and tornadoes were down as well. He chalks up record high and low temperatures to the jet stream shifting from a west-east flow to more of a north-south line. The "pre-meditated" science is a major culprit for the climate change concerns, according to Ball. But he also blames the media. "The main reason they were able to get away with what they've gotten away with is that a majority of the mainstream media were complicit in what (the IPCC and other scientists) were doing," said Ball. "This is where the Founding Fathers have been corrupted because they believed the media would be the watchdogs, the gatekeepers. The mainstream media have failed completely." |
| Funding Fight Back in House |
| Fri, 27 Sep 2013 16:19:40 EST The U.S. Senate approved a measure to fund the government until mid-November but stripped House language that would defund the Obama health laws. That puts the ball back in the House, where GOP lawmakers insist they will not rubber stamp spending without some concessions on Obamacare. Friday's Senate vote to restore Obamacare funding comes as no surprise and Republicans will talk through a number of options in a Saturday conference. One option that is not on the table is backing down and passing what Democrats are calling a "clean" continuing resolution. "I don't think there are 218 votes in the House of Representatives to pass a continuing resolution of any duration that doesn't have some fundamental reforms to Obamacare," said Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, which is comprised by House conservatives. "I just don't think that those votes are there." But will be the GOP isn't immediately clear. "The question is what can we unify around and where we can get the overwhelming majority of our conference on board. Those are the discussions that are occurring literally as we speak. They center around whether or not to send back a delay of Obamacare, whether or not we ought to be addressing the Office of Personnel Management decision (to grant members of Congress and staffers special exemptions), whether it ought to be something more scaled back like a repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board or the medical device tax. Those kinds of things are what we're talking about right now," said Price. House Republicans will determine their next move on Saturday and the new resolution will be approved Sunday at the latest. Different members have different wish lists on what to attach to the new continuing resolution. Price says it's vital to get as many members on board for whatever the new strategy will be but he believes an admission by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin that he would support a one-year delay of the individual mandate is a major breakthrough. "I was really heartened by the fact that Senator Manchin is beginning to break with his obstructionist leadership in the United States Senate with Harry Reid at the helm and say that he could support an individual mandate delay. I think that's the first indication we have that there may be some negotiating room on the other side," said Price. The congressman is also firing back at the administration and most Democrats for declaring there will be no negotiations on the continuing resolution or debt ceiling increase. "If Harry Reid and the president want to shut down the government, then they will do it. As the Speaker has said, this is a negotiating process. This is a compromise process. For Senator Reid, the obstructionist leader of the United States Senate to simply say, 'No, it's my way or the highway and have the president continue to echo that, that's not the way the process works," said Price. |
| 'There's Always Been A Divide' |
| Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:59:48 EST Louisiana Sen. David Vitter says proponents of defunding Obamacare may have lost the votes on Friday but made great progress in highlighting the problems of the soon-to-be-implemented law. The senator also explained what other terms would be acceptable in a continuing resolution and how fractured the Senate GOP Conference is right now. On Friday, 54 Democrats were joined by 25 Republicans in moving forward on the House bill to fund the government while defunding Obamacare. Sixty votes were needed on that motion to invoke cloture. Vitter and 18 other Republicans opposed the move, knowing Democrats would then need just 51 votes to approve an amendment blocking the defunding provision. All 54 Democrats approved the amendment and the same members then passed the whole bill. The votes followed just days after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz held the Senate floor for 21 straight hours to rail against Obamacare and demand it be defunded. Many Democrats, most members of the media and even several Republicans considered the Cruz speech a waste of time because Obamacare defunding could never succeed in the U.S. Senate. Vitter strongly disagrees. "First of all, it called a lot more attention to this issue and Obamacare's implementation and the importance of the October 1 date," said Vitter as the cloture vote began. "The proof of the fact that it caused a lot more attention and debate about that is the cloture vote on the Senate floor. I expect Harry Reid will win but I think there'll be a lot more no's than their would have been before Ted went to the Senate floor." The 19 "no" votes were noticeably more than the dozen members who backed defunding at the outset of the debate. Still, the effort fell 22 votes short of blocking cloture. The past several days also exposed a divide within the GOP conference that bubbled up on multiple occasions. Sens. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), John McCain (R-Arizona), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) took the most public shots at Cruz and no members of leadership backed the strategy either. They argued that Republicans should simply try to pass the House bill that defunded Obamacare and try to win five Democrats to their side to keep the provision in place. So how fractured is the GOP delegation? "There's always been a divide among establishment Republicans and bolder conservatives, so that's nothing new. This is a pretty clear example of that. Hopefully, we're going to get beyond that divide. The House is not going to just swallow and accept a so-called clean spending bill. I think they're going to send something back," said Vitter. "I think the best thing they could send back is our 'no Washington exemption' language with either a one-year delay of all of Obamacare or of the individual mandate." Vitter is the leading voice behind the effort to strip lawmakers and their staffers of special Obamacare exemptions and subsidies. The law forbids such special treatment but the Obama administration approved them in early August. Vitter attempted to attach an amendment to remove those exemptions to the continuing resolution but was denied by the Democrats. "I was blocked out of any vote just as I was blocked out of any vote on this important issue for two weeks on the energy efficiency bill by Harry Reid, the majority leader. He and his group desperately want to prevent a vote on this because they know they're in the wrong and because they know the American people are incensed over this issue," said Vitter. "I'll keep fighting for a vote and I'll get a vote eventually because I'm going to keep fighting for one until that happens." |
| 'A Cruel Hoax' |
| Thu, 26 Sep 2013 16:38:36 EST In addition to the budget and debt ceiling showdowns expected to play out in the coming days, congressional Republicans are planning to make another public push for President Obama to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline to be built across the U.S.-Canadian border. Backers of the plan say the project is a double win for the U.S. because they contend it will create jobs and decrease our dependence upon foreign energy. But opponents say the economic benefits are greatly exaggerated and the environmental risk is severe. State Department estimates suggest the project would create about 20,000 construction jobs and advocates of the pipeline say another 20,000-plus jobs would be created in supporting roles. But Keystone critics aren't buying it. "The KXL Pipeline may create at the most 2,000 jobs during a year or two while it's being constructed. In terms of long-term, permanent jobs it will be creating something between 50-100 jobs," said Labor Network for Sustainability Co-Founder Jeremy Brecher. "So the idea that this is somehow a major part of the solution to our terrible unemployment problem, it's hard to describe it as something other than a cruel hoax." Keystone supporters point back to the State Department estimate to back up their claim of 20,000 construction jobs. They also admit that the permanent jobs will be limited but that shouldn't be a deterrent. 1cThe president is right. The same study at the State Department says 50-100 permanent jobs," said Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry, in an interview with us last month. "Keep in mind this is a construction infrastructure job. So when the construction is done 26there will be minimal permanent employees. But go on a bridge and tell me how many permanent employees are on that bridge that was finished right now." 1cThe president, in his own stimulus package, was advocating for these type of projects to create jobs, but now when it 19s the pipeline, he uses it to criticize, 1d said Terry. For Brecher, not all construction projects are created equal and he says comparing Keystone to President Obama's infrastructure goals is wrongheaded. "What we get with infrastructure jobs are a reduction in our gas explosions and our water and sewer line breakage and we get something that's good for us. With the pipeline, what we get is more devastating climate change," he said. Energy independence is also a divisive issue in this debate. Rep. Terry said the amount of oil coming from Canada would offset all imports from Venezuela. Brecher says that's simply not true. "There was a fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal whose headline was 'U.S. Refiners Don't Care If Keystone Gets Built.' And it says, 'There's so much oil sloshing around the U.S. from its own wells that refiners don't need lots more heavy crude from the north to keep busy,'" said Brecher, who also asserts that a lot of any additional crude would simply be refined in the U.S. and then exported overseas. "The idea that this is somehow going to replace oil that's coming from foreign countries just doesn't fit with the facts as reported by The Wall Street Journal," he said. One feather in the cap of Keystone supporters is that several labor unions have embraced the pipeline and job-creating potential they believe it provides. Brecher says the labor community is split, since the nurses union and some transportation unions remain opposed. "The labor movement is divided and I think you can tell who's looking to the past and who is looking to the future," he said. The two sides of this debate agree on very little, except how Keystone became a focal point of the larger energy debate. Rep. Terry says environmental extremism that doesn't match up with the science is pressuring President Obama to hold off on approving the pipeline. Brecher says environmental concerns are the trigger for this fight, but for good reason. "People like world-leading climatologist Jim Hansen and a lot of other people threw it up and said, 'This is really a place to draw the line with those who are destroying our climate, destroying our environment, and claiming that they're doing so in the name of creating jobs when actually they're just after more profits for the most rapacious energy corporations," said Brecher. Brecher says the fight is not just about the environment. He says shifting to different fuels will not only help our atmosphere but boost our economy. He says climate change is responsible for destructive storms like last October's Superstorm Sandy and believes the damage will only get worse without meaningful change. "Our whole economy is going to look like a place that was hit by Hurricane Sandy if we don't start drawing the line against the greenhouse gases that are creating climate catastrophe and start building an alternate economy, which by the way will be a much more jobs-intensive economy," he said. |
| Guns, Treaties and Politics |
| Wed, 25 Sep 2013 17:12:10 EST Secretary of State John Kerry signing the a United Nations small arms treaty is nothing more than empty symbolism and President Obama will get nowhere in his latest attempt to advance gun control legislation, according to Bill Frady, host of "Lock 'n' Load Radio" presented by Gun Owners of America. Kerry signed the UN's Arms Trade Treaty this week while in New York City for the opening of the UN General Assembly. Supporters say it would clamp down on weapons trafficking between rogue regimes and terrorist organizations. Frady says it would have a restricting effect on law-abiding gun owners in the U.S. as well. "It also dictates to the signing states that they have to impose new rules and regulations within their nations to make sure they're able to comply with this treaty and that covers small arms," said Frady. "Terrorists are not running around with American-made weapons. They're running around with AK's. There's various nations that will underwrite any cause (such as) Russia, China. The AK is the prevalent weapon on the planet. So we're not the problem. I did notice that along the way (Obama) did manage to get in there and back Syrian rebels to the tune of $340 million. "I'm sure he wants to arm them. The United States Army has been buying AK's and AK magazines and AK ammo. I'm just presuming that they want to send that to our Syrian brethren, the great rebel freedom fighters so they'll have something they're accustomed to," he said. Like any treaty, this one would need two-thirds support in the U.S. Senate to be ratified in this country. A procedural vote months ago shows the plan cannot even draw a simple majority in the Democratically controlled chamber. As a result, Frady says Kerry and Obama embracing the treaty is just window dressing. "For a moment, it's a symbolic victory for him, but that's going to last about five minutes," said Frady, who believes Obama will try to tell his base this is the best he can do given the current makeup of Congress. Other gun rights advocates are more fearful that Obama may try to implement the treaty through executive orders if the Senate continues it's opposition. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Corker has written the president and strongly discouraged enforcing any component of the treaty without Senate ratification. Frady believes Obama could pay a hefty price if he defies the Senate. "If he were to actually try to do that, that might be a turning point for a lot of people. Clearly, he doesn't have the mandate that he thinks he does. Gun control is not on the minds of too many people right now in the wake of everything that's been going on around here. The gun free zone is what's on everybody's mind," said Frady. "I think that would be a very bad move." The Democratic push for additional gun control legislation failed to advance in the U.S. Senate earlier this year. Nonetheless, President Obama made another plea for Americans to demand new laws earlier this week. At the memorial service for Washington Navy Yard shooting victims, Obama asked if Americans "care enough" about the victims to press relentlessly for additional gun restrictions. "Of course we care enough. The gun-owning populace cringes, not because we know we're having to gird ourselves for more gun control talk but because we don't like innocent lives being snuffed," said Frady. "Sixty-nine hundred times a day, people defend themselves with guns. A gun is a tool." Frady points to a recent slashing spree on a Texas campus as proof that people need guns to defend themselves because threats to life can come in many forms. "He went into a college where they didn't have any guns and he slashed with impunity. The fact that nobody died is just dumb luck," he said. "It's a very blatant reality that where you don't allow people to arm themselves, they are fish in a barrel." The gun debate may be off the front burner in Washington but it's red hot in some states. Maryland's new gun control laws take effect next week and voters recalled two Colorado lawmakers who backed new restrictions in that state. One of the marquee races this November is the race for governor of Virginia between state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and former Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe. In a state where Democrats have historically shied away from gun control rhetoric and even court the National Rifle Association, McAuliffe is now rolling the dice by backing universal background checks, magazine capacity limits and a return to Virginia's former policy of only allowing one gun purchase per month. Some of those positions mirror the new laws in Colorado. "It's sort of like Terry McAuliffe is trying to parachute into Virginia and tell everybody in Virginia that is law-abiding that 'I'm smarter than you and I know how to take care of you.' Go ahead and embrace Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia. You will not be sorry," said Frady. |
| Democrats and the Fiscal Fight |
| Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:03:58 EST House Republicans passed a continuing resolution on Friday that would fund the government at current levels while completely defunding Obamacare. But Democrats are demanding a 'clean' resolution and a hike in the debt ceiling with no strings attached. "From the White House perspective, they'd like as high of a funding level for government agencies as they can possibly take and they don't want these measures to be complicated by all the things that Republicans want. You know, defunding Obamacare and tax reform and other measures like that that the White House doesn't want to debate and doesn't want to accept," said Larry Haas, who served as spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration. "So you've got two different perspectives here where the administration would like clean legislation and the Republicans would like very dirty legislation, dirty in the sense of having a lot of things attached to it," he said. Haas believes it is incumbent upon Congress to pass a "clean" continuing resolution and a no-strings attached hike in the debt ceiling weeks later. "I always believe clean is better than dirty when it comes to the debt limit because frankly when it comes to debt limit legislation, we are talking about the full faith and credit of the United States. If you don't raise the debt limit on time what it means it you're not paying the bills. You are defaulting, which is akin to a family falling into bankruptcy. We've never done that and we never should do it," said Haas, who believes there shouldn't be a debt limit in the U.S. "We really shouldn't have a debt limit because we alone among major industrialized nations have this very arcane system in which debt rises and somehow we have a statutory limit on how much debt we can have at any one time and we have to pass laws to raise the debt limit," said Haas. "If you want less debt, the way to accomplish that to to stop cutting taxes and to stop raising spending. The debt limit is the net effect of what lawmakers have done for months or years. So I feel very strongly that we not only should have clean debt limit legislation that should pass but that in an ideal world, we wouldn't have a debt limit to begin with." A common conservative counter to that argument is that the debt ceiling is an ideal time to demand greater fiscal discipline in an effort to slow the growth of debt and eventually reverse it. Haas says Congress and the president have that power any time they wants to exercise it. "They have all the authority that they need. They can vote to cut spending and they can vote to raise taxes. What they really should do, probably, is a combination of those two thing. Raise taxes on those who can afford to pay more and also take a very serious look at cutting spending in places where we see waste, where we see unnecessary spending, but not in places where we're making investments that actually will help the economy down the road like biomedical research or infrastructure and things like that," said Haas. The current operating debt of the United States is approaching $17 trillion. Many estimates add unfunded liabilities to the tune of another $90 trillion. Some estimates go even higher. So how dire is our debt? "A lot less dire than you're making it out to be. Those are very frightening figures. The fact of the matter is what is key here is the relationship between the size and direction of the debt and the size and direction of the economy as a whole. Debt can continue to rise if the economy is growing faster than the debt is rising. And we have had numerous examples that through the course of the World War II era, where while the debt was continuing to rise, the economy was growing so much faster than the debt that debt as a percentage of the economy was shrinking. And that's what we want to see," said Haas. Haas admits that recent years of trillion dollar deficits increased our debt at "rather frightening rates." Now, he says projected deficits of about $600 billion this year have us on a sustainable course. "We're actually not not too far from a situation in which we could stabilize the debt as a share of the economy and actually get it to start shrinking. We don't have to do that much more, probably save about a trillion over the course of the next ten years," said Haas. "I'm not saying we don't have any work to do. I'm not saying it's not a serious problem, but we're actually within striking distance of being at a place which would make our situation a hell of a lot better than it seemed to be than it seemed to be three or four years ago." |
| 40 Years of Freedom |
| Thu, 19 Sep 2013 15:50:13 EST On September 20, 1973, the final U.S. prisoners of war were freed from the infamous Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam. Four decades later, former POW Orson Swindle shared his memories of his mission gone wrong, surviving captivity, the perseverance of his fellow prisoners and the sweet taste of freedom. So what comes to mind first for Swindle on this important anniversary? "Certainly the joy of freedom. You never know what it is until you've lost it and 600-700 of us experienced losing it for a very, very long time," said Swindle. "When I hear people bemoaning the difficulties of these times. They don't know anything about what difficulties really are. This group of people overcame obstacles that are somewhat unparalleled in our history." Then-U.S. Marine Corps Captain Swindle flew more than 200 sorties against the enemy while flying in a Vought F-8E Crusader. He was flying his last scheduled mission when he was shot down on November 11, 1966, over Quang Binh Province. "They had just shot down two Air Force F-4's on the target area. As soon as we got there, I was not leading the flight. I was flying wing on another pilot and we maneuvered to make runs on the target. He couldn't see the target, couldn't find it. I saw it. I rolled in on the target, dropped the bombs and pulled off and got hit underneath the aircraft and lost hydraulic controls in the airplane. It doesn't fly very well that way," said Swindle. "I couldn't even read my instruments so I have no idea but I can roughly guess (I was) probably about 2,000 feet and going down at a very fast rate. I had to just get out of the airplane. There was nothing else do to," he said. Once he parachuted to the ground, Swindle was immediately taken into custody by enemy forces. "I violated one of the cardinal rules of being an attack pilot. Don't dare jump out of the airplane over the target you just bombed. They were just a wee bit angry to say the least. I was pretty brutally treated, which was commonplace back in those days," said Swindle. Swindle says the horrific treatment he received in those first years of captivity was pretty standard for U.S. POW's. And he adds the effects of that torture are still felt by the survivors every day. "Pretty much all of us have very restricted shoulder movement. Raising our hands above our head is rather difficult. We suffer a lot of arthritis, mostly skeletal type and nerve-ending damage. I have spinal stenosis and numbness in my hands and my feet, but all in all I'm probably one of the luckiest people you've probably ever talked to," said Swindle. Compared to their Vietnam contemporaries who were not prisoners of war and even returning soldiers today, the vast majority of those held in the Hanoi Hilton came home remarkably well-adjusted. Swindle and many of his fellow prisoners give the credit to Commander James Stockdale for keeping the men organized and hopeful. Stockdale's leadership is chronicled in the new book,"Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton: Six Characteristics of High-Performance Teams" by Peter Fretwell and Taylor Baldwin Kiland. Swindle extolled Stockdale in the book and in our interview. "Jim Stockdale was just a remarkably intelligent man, but he was a leader who led by total example. He spoke softly but firmly. He set the example and he was incredibly courageous. Just being around him was uplifting," said Swindle. "In the book there's an accounting of my first 'meeting' with him and it was whispering under a door to him after he'd been badly tortured. I told him six years later when we were finally face-to-face, 'Talking to you that Sunday afternoon a long time ago in the Spring of '67 probably helped save my life. You were that much of an inspiration to me and the rest of us. We just want you to know how much we admire and appreciate what you did for us. Just a great man and a great friend," he said. Stockdale was thrust onto the political stage as Ross Perot's running mate in 1992. His performance in the lone vice-presidential debate prompted some to turn Stockdale into something of a punchline. Swindle was spokesman for the Perot campaign. "He never should have been in that role. That was not Jim Stockdale by any stretch of the imagination," said Swindle. "He is just an incredible intellect. In fact, the two people he was engaged in the debate with (Dan Quayle and Al Gore), if you put all their intellect in one container, it would be somewhat like a thimble up against a mountain. Jim Stockdale was just a brilliant man. They have no idea the nature of his character, the depths of his belief system, his fortitude. He never should have been in that environment . He did it out of friendship to Ross Perot." Swindle says the greatest legacy of the prisoners 40 years later is the astounding success they achieved in the military, in public service, in law and business in addition to raising families. He says the bond is as strong as ever 40 years later. "They;re dear friends of mine and I have a great love and affection for all of them," he said. |
| Repeal and Replace |
| Wed, 18 Sep 2013 17:44:13 EST Conservatives in the House of Representatives are unveiling legislation they plan to push to replace Obamacare and provide real health care affordability and access to the American people. The plan is titled "The American Health Care Reform Act," and is the work of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the 188-member coalition of House conservatives. "The big problems before Obamacare were that is cost too much and access was limited. Yet, since Obamacare, those problems are even worse. Costs are much higher and access is even more limited, " said RSC Chairman Steve Scalise of Louisiana. He says the additional problems created by Obamacare, including doctors leaving the profession and Americans losing health plans they like, make it impossible to fix the new laws. "We actually begin by repealing Obamacare because we do think you need a clean slate if we're actually going to go and fix problems and then we work on things that get a competitive marketplace, which doesn't exist today," he said. The RSC reform plan starts with removing the barriers to purchasing health insurance across state lines. It also allows for association health plans, so small businesses can pool together in order to receive better rates often reserved for larger firms. Individuals could also band together to find better rates. Tax reform is also a major aspect of the bill, providing assistance for individuals to shop broadly for their coverage. Scalise says that option could save a lot of people a lot of money. "One of the problems right now with buying your own health care, if you find a health plan that's better than your employer's care, your employer is able to deduct the cost of health care. But you as an individual can't deduct that same plan if you buy it on your own. It makes health care much more expensive if you go outside your traditional employer model," said Scalise. "So by equalizing that and allowing individuals to have the same ability to deduct health care that companies enjoy, you actually lower costs and can give families more options than they have today." Other features include medical malpractice reform, expansion of Health Savings Accounts, provisions to help patients with pre-existing conditions and an end to taxpayer dollars being used to pay for abortions. So why are House conservatives bringing forth this plan now as opposed to championing it during the original debate or more than three months before most of Obamacare kicks in? Scalise says many of these ideas were promoted during the debate in 2009-2010 but Democrats had the numbers to pass their version. Since then, he says Republicans have focused on repeal of Obamacare as well as individual parts of the plan. By the time 2012 came around, the party essentially waited to see if Mitt Romney would defeat President Obama and take the lead on changing the health care laws. The other news on the Obamacare front Wednesday was House Speaker John Boehner's decision to allow a House vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government past the end of the month at existing rates while completely defunding the new health care law. Scalise welcomed the news enthusiastically. "I'm glad that the Speaker is bringing a bill that a lot of us in RSC pushed for, that we wanted to tie defund and delay or Obamacare to the CR. This is something we've been asking for for weeks. Our leadership listened and has responded to the members in the House," said Scalise. "It shows that we want to fund government. We want to fund the essential running of government, but we also believe that the president's health care law would be bad for our country," he said. Democrats say Republicans are willing to shut down the government over their fixation on Obamacare. Republicans say any government shutdown would be a result of the Democrats' insistence on defending a failing program. Scalise says the GOP should have the upper hand in the debate because it actually has a bill to fund the government and Democrats do not. |
| Boykin Talks Syria, Navy Yard Shootings |
| Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:21:12 EST Major changes need to be enacted in conducting government and contractor background checks and in evaluating those who already have clearance, according to Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin in the wake of Monday's horrific murders at the Washington Navy Yard. Boykin, who is executive vice president at the Family Research Council, is also blasting the Obama administration for its handling of Syria, saying the president bungled an already wrongheaded policy and is now actively supporting Syrian opposition forces engaged in genocide. Twelve people were murdered at the Navy Yard Monday morning. Authorities eventually took down the alleged shooter, 34-year-old Aaron Alexis. Since Alexis had valid credentials for entering the installation, Boykin says this latest tragedy shows the background check system in serious need of reform. "It is very difficult to get a security clearance in most cases but in this case his emotional problems, his mental illness as well as his history were not a factor. Why was that? Why were those things not considered in granting him a security clearance?" asked Boykin, who says recent attempts to add scrutiny to the background check process were pilloried on Capitol Hill. "People like Michele Bachmann asked that somebody investigate how Huma Abedin, who had a clear connection to the Muslim Brotherhood through her father, mother, brother and even her own previous employment. They were just scalded by the media as well as their comrades in Congress for questioning how she could have gotten a security clearance. This is a big problem and these security clearances need a better process that ensures that we're not getting people with mental illness and people with criminal backgrounds walking around with a clearance that gives them access, not only to information but also, in many cases, to facilities," he said. The general also advocates great vigilance in monitoring people who already have security clearance and suspending or revoking that clearance if troublesome indicators arise. Boykin also sees a larger cultural trend that puts us at greater risk. "I think a lot of it goes to this whole attitude of tolerance. We're taking it a bit too far here," he said. The Obama position on Syria is also galling to Boykin. He is not at all impressed by the diplomatic deal struck between the U.S. and Russia that requires Syria to declare the extent of its chemical weapons arsenal within a week and destroy it by the middle of next year. Boykin says that goal is pure fantasy. "(Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) stays in power because he has chemical weapons. He is not going to give those up. It is nonsense, a thousand tons of chemical weapons and you think his inventory is going to be accurate? You think he's really going to turn those over? You think he's going to disassemble production facilities that would allow him to make more? That is not going to happen because when he loses those chemical weapons, he has no ability to stay in power there. This is a farce," said Boykin. Boykin says Assad would be in peril without the weapons because his Alawite sect makes up a small percentage of the Syrian population and are hated by Sunnis and Shia alike. Secretary of State John Kerry says the threat of force remains on the table if Assad fails to comply. Boykins sees that as an empty threat. "I put about as much credibility in that as I did the threat of a red line," said Boykin. "This is an administration that has, frankly, gotten in over its head and is looking for any way out right now and the Russians as well as the U.S. Congress have given him a way out." Boykin is disgusted by Obama's reversal of U.S. policy in his decision to arm the Syrian resistance, which is comprised in large numbers by Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and other radical elements. He says the U.S. is bankrolling the slaughter of innocent people, particularly Christians. "What we're doing by arming these people is we're contributing to the genocide of the Christian community," said Boykin. "As bad as he is, Bashar al-Assad has allowed the Christians there to live in peace. What these people are determined to do is to destroy every Christian village, kill as many Christians as they can and run the rest of them out of the country." Boykin says the U.S. is repeating the same mistakes that led to persecution of Christians by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. |
| 'You're Not a Dictator' |
| Mon, 16 Sep 2013 16:06:18 EST Congressional Republicans should absolutely fight to defund Obamacare in a fight over funding the federal government and President Obama has no right to demand a debt ceiling extension without Republicans demanding spending restraint in return, according to South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney. Current government funding expires at the end of September. The GOP is divided over whether to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at current spending rates across the board or to fund everything at current rates while completely defunding Obamacare. Many conservative members of the House and Senate are pushing to cut off funds, while leadership has been very cool to the idea. Mulvaney says starving Obamacare makes perfect sense and there are enough members committed to this course of action to force the issue. "I don't think the support exists within the Republican Party now to not fight. We have to fight," said Mulvaney. "It's not just folks you might think of ordinarily, the extreme right wing of the party. It's a lot of the guys more in the center who are hearing from their districts back home that folks don't want to fund Obamacare. I can't imagine us not dealing with Obamacare in some fashion as part of this discussion." With Democrats controlling the U.S. Senate and President Obama likely to veto any funding bill that removes funding from Obamacare, Mulvaney admits it's an uphill climb. But he says conservatives might able to make some progress through this maneuver and it shouldn't be that hard to explain to the public. "The marketing there is very simple. We don't want to shut the government down. We should send a bill over to the Senate and the president that says we're going to keep every single part of this government open, except the part of it that doesn't exist yet in Obamacare. We do lousy messaging most of the time. That's why we might even be able to win," said Mulvaney. "We might be able to get some wins. For example, we might get the IRS out of health care. We might be able to change the rules on the conscience provisions within the HHS mandate regarding employers who object to contraception and abortion based upon their religious principles. We might get rid of this IPAB. We might get rid of the medical device taxes. There's a lot of small victories we could get, but we're not going to get them if our opening bid is to fund the whole bill," he said. By mid-October, regardless of how the budgeting battle unfolds, the debt ceiling will be breached and another major battle is expected. President Obama is trying to head off a repeat of 2011 by saying he refuses to make any concessions in exchange for a debt ceiling increase because he contends paying America's bills should not be held hostage to demands of spending restraints. That position is a non-starter for Mulvaney. "You hate to diminish the office of President of the United States by calling him silly, but that's just silly. We negotiate everything on this. You don't get to impose your will. You're not a dictator. You're not an emperor. We negotiate everything in Washington, D.C., and for him to say he's not going to negotiate this is one of the more absurd things I've heard him say out of a lot of absurd things I've heard him say," said Mulvaney. "If he's serious about it, it means he wants to tank the entire economy, which is just bizarre. I'm surprised that more people are not calling him out on that. We have always used the debt ceiling for improving our spending condition. It's the one time when people get a chance to step back and say, 'Why do we have a debt problem?' This is our chance to at least make it a little better," he said. Obama and many other Democrats contend that nearly $17 trillion in debt and much more unfunded liabilities is not a threat to the economy as long as annual debt comprises a small enough percentage of the gross domestic product. Mulvaney finds that approach appalling. "I've run numbers that say within my lifetime, under some fairly reasonable assumptions, every single penny that we take in as a nation will go to one thing and one thing only and that is interest payments on the debt," said Mulvaney. "You tell me if that's dire. I think we both know that it is." |
| Putin on a Blitz |
| Fri, 13 Sep 2013 16:27:57 EST With Vladimir Putin taking center stage in the international drama over Syria, the Capitol Steps get an inside scoop at how Putin is approaching this showdown with the U.S. Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| Rebels 'Dominated by Jihadists' |
| Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:12:33 EST The Obama administration and its congressional allies on Syria insist the rebels there are moderates and that any radical elements involved are a tiny fraction of the opposition who would never take power if the rebellion succeeds. Other evidence suggests rebel forces are responsible for executions of Syrian soldiers, the live dismembering of Christians and even cannibalism. So who's right? "The rebel forces are now dominated by jihadists, from Al Qaeda to Hezbollah to some of the forces that are just pure Muslim mercenaries," said Ken Blackwell, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. "All you have to do is to look at who has been brutalized by this rebellion group. The most dominant victim has been Christians. When you look at that, you have to raise the question, 'Why would we support forces that are hellbent on creating hell on earth for Christian believers in Syria?" When asked to answer his own question, Blackwell says lack of clarity from Washington is a big part of the problem. "There's no coherent Middle East policy within the Obama administration. There's no clarity of purpose, no real set of objectives for why we should be engaged, what our interests are and who our true allies are," said Blackwell. "This is an administration that stiff arms (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, that turns a cold shoulder toward allies in the UK and who, over the past several years, has embraced and been a cheerleader for the Muslim Brotherhood." That characterization is very different than the description of the rebels by the likes of President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Arizona Sen. John McCain. Obama and Kerry have stated that radical elements of the rebellion make up an insignificant percentage of the opposition and would not be a threat to take control over Syria should Bashar Assad be removed from power. McCain has goes even further, contending that there are no radical elements among the rebels. "I think they've gone 'Through the Looking Glass'. There are other folks who are in contact with forces on the ground and those who are being victimized. They just paint a different picture," said Blackwell, who believes the ineptitude of Obama is on full display right now. "This is a clear situation where Putin has played the president for a chump. Assad is being very, very slippery. There are no Boy Scouts in this battle. We have an administration that hasn't taken the Middle East seriously, that tends to be very unsophisticated in its understanding of the jihadist movement in the Middle East and now they want us to believe that they're in command of the situation," said Blackwell. Blackwell says Obama's handling of this and other Middle East crises sends exactly the wrong message to our enemies and the rest of the world. "The way that the game is played in the Middle East is that no one there respects weakness. They exploit weakness. I think they see us as a hapless giant at this point in the way that we are behaving. Our policy is not decisive," said Blackwell. "As a consequence, I think that there's a lack of confidence and therefore a lack of respect for the administration and, consequently, for America." The civil war in Syria is creating some strange bedfellows, pitting some elements of Hezbollah against their own benefactors in Iran and in the Assad regime. Blackwell described how these lines got drawn and why the shifting focus of the Obama administration is flawed in his judgment. "This is a fight among cousins when you get right down to it. This is an internecine, tribal, intra-religious war. That's a problem. This administration hasn't looked at it with the sort of real politik sophistication of previous administrations and right now, they are wandering," said Blackwell. "There's an old African proverb, 'If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there'. That's what this Obama administration is playing out right now. They don't know where they're going, so today this road will take them there. Tomorrow that road will take them there. What they're breeding is confusion and uncertainty here on the home front and that's really, really never a good way to proceed to protect U.S. interests," said Blackwell. |
| More Obama Confusion on Syria |
| Wed, 11 Sep 2013 16:17:14 EST President Obama tried to convince a skeptical public that Syria's reported use of chemical weapons warranted a limited but effective military response unless diplomatic efforts to disarm the Syrians of those weapons succeeded in the next few days. According to Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, it didn't work. Blackburn, who announced her opposition to the use of force earlier this week, says the Obama administration's actions over the past week have been far more confusing than reassuring and Tuesday's speech didn't help. "It was conflicting because it seemed to confuse the issue. You know you look at the past week, it was urgent. You had Secretary Kerry's speech. Then it was, 'Let's go to Congress and let them decide.' Then it was, 'Well, I think I don't like what I'm going to hear from Congress so let's see what else is out there.' Then it was, 'Let's see what Russia has to say about this.' So we've been a little bit all over the board on it," said Blackburn. The vote counts in Congress are trending against the president, particularly in the House. Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly against military action as well. Obama is now asking leaders to postpone any votes while the diplomatic process plays out. Blackburn isn't holding her breath. "I'm beginning to think he will probably not come to Congress at all for a vote," she said, noting that she and other members were even more skeptical about backing the president after receiving a classified briefing. "I had remained a 'Lean No' until I was able to get those classified briefings and I came out of the briefing without certainty on the issues of who actually instigated and carried out the attacks, who was in possession of the chemical weapons, uncertainty as to our having a definable plan and a way to define the mission for our men and women in uniform," said Blackburn. "I left with more questions than answers." The congresswoman attracted quite a bit of attention in the past few days for suggesting she might be willing to back military action in Syria if the sequestration cuts impacting the military were reversed. Critics accused her of playing politics on a grave matter of national security, but Blackburn stands behind the idea. "You cannot send men and women into battle without the training, the tools and the resources to do the job. I think it is immoral to send those individuals into battle and not be able to give them what they need to carry out that mission," said Blackburn. "The military has had two complete rounds of cuts. Prior to sequestration, they had a $400 billion cut. Then sequestration brought them a $500 billion cut. So basically it boils down to this. We did the drawdown in Iraq, the military got cut. We did the surge in Afghanistan, the military got cut. We had issues with Egypt, with Libya, with Pakistan, the military got cut. The president goes in and signs an order to reduce their pay increase. They were to get a 1.6 percent pay increase this year. The president chose to give them only one percent and then the next day he goes out and says we need to carry out these strikes on Syria. That type of action by the commander-in-chief is completely inappropriate," said Blackburn. Blackburn isn't nearly as hopeful as Obama about Russia and Syria agreeing that Syria will surrender it's chemical weapons stockpiles to the international community and eventually have them destroyed. "Look at what has transpired with Russia in the recent past. You have the issues with Snowden. You have the way they came in and said, 'Lets do this with Syria,' then they're going to be there to protect Syria. I just don't have a high degree of confidence that Russia is going to be there to serve us well or be on our side in this Syrian situation," said Blackburn. |
| Syria 'Confusion' |
| Tue, 10 Sep 2013 16:10:38 EST The Obama administration is sending a consistent stream of mixed messages that leaves members of the U.S. military scratching their heads over what a possible mission in Syria would entail according to retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney. "Well, I'm thinking confusion," said McInerney, when asked to describe the mindset of the military as administration statements evolve. "No sound objectives, no clear guidance to the military. I'm thinking large force deployment to 'unbelievably small.' So it is very conflicting with no objectives. If you don't have an objective then what are you trying to accomplish." And the general says the message is confusing because the administration is constantly shifting in what any action is designed to accomplish. "I don't think they know what they want to do. I think they got swept into this because the president made that off-hand remark about a red line and then all of a sudden he had to justify it. When he lost the British parliament support, he really lost all the international support. Without international support, he really saw his case crumbling," said McInerney, who says Obama's red line comment was not only ill-advised but not even grounded in any weapons treaties. "A red line, even with the international agreement against chemical warfare, there were never any red lines in these proclamations and so now all of a sudden the president made one and that's what has gotten him in trouble. Yet, even after he made it, they didn't even go out and come up with a plan with the allies - NATO, UN, Russia, Chinese, etc. to get them out of it. So now they're bailing water very, very fast," he said. On Tuesday, Obama said he wanted to delay any congressional votes authorizing force in Syria to allow a diplomatic approach to play out, now that Russia has suggested Syria give up its chemical weapons to avoid a strike. The development could be welcome news for the administration, but Russian President Vladimir Putin says the U.S. must take military action off the table before and formal agreement on Syrian weapons is begun. "Putin threw in that counter-proposal that we renounce the military option, which makes the president delighted. He probably asked him to put that in there because he knows he's not going to get that kind of support on Capitol Hill," said McInerney, who sees a bigger problem developing in all this. "Now we given the entire control of this operation to the Russians. Are we going to have blue helmets in there securing these chemical weapon storage sites? What will that do in a civil war that has been going on two-and-a-half years. It really puts Bashar Assad in the driver's seat as far as Syria goes because now the UN will be supporting him," said McInerney. "The French want to make it a UN Security Council issue. Then you have the auspices of the UN overarching this particular agreement. So it takes away all of the U.S. flexibility." McInerney says the lack of defined objectives prevents him from backing any military action in Syria. He says the best path would be to covertly fund the rebels we know to be moderate to the exclusion of the more radical elements, including groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. |
| Pentagon vs. the President |
| Fri, 6 Sep 2013 16:08:31 EST U.S. military leaders are staunchly opposed to President Obama's call for military action in Syria and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis says the brass need to be very focal in letting Obama know where they stand and why. Maginnis was a career military officer, advised the Army after his retirement and is also author of the new book, "Deadly Consequences: How Cowards Are Pushing Women Into Combat." He says officers with the highest command need to be more forceful in explaining their reservations to the president, even to the point of resignation. "The idea that these men who understand war are not making quite a case, I hope behind the scenes (they are), Evidently, it's not to the point that they're willing to put their stars on the table," said Maginnis. "I think at some point, and I've talked with some of these types of folks and they are my peers, very few will ever see the utility of putting stars on the table even if it means the loss of a lot of American lives." Maginnis says history offers a tough lesson on this front. He says the service chiefs went to the White House in the lead-up to Vietnam and discouraged President Lyndon Johnson from doing what he ultimately did. Maginnis says several of those officers later regretted not putting their careers on the line in an effort to make their case more forcefully. "That cost us 58,000 lives and it kept us in war for over a decade," said Maginnis. "Now we're still in a war and have been for 11 years. Are we going to now extend that to a civil war which questionably doesn't have any national interests at stake just because we hate to see, and rightly so, people being murdered. "Syria is not our fight. Syria is a Turkish fight, a Jordanian fight, a Saudi Arabian fight and others, but not ours," he said. Maginnis says the military's reticence could be seen in the testimony of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey this week on Capitol Hill, as he stated the military could carry out any orders from the president but made it clear there was little enthusiasm for the mission. In published statements, Dempsey has criticized Obama for saying a delay in the mission would make no difference and said that the Syrian rebels weren't people he wanted to do business with. According to Maginnis, the military is also severely strapped for cash thanks to sequestration and he agrees with Dempsey that any U.S. action will likely mean a much bigger commitment than anyone is admitting right now. "The idea that a pinprick is going to do anything other than irritate the monster called Assad is ludicrous. What we need to do if we're serious about this is go in there and destroy his military. Otherwise, let't not make the monster angry. The Syrians are not the Libyans and the Syrians are not what we fought in the Balkans and they aren't the Taliban. They're an organized, very capable, large military that, oh by the way, happens to have the Russians as their ally and the Iranians with all their proxy forces," said Maginnis. As a result, Magginis asserts that Obama can wage an air campaign that accomplishes few objectives and will end up killing civilians because Assad is placing high-value targets among the people or be forced to put "boots on the ground" to achieve real results. He believes the lack of support for this missions goes through all the ranks of the armed forces and could be a hindrance to our performance if attacks are ordered. "They'll vigorously execute whatever the mission is, whatever the plan is. That's our tradition and we do obey the civilian leaders. But when you have civilian leaders that ignore sage advice it becomes pretty evident. The morale will sink and so the effectiveness of the force will be diminished to a certain degree," said Maginnis, who believes Congress is the last real hope of preventing this military action. "Congress had better show some courage here and step up and say we're not going to be co-conspirators here in what is a badly planned operation that could lead us into another ground war in the Middle East and kill more Americans. And for what?" |
| Down the Road Again |
| Fri, 6 Sep 2013 15:56:34 EST While the debate over possible military action in Syria dominates the headlines, within the next month lawmakers will debate funding the government and another debt ceiling deadline. The Capitol Steps express their skepticism that any long tern solutions willo be found as they roll out their recent favorite, "Down the Road Again." Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| The View from Jerusalem |
| Tue, 3 Sep 2013 16:03:02 EST As President Obama presses the case for military action in Syria and members of Congress debate whether to authorize that action, Israel is watching developments unfold with great division over whether the United States should act and great apprehension about what might replace a deposed Assad regime. Congress is expected to vote next week on whether to authorize force against Syria. If approved, the military action could begin at any time. What's not clear to Israelis is what impact the strikes would have and that uncertainty is prompting strong divisions over whether an attack would be good for them. "We don't know what we will have after Assad, if he will go," said retired Israeli Brigadier Gen. Elihu Ben-Onn, who is now a radio talk show host in Jerusalem. "We don't know who will come after him and what will happen in Syria. Will Syria be divided into three, four or five parts? Maybe Al Qaeda will come closer and then jihad will come close to the border. Israeli public opinion is very confused." Gen. Ben-Onn says Israel does benefit from two radical Islamic elements warring with each other rather than trying to attack and agitate Israel. Still, he says he hopes the U.S. is effective in deterring Assad from further chemical weapons attacks on his own people. He is also convinced that if the U.S. does strike, a Syrian counterattack against Israel is unlikely. "They have the power, maybe, to attack Israel but they know if they would dare to do that the response of Israel will be so strong that, according to many officials in the state of Israel, the regime of Assad will disappear," said Ben-Onn, who notes that Bashar Assad has never attacked Israel. "He will not try to play this game this time. If he does play this game, it might be the last day of his position as the president of Syria," he said. Press reports from the Middle East confirmed Israel and the United States conducted joint missile exercises recently. Ben-Onn stresses this was a planned exercise and not specifically in response to the ongoing standoff. However, he says missile defense preparedness does send a pretty clear message. "I hope this message is clear to the Russians, and to the Syrians and to the Iranians that Israel will always protect our citizens," said Ben-Onn. |
| The Gay Agenda's 'Zero-Sum Game' |
| Fri, 30 Aug 2013 15:53:12 EST Thursday 19s federal court ruling to uphold a ban on therapy to young people with unwanted homosexual inclinations supports a blatantly unconstitutional position and is part of a 18zero-sum game 19 on the part of the gay lobby to force approval of their behavior in every corner of the nation, according to Liberty Counsel President and Chairman Mathew Staver. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to uphold California 19s statutory ban on counseling minors with an intent to help them work past their homosexual feelings, whether wanted or unwanted. Supporters of the law say the counseling amounts to little more than parents taking steps to stop their kids from being gay. Staver, who is arguing this case in California and represents two families involved in such counseling, says that 19s total fiction. 1cThis is about minors who want this kind of counseling and parents who want to support their sons or daughters to get this kind of counseling, 1d said Staver. 1dThese minors have gone to their parents and said, 18I am having these issues and I am beginning to have these same-sex sexual attractions. I don 19t want to have these attractions. I don 19t want to engage in same-sex behavior. I don 19t want to identify myself as homosexual. Can you help me? 19 And so the parents have sought out counselors who can. 1d 1cThe counsel has actually helped these children. Their self-anger and self-hatred has gone down. Their self-esteem has gone up. Their relationships with their friends have improved. The relationships with their families have greatly improved, 1d said Staver. 1cNow under this particular law and this ruling, that counsel will have to come to an end. This is devastating to them. This is a very dangerous decision because for the first time we have the government telling a counselor what kind of counsel he or she may give to a client who needs it, instead of leaving it up to the counselor 19s professional judgment and to the clients who have a right of self-determination to set their own counseling objectives, 1d he said. Staver says his clients will likely appeal the decision to the full Ninth Circuit rather than go straight to the Supreme Court. That decision is partly due to Staver successfully arguing for an injunction to the law before to a separate three-judge panel of the court last year. He says that hearing proved the state has no basis for arguing that this sort of therapy is harmful, with one of the judges strongly rejecting the argument provided by the government. 1cThey tried to point to the (American Psychological Association) Task Force of 2009, and the judge said, 18That doesn 19t support it. 19 In fact, the same task force says there 19s evidence of benefit of this kind of counseling. There 19s no research whatsoever, zero, regarding minors, 1d said Staver. 1dSo the state doesn 19t have any background or foundation to ban this kind of viewpoint. This is completely and only politically motivated. 1d Staver believes public officials who should be affirming traditional marriage and other Constitutional freedoms but aren 19t fall into two categories - those who share the liberal ideology on homosexuality and those who fear the fierce backlash of the homosexual movement. He says it 19s a relentless movement that is not just content to demonize contrary beliefs but to force acceptance of their agenda. 1cWhat we 19re seeing is the zero-sum game that I talked about a long time ago that 19s coming and now is here. The homosexual agenda is a zero-sum. There 19s a winner and a loser. There 19s no compromise. There is no tolerance. It is a dominating agenda that no only wants to crush every other worldview or every other contrary opinion, but force every other contrary opinion to fall in line and affirm homosexuality as normative. That 19s the clash that 19s here, 1d said Staver. According to Staver, the demand for total acceptance and even celebration of homosexuality is intensifying by the day. He says it won 19t be long at all before churches are targeted legally for accurately preaching scripture on the issue or for refusing to perform same-sex ceremonies. 1cI think it 19s right around the corner. I think we saw the decision last week of the Supreme Court of New Mexico saying to a wedding photographer, 18You 19ve got to give up your religious freedom if you want to be a wedding photographer. You 19ve got to be forced to photograph same-sex ceremonies. 19 I mean that 19s just as absurd as saying you 19ve got to be forced to photograph KKK rallies, 1d said Staver. 1cHere you 19ve got a lady who says, 18I 19ll photograph anybody, but I 19m not going to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. 19 This court said, 18You have to. You must, not withstanding your religious convictions. Either give up your religious convictions or change them or get out of that profession. 19 That 19s the zero sum game. That 19s the zero-sum collision that we 19re facing. 1d |
| Who Are We Backing in Syria? |
| Thu, 29 Aug 2013 16:05:28 EST President Obama is unlikely to take any military action against Syria that will actually make a difference, but his administration is actively backing the radical Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda elements of the rebellion while leaving the Free Syrian Army high and dry, according to retired U.S. Army Major General Paul Vallely. Vallely consults with military leaders of the Free Syrian Army and recently returned from a trip to Turkey that also included a heavily guarded trip to the rebel stronghold of Aleppo. He was in the region when the apparent chemical weapons attack took place. Vallely believes there should be military action to take down the Bashar Assad regime, but he says the "shot across the bow" approach floated by Obama would be pointless. "Obama's really not a very brave person so I don't think he'll take any brave action," said Vallely. "He is known, even in the Middle East and Syria, for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood as he did in Egypt. His trend is toward supporting those elements also in Syria. "The Syrian generals who defected, they all know this. They look at America as very weak, very impotent under our leadership right now," he said. As a result of his latest consultations, Vallely reports that the U.S. is actively providing support and logistics for the Muslim Brotherhood and salafist organizations like Al Qaeda, but the more democratic-minded Free Syrian Army is essentially ignored. So why are Obama and his advisers siding with the more radical elements? "They continue to make international mistakes like they did in Libya and that they did in Egypt. So there's a pattern of ineptness and a misunderstanding about why this administration would continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood and the radical Islamists, rather than the Free Syrian Army which is the true opposition force over there," said Vallely, who believes Obama has not been hoodwinked by the Muslim Brotherhood but simply embraces its ideology. "I think they approve of it. It's their agenda to support the Muslim Brotherhood. You don;t have to look any further than what happened in Egypt. There's a perfect example of how Obama screwed up royally and that's why the military has come in. They basically want to decimate the Muslim Brotherhood, whose ambition is Sharia government," said Vallely. Polls suggest Americans are overwhelmingly against any military action in Syria. Vallely disagrees. He believes action should be taken against Assad but that it should be action that leads to a collapse of the regime. "Western or other forces in the Middle East really need to neutralize the Syrian Air Force. Assad would fall in about 30 days if the air campaign would occur and knock out the jets and the helicopters," said Vallely, who says the rebels don't have a way of countering Assad's air power. But he says the need to remove Assad from power couldn't be more urgent. "Rest assured, Assad is just as bad as Hitler was and the international community needs to do something. First they need to ground and neutralize the Syrian Air Force," he said. But if Assad falls and the U.S. is actively backing the radical elements of the rebellion, won't that leave Syria in the hands of extremists and the Free Syrian Army out in the cold? Vallely says that's a hasty assumption. "The Free Syrian Army is better structured and organized than is thought. They have many professional individuals, from legal to financial to government policy planners. Remember, many of the defectors were not only military but they were also political bureaucracy-type people. So they're prepared. They've already mapped out a plan for post-Assad," said Vallely. |
| Same Rules for Washington |
| Tue, 27 Aug 2013 16:00:32 EST Members of Congress and their staffers may not be getting special breaks and benefits from Obamacare if two U.S. senators are successful in making official Washington deal with the same health care system every other American must navigate as the law gets implemented. Earlier this month, in responding to the plea from lawmakers of both parties, the Obama administration granted certain exemptions and special subsidies for members of Congress and key staffers in order to ward off a mass exodus of veteran Hill aides. But Senators David Vitter (R-La.) and Mike Enzi (R-Wy.) are now pushing legislation to force Congress to give up the special deal since it's not part of the actual law and the law was never changed through the legislative process. "It's necessary because of this ridiculous rule issued by the administration that exempts members of Congress from certain parts of the sting of Obamacare. There's a specific provision in Obamacare that says every member of Congress, every member of our staff, has to go to the exchanges just like the fallback position for all of the American people. Under this special rule, there's a huge subsidy created out of thin air, it's not in the statute, to take all the sting out of that move," said Vitter. "I think that's ridiculous and I think it's exactly what the American people hate most about Washington, Washington creating special and favorable exemptions and rules for Washington and not the American people." Obamacare was passed entirely on Democratic votes but Vitter says members of both parties eagerly sought special treatment for themselves and their staffers. "There was a lot of jockeying and lobbying behind the scenes for this special fix, this special rule for Washington, and unfortunately it was very bipartisan. There were a bunch of establishment Republicans in on the deal," said Vitter, who says his ultimate goal is not to force misery on more people but to make lawmakers see what a bad deal Obamacare is for everyone and get them to drastically change or scrap the law. The Vitter-Enzi law would also force the executive branch personnel to abide by the same terms of Obamacare as the general population. Democrats currently control the Senate, but Vitter says he plans to force a vote on this issue every chance he gets. "We're going to bring it up as an amendment on any number of bills until we get a vote, and we'll keep trying until it happens," he said. "This is pretty time-sensitive because this special insider deal, this special rule could go into effect by October 1, so we're to start demanding a vote immediately." After so much lobbying for the special treatment from both sides of the aisle, Vitter knows he and Enzi might get a frosty response from their colleagues on this issue. "I think you're going to see two very different reactions. (There's the) private reaction, in which case I think Mike and I will be chewed out by a bunch of our colleagues. That's fine. I'm used to that," said Vitter. "And then the public reaction when we force a vote when some folks who chewed us out will vote with us. I'm going to fight for a vote, as will Mike, so that everybody in the Senate gets to make a clear public stand, either with Washington or with the American people." Because the Obama administration quietly created the new rule, the Vitter-Enzi amendment would be the first actual vote on whether members and their staffers deserve special treatment. Most lawmakers haven't been forced to publicly defend the policy they urged the administration to adopt. Vitter has a hunch how some members will try to justify it. "Some of these folks are going to argue that it will create a 'brain drain' from congressional staff. Most folks in the real world who hear that argument react in two ways. First of all, are these the same brains that gave us Obamacare? If it's the same brains we're talking about, we can do without them," said Vitter. "Secondly, yeah, that may be a problem but it's a problem for America, not just for Washington. We need to fix those sorts of problems for America, not just for Washington." Vitter is also among a dozen GOP senators to support defunding Obamacare in connection with funding the federal government in the coming fiscal year. He admits winning a public relations battle with Democrats over a possible government shutdown, but he says lawmakers must seize every opportunity to stop what he believes to be a disastrous law. "I think that's a legitimate question about tactics. I'm for delay, repeal, defunding, anything in that direction that will work. I think we need to be very aggressive about it and take it a step at a time. I think the first step should be the U.S. House voting a government funding bill that also defunds Obamacare and send that to the Senate. Certainly, I would support that bill in the Senate," said Vitter. |
| March Like an Egyptian |
| Thu, 22 Aug 2013 15:56:49 EST For the past two years, Egypt has been witness to much political turmoil. From the ouster of Hosni Mubarak to the military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood, major change has come quite rapidly. And now, Mubarak has been released from prison. In honor of that news, the Capitol Steps bring back their 2011 parody, "March Like an Egyptian." Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton. |
| In the Midst of Persecution |
| Thu, 22 Aug 2013 14:32:03 EST Christians in Egypt are under the worst persecution by Islamic radicals in recent memory, Syrian believers are displaced in massive numbers and the effort to assist them in both countries goes on despite tremendous upheaval in both nations. Most of the recent attention has been focused on Egypt. Christians have been in the Muslim Brotherhood's cross hairs since the 2011 Arab Spring, but the persecution has greatly intensified in the weeks following the July 3 coup that removed Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from power. The violence is a result of radical leaders blaming the coup on Christians. It's a palpably false claim but it carries great resonance with those loyal to Morsi. "Right now these militants are lashing out for any reason. What you're going to find is that people use the political climate as an expedient excuse. People in Egypt just want to worship in freedom. They're not pushing a political agenda," said Dr. David Curry, the new president and CEO of Open Doors USA, one of the most prominent organizations ministering to the persecuted church. "They are a minority. There are people, when they have political problems, will lash out at any minority they perceive to be part of that, but the church is not an organized faction in this political situation. They're just the victims in this circumstance," he said. Curry admits the religious freedom for Coptic Christians and other believers has never been ideal in Egypt but he sees the current conditions as a "new low" and says no one is sure where this crisis is headed next. In the meantime, Curry says Christian businesses, churches and individuals are in very serious danger. He says the decision by the Coptic pope to cancel services for the first time since the fifth century was a smart one. "I think what the pope of the Coptic Church was doing was just using wisdom because right now to be on the street in Egypt, even just wandering around doing your daily business, is a very dangerous proposition for believers of the Coptic stripe or any sort of Christian stripe," said Curry. "So when you have services that are scheduled and people know where to attack, it could be very dangerous. We've had almost 50 churches burned to the ground or attacked in some way in Egypt, just in the last few days." Despite a justified fear for their lives and safety, Egyptian Christians are still shining brightly in the darkness surrounding them. Curry says one account typifies the depth of faith of those under fire. "We had one believer who was really trying to exemplify the message of Jesus, that is to love your enemies, to be a servant. So he was trying to give bottled water and care and love to people who were protesting in the street, even though he knew some of those people were militants who might someday attack his business and his home and his church. And indeed some did, but he was trying to be a loving example and caring for people," said Curry. "You see, these are people of real spiritual depth and faith on the ground and we're hoping that America and the American people are going to rally behind them and support them in their freedom to worship." Curry says U.S. support needs to take multiple forms. "Prayer is our first weapon. It's a supernatural weapon, but we believe wholeheartedly in it. The second thing we're asking people to do is to support the work that's happening on the ground. Open Doors has teams on the ground in every major city of Egypt that are helping to support believers, that are trying to keep everybody safe and do anything we can do. That's the kind of work we're doing and we believe it's going to pay big dividends in the years to come," said Curry. Open Doors USA also has a significant presence in Syria, where a civil war has been raging for two years between the Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad and a patchwork of rebel groups ranging from respected military leaders to Al Qaeda-dominated Islamist factions. It's another crisis for Christians, many of whom fled to Syria when the new government in Iraq began persecuting Christians. It's a situation further complicated by this week's government attacks that rebels allege were chemical weapons. "What we're concentrating on is trying to help and serve the millions of people who are now refugees. A great many of them are Christians who have been forced out by the forces that would be against them. We're providing packages on the ground for food, for general supplies that they're going to need," said Curry, who also noted the possible use of weapons of mass destruction. "Those things have been suspected and talked about in the past. This is a very clear example of the danger that is evident to these folks who are refugees, who are displaced and might be in a position to be persecuted for their faith," said Curry, who struggles to see any end to the Syrian conflict in the near future. "The government here in the United States is going to have to find ways to try to bring this to a more peaceful and swift resolution," said Curry. "Otherwise you're going to see millions more not just displaced internally within the country as is the case now but also added to the refugee numbers. It will be a major - maybe the major - humanitarian crisis, although it's competing with Egypt right now." |
| Delays and Deceptions |
| Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:40:15 EST President Obama may stall a decision on approving an expansion of the Keystone XL Pipeline beyond the end of his administration and his argument against the project's job creation potential contradicts his own jobs agenda, according to an ardent Keystone supporter in Congress. Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He says the project remains "in limbo" since President Obama refuses to allow the pipeline to cross the border and the Senate has not approved legislation designed to deem the project approved. A growing bipartisan majority in both chambers of Congress back the extension, but Obama has refused to sign off on it because of environmental concerns. TransCanada owns the pipeline and wants to build a six-billion-dollar extension from Alberta to the Nebraska-Kansas border. The State Department has studied the proposal since 2008. Terry believes Obama is content to wait as long as possible. "This is what I fear. When he talks about the life-cycle CO2 climate change, I'm wondering if he's going to say, 'We need a new study because I don't like the criteria that was used', even though that's from the EPA that mandated the criteria of the study. So I'm thinking what he's going to try to do is just delay it another three-and-a-half years," said Terry, who believes the House and Senate might force the issue against Obama's wishes. "If the president's going to delay this or wants to delay this for another three-and-a-half years, that we'll get enough senators to vote yes on deeming it and we can actually just go ahead and get it done. Boxing the president in this way might actually be the best thing for him, because then he can blame Congress for doing it and he can keep his street cred with the extreme environmental groups," said Terry. TransCanada strongly prefers to build the pipeline to the U.S. but has indicated that U.S. refusal or extended delays could trigger Plan B, which would mean a pipeline extension to the west coast of Canada and shipping the oil to China. President Obama has also indicated that he doesn't see much economic value in the project. At a rally for his economic plan earlier this summer, Obama said, "They keep talking about an oil pipeline coming down from Canada that's estimated to create about 50 permanent jobs. That's not a jobs plan." Terry says the president's comments are badly misleading and undermine the very heart of the administration's own plan to create more jobs. "It's a six-billion-dollar infrastructure job, six billion private dollars coming into the United States to build this infrastructure project. It'll have 20,000 direct construction jobs, another 20,000 that'll be incidental and support manufacturing jobs and the refineries. Even the State Department says 42,000 jobs directly and indirectly created by this pipeline," said Terry. "The president is right. The same study at the State Department says 50-100 permanent jobs. Keep in mind this is a construction infrastructure job. So when the construction is done...there will be minimal permanent employees. But go on a bridge and tell me how many permanent employees are on that bridge that was finished right now," he said. "The president, in his own stimulus package, was advocating for these type of projects to create jobs, but now when it's the pipeline, he uses it to criticize," said Terry. Obama has given his blessing to an extension of the existing pipeline from Oklahoma to the Texas coast. Terry says that supposedly fair-minded position was meaningless. "Frankly it was just silly. The only thing the president has to do with this pipeline is to permit it to cross the Canadian border. Otherwise, all the states have the power in this respect. So the pipeline had already been approved by Oklahoma and Texas. Therefore, the president had nothing to do with whether that was going to be built," said Terry. The congressman also refutes a common argument for rejecting the pipeline extension. Critics allege the pipeline will bring great amounts of oil to refineries along the Gulf Coast but the U.S. will only be keeping a fraction of it while much of it is exported to other countries. "The parties that have contracted for that oil are refineries, not shipping entities. So the oil comes from the oil sands in Canada directly to about half a dozen U.S. refineries that are expanding right now to accept that oil," said Terry, who adds that Keystone will reduce costs for energy and energy byproducts in the U.S.. "For most of us that are worried about the price at the pump and our energy security so we can get in the car and get to work and get the kids to school, that's going to add to that level of security," he said. |
| Secret Service Man |
| Fri, 16 Aug 2013 13:55:45 EST As the president's U.S. Secret Service detail enjoys a week at Martha's Vineyard, the Capitol Steps reflect back on the group's most embarrassing moment. Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton. |
| The Obamacare 'Death Spiral' |
| Thu, 15 Aug 2013 16:15:08 EST The Obama health law is banking heavily on young, healthy people purchasing insurance in order to pay for the care of older and less healthy people, but a new study suggests the administration will struggle mightily to recruit enough young adults to make the system work because it doesn't make financial sense for them to do so. That's the conclusion of a new study by the National Center for Public Policy Research, entitled "Why the 'Young Invincibles' Won't Participate in the Obamacare Exchanges and Why It Matters". The Obamacare exchanges open for enrollment on October 1 and the bulk of the law kicks in at the start of 2014. That includes the individual mandate, which requires every adult to carry health insurance or pay an annual fine of $95 that the U.S. Supreme Court deemed a tax in 2012. To make the system work, the government needs millions of young adults aged 18-34 to get on board. Particularly targeted are childless single people. "They are needed to cross-subsidize people who are older and sicker. If they don't participate in the exchanges in sufficient numbers, then you run the risk of an insurance death spiral," said National Center for Public Policy Research Health Policy Analyst David Hogberg, who authored the study and elaborated on the "death spiral" concept. "This is where not enough young and healthy participate. The price of premiums rise to cover the cost of the older and sicker. Then more young and healthy drop out and the price goes up again. Eventually, a number of insurers are going to drop out of the exchanges because they will be unable to make a profit. So you'll have fewer insurance companies competing, which also has an effect on the price," he said. "You basically end up with an exchange pool here that's older and sicker and the price of insurance is extremely prohibitive. You don't have an insurance system that really does a good job of covering most people." In the exchanges, patients will have the choice of four basic types of plans - platinum, gold, silver and bronze. Platinum offers the most coverage and charges the highest premiums. But even the premium for the bronze plan dwarfs the amount someone will pay for refusing to purchase coverage. The biggest chore for the administration is convincing healthy young people from ages 18-34 to buy a health insurance policy even though it will be much cheaper for them to pay the fine. "I ran the numbers and even if you exclude just the people who would pay $1,000-plus in premiums, they would have an incentive to simply forego insurance because it would save them $1,000 and just pay the fine. If you exclude them and include the others who don't have that incentive, you'd still come up about 780,000 people short, so even under the best of assumptions I don't think they're going to reach that number," said Hogberg, noting that the government needs about seven million people to sign up for the exchange and about 2.7 of them need to be young, healthy adults. Hogberg points out that a lot of young adults don't make much money to start their careers and the $500-plus difference per year between buying a health care premium and paying the tax penalty is a huge one, even after the Obamacare subsidies are factored in. "That's easily a month's rent many places in America," he said, noting the difference could also make a big dent in grocery bills or car payments. One of Obamacare's most highly-touted provisions is also working against the administration, namely the rule that allows young adults to stay on their parents' health plan until age 26. "If those folks are on their parents' policy, then they're not going to be going on the exchanges. That means even less young and healthy people going into the exchanges. The burden in terms of getting enough young and healthy people in there to cross-subsidize the older and sicker is going to be that much more difficult," said Hogberg. Hogberg says we'll know pretty quickly if the exchanges are getting a lot of customers because he expects the administration to trumpet statistics that are favorable to the program. If the numbers are low, he says we probably won't know until mid-2014, when insurers adjust their premiums based on the initial response. He says if rates jump by 25 percent or more, the exchanges will be headed toward the death spiral. |
| Immigration Reform Makes America Stronger |
| Tue, 13 Aug 2013 15:39:12 EST The Republican Party remains divided over immigration reform, and one of the biggest sticking point centers on whether to embrace a pathway to citizenship for those in the U.S. illegally. Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist is actively lobbying for legalization and says changing immigration policy for high-skilled and low-skilled workers is good for America and for the U.S. economy. "We need to have an immigration policy that allows us to bring a lot more talent to the United States than the present one. The so-called H1B Visa, visas for people with high skills, should be dramatically increased. We should have quite a number of people who bring talent and skills to the United States and allow them to stay and work," said Norquist. "You come over, you go to MIT or Cal Tech from some other country. We sell you a great education and then we toss you out of the country and say, 'Go back to India or China or some other country and start a technology company and compete with the United States. "Why not let people stay here and work if they'd like to and eventually become citizens. We should be doing a great deal more of that. It's what built the country in the first place," said Norquist, who says the same approach should be taken to low-skilled workers who come to the U.S. illegally. "We have a shortage of people willing to work in farming. We have crops rotting in the fields in those states where they decided they didn't like immigrants coming and working on farms," he said. But would legalizing those immigrants have a positive or negative impact on the economy? Norquist cites a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing legalization having a net positive effect. However, the Heritage Foundation estimates that the illegal immigrants who would receive legal status would cost the nation a net $6.3 trillion in government programs. Norquist says the Heritage report is based on "phony numbers" and says the CBO report and another done by former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin tell the real story. "It would be a dramatic increase, both in revenue of higher taxes of more people working, way more than any government spending. It just makes sense. If you're going to grow at three percent a year instead of two percent a year, that's two-and-a-half trillion dollars in revenue to the U.S. government over the course of ten years," said Norquist. Norquist backs stronger border security measures but says the bigger issue is reforming the guest worker program which would reduce the incentive for most illegals. He says President Eisenhower crafted a guest worker program that reduced border apprehensions from one million per year to about 40,000. He says President Kennedy and Johnson then gutted the program as a favor to labor unions and the numbers increased again. He says the same problem happened during the 1986 amnesty debate. "The most important way to have a secure border is to have a robust guest worker program so that everybody walks through the doors and not try to crawl over the fence," he said. "Yeah, we should have strong border security. I think that's useful and helpful, but 90 percent of that is a serious guest worker program." Norquist says the Senate bill has a much weaker guest worker program than he would like because Democrats acquiesced to organized labor. He says a House bill would be much better on that front. |
| What's the GOP Immigration Plan? |
| Fri, 2 Aug 2013 15:32:45 EST Summer recess is underway for the House of Representatives without any votes being taken on immigration legislation. That's fine with opponents of legalizing millions of illegal immigrants, but the lack of action might well be the deliberate strategy of GOP leaders hoping to get a comprehensive bill passed this year. The National Journal reported this week that House Speaker John Boehner initially wanted something passed before the August recess but then decided to delay the House action to help members avoid a backlash at town hall meetings. "If they were to do that, they would be violating the Speaker's absolute promise that he would not bring a bill to the floor that didn't have the support of a majority of the Republican Party," said Gohmert, referring to the so-called Hastert Rule by which leadership requires majority support within their own party before moving on any legislation. That common understanding of the Hastert Rule seems to be getting a new interpretation from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, an ardent supporter of reform. At a town hall this week, a constituent blasted the the GOP over the Hastert Rule and demanded House action on the Senate's Gang of Eight bill. Ryan insists he doesn't want a comprehensive package, but several smaller bills that accomplish the same goals. But he offered a much different method for applying the Hastert Rule. "Bringing these bills to the floor, we'll find out," he said. "It is not, 'They don't some to the floor unless we have a majority of the majority,' because we don't know if we have a majority until we vote on it." Gohmert says that is not the understanding House Republicans have. "It doesn't sound like it's being understood equally by everybody," said Gohmert, who has high regard for Ryan but says the two are occasionally on "extreme opposite ends" of an issue from time to time. He specifically cites the 2008 debate on the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP) in which Ryan strongly backed the Wall Street bailout and Gohmert vigorously opposed. "There were some good, free market, common sense solutions with giving one bozo from Goldman Sachs $700 billion to go spend like he wanted to," said Gohmert. "And I think there are better solutions here than what they're talking about. "There's no sense talking about legalization of anybody until you control your own border because you're inviting people to do exactly what they're doing, and that is come in numbers 3-5 times more than they were before," he said. "Secure the border and quit talking about legal status until it's secure. Then we'll get this stuff worked out." Another blow for border security advocates came this week from Arizona Sen. John McCain, a member of the Gang of Eight, who indicated that he would work to greatly reduce the Senate plan for 20,000 new border agents when the issue heads to a House-Senate Conference. Gohmert says he highly respects McCain's service to this country, but is disappointed at the senator's approach to this issue. "He just doesn't get it," said Gohmert. "When you keep trying to do a bill that deals with people illegally in the country and you still haven't secured the border, then there's no use having a bill. The president has the money, he's got the manpower, he's got the ability, just like Woodrow Wilson did when he completely secured the border. "He could do it if he wants to and we don't need to have the administration and people like Senator McCain saying, 'OK, we'll put this in the bill and allow him to extort legalization for people that are illegally here or citizenship for people that are illegally here in return for him finally doing the job he is sworn to do," said Gohmert. The congressman isn't sure how big of an issue immigration will be at town hall meetings around the country this month. He says people want the border secured but are otherwise focused on bigger issues. "They want tax reform like we've promised for years. Let's go to a flat tax. Let's throw out the IRS," said Gohmert. "People want to know what happened at Benghazi. People don't want their government doing any more spying than they are. Those are the issues that I'm hearing more from, except for those that are getting paid to make a big deal out of trying to legalize people that are illegally here." |
| 'Affront to the American People' |
| Thu, 1 Aug 2013 15:22:49 EST The House of Representatives is backing legislation to strip the IRS of its Obamacare enforcement power in a move the lead sponsor says will protect the privacy of the American people, keep health care neophytes out of our medical system and he hopes it will be another step towards ridding the nation of the law altogether. The "Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act" is sponsored by Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a practicing physician for more than 20 years before his election to Congress in 2004. The Obama health law grants the IRS more than 40 different enforcement powers. Price says the admitted conduct of the IRS in evaluating conservative organizations for tax-exempt status disqualifies the agency from this new role. "The genesis for it was earlier this spring when the revelations came out about the incredible, chilling tactics of the Internal Revenue Service targeting political groups and targeting individuals for their ideology and then leaking donors to those groups and then targeting donors for audits," said Price. "The IRS is the implementation and enforcement arm of the Affordable Care Act and that just ought not be. The American people, by over 80 percent, believe that ought not be the case," said Price, who says putting more sensitive data in the hands of the IRS is exactly the wrong move. "The medical information, the IRS will tell you, is not what they're after. Even though it's not the focus of what they would be doing, they described what they did in the tax-exempt arena as 'not necessary'. So it's just a step to have it be 'not necessary' for them to access your health care information. We don't think that's acceptable and that's why we think it ought to be stopped," said Price. The bill does not specify which arm of the government would be responsible for implementing and enforcing the law. Price says that would be the administration's decision but he hopes it would be people who actually know something about health care. But just shifting the bureaucracy is not Price's ultimate goal. He says the whole law needs to go. "The Obamacare law is an affront to the American people and certainly will destroy quality health care in this country. At every single turn at which we have the opportunity to move health care in the right direction, we're going to take that opportunity and this is one of those," said Price. "What we need to get to is patient-centered health care, which is a bill that we've proposed, that allows patients and families and doctors to make medical decisions." The legislation Price introduced and he believes is a superior way to address health care reform is HR 2300, "The Empowering Patients First Act". The congressman also weighed in on the escalating GOP debate over whether tying the defunding of Obamacare to a continuing resolution to fund the government is the best way to derail the law. Without specifically touting the merits of that plan, Price says any strategy that weakens or eliminates Obamacare is fine with him. "When this happens is less important to me than that it happens. I'm a plan A, B, C, D, E guy. You've got to keep fighting on every single front. You're never quite certain which one is going to be successful, so whatever opportunity we have, we need to keep pushing," said Price. "Whether it's the continuing resolution, whether it's funding of the government, whether it's any other piece of legislation that's coming through, we need to absolutely make sure that Obamacare doesn't result in Washington's ability to dictate to the American people what kind of health care is available to them and, therefore, what kind of health care is not available to them." Critics of the defunding plan on both sides of the aisle suggest trying to defund Obamacare as part of funding the government will pit the effort to end Obamacare against government functions like paying the troops and issuing Social Security checks. Price says that's not true. "The House has already passed legislation that would make it so that the president was able to continue with Social Security checks and paying the troops and the like. That's a false argument on their side," said Price, who says that legislation is still awaiting action in the Democratically-controlled Senate. |
| The Case Against Defunding |
| Wed, 31 Jul 2013 17:23:58 EST With most of the Obama health laws set to take effect in just five months, conservatives in both the House and Senate are launching a push to defund Obamacare before most of it is implemented in January. Led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee and endorsed by the likes of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the plan is to attach defunding of Obamacare to the continuing resolution to fund the government that must come by the end of September. The group of 12 senators and 65-70 House members would propose funding the rest of the government at current levels but opposing any continuing resolution that funds the health care law. Critics say it's tantamount to shutting down the government over one issue. Lee says conservatives are willing to fund everything else and any government shutdown would be the fault of Obamacare supporters who are willing to hold the rest of government operations hostage to a very unpopular law. But Democrats are not the only ones cringing at this plan. GOP leaders appear very cool to the idea and even some of the most ardent Obamacare opponents believe this is the wrong approach. "The Republicans control only the House of Representatives. The Democrats control the Senate and the White House. It's two-to-one against Republicans in trying to make that work," said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner, a staunch opponent of government involvement in health care who was prominent in the fights against the Clinton and Obama health care reform efforts. She badly wants to see Obamacare dismantled, but says this approach puts the American people in a terrible position. "It is a strategy that is going to ask the American people, 'Is it more important to you to repeal Obamacare or to get your Social Security check or to pay the troops or to make sure that doctors get paid so you can continue to get your Medicare benefit?'" said Turner. "That is a terrible deal. The American people should not be presented with that choice. We have to do this in a very different, smarter way." Turner says that "smarter" strategy is already unfolding in the House of Representatives, through recent votes to delay the employer and individual mandates and a scheduled Thursday vote to remove any IRS role in the enforcement of Obamacare. The deck is stacked two-to-one against Republicans on those issues as well, but Turner sees better odds with the current House strategy. "I think there's a real chance. There are 35 Democrats who supported the legislation...to delay the employer mandate. Twenty-two Democrats joined all but one Republican in saying that they want to delay the individual mandate," she said. Turner admits that still falls short of a veto-proof majority, but she says it's a far better strategy than risking a government shutdown over a defunding effort. "If the president wouldn't sign those provisions even though they're likely to get a lot of Democratic support, he's surely not going to sign a full repeal of his signature legislation. It's really a fool's errand," said Turner. "The smart way to begin to dismantle this law is take out the center pillars, the individual mandate, the employer mandate, the IRS enforcement, the ability to distribute subsidies on the honor system. Those four things alone and Obamacare collapses. That's what we should be talking about, not this intramural warfare among conservatives over the best way to get rid of Obamacare." Turner does encourage Republicans to seek other ways to use the continuing resolution as leverage to chip away at Obamacare. |
| Pennsylvania Marriage Fight |
| Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:44:13 EST A pro-life group is denouncing officials in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, after the officials there began handing out same-sex marriage license despite state law clearly limiting the institution to the union of one man and one woman. On July 23, county Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes announced he would begin issuing licenses to same-sex couples. On Friday, that decision was met with a pray-in at the county offices by member of the Pro-Life Coalition of Pennsylvania. "Civil law, from the beginning of our nation, has defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman, because the purpose of civil marriage is not about love," said coalition president Mike McMonagle. "There's no box on the marriage application whether you love each other. Having the institution unites a mom and a dad with their children. Failing to do that creates all sorts of problems for civil governments with failed education, welfare dependency, crime, prisons, etc." McMonagle sees multiple political elements at work in the actions ordered by Hanes and holds figures in both parties responsible. "The reason the county chairman, Josh Shapiro, did this was because he wanted to undermine Gov. Corbett's political support among conservatives, which he has succeeded in tremendously," said McMonagle, who contends Democrats see forcing the issue as politically advantageous. Shapiro is a Democrat and Corbett is a very unpopular Republican up for re-election in 2014. "Governor Corbett has been so timid on this because he's afraid of addressing the issue down in the Philadelphia area. He thinks he's going to lose on it, but in reality he's losing a lot of conservative supporters because of his timidity and failure to enforce the rule of law," said McMonagle. Corbett has stated on multiple occasions that he supports the traditional definition of marriage but initially reacted to the same-sex marriage license controversy by declaring it to be a county issue. McMonagle calls that "utter nonsense". "To be married in Pennsylvania or any other state, once the clergyman or Justice of the Peace signs your marriage certificate, that certificate is ultimately filed at the Pennsylvania Department of Health and that's when you're legally married. Governor Corbett should come out and say, 'I'm not going to recognize these same-sex marriage certificates.' Next, he should initiate some sort of legal action to stop Hanes from doing this and so should other public officials. Our state legislature should call for his impeachment. We've been calling for all that activity," said McMonagle. Corbett is vowing to launch a legal defense this week. McMonagle believes the slow response is a result of Corbett challenging the recent NCAA sanctions against Penn State University and getting his case tossed out before arguments even began. The legal fight to come could be intense, but McMonagle believes Friday's pray-in served a very important purpose. "It began the rally of the truth. There's an old saying that a lie is halfway around the world before truth is getting its shoes on. This marriage debate is a good example. The lie that civil marriage is just about people in love with each other is halfway around the world," said McMonagle, who also explained why a group devoted to protecting the unborn is so active in the marriage debate. "(Same-sex marriage) is just a continuation of the war on children, begun with contraception and sterilzation and continuing with abortion. Now it's an effort to deny children a mother and a father," said McMonagle, who says it makes perfect sense to restrict marriage to the union of one man and one woman. "This whole issue brings out all the asinine questions you get on this issue. 'Isn't marriage for everyone?' 'Does that mean that infertile couples can't get married?' 'Isn't it about love?' etc.," said McMonagle. "There is thing called just discrimination. For example, it would be unjust discrimination to deny a blind person the right to vote because voting has nothing to do with the ability to see. But it would be just discrimination to say to a blind person, 'You may not have a driver's license because being able to see is essential to driving. Heterosexuality is essential to the meaning of marriage. Marriage is a union of one man and one woman. It means the capability of having sexual intercourse, which, by definition, is impossible in a same-sex relationship," he said. In addition, McMonagle says religious liberties are already under attack in this country, even though traditional marriage remains the law in the vast majority of states. He points out several business owners face legal sanction for refusing to provide services for same-sex weddings. He says ministers in Canada and Great Britain are legally forbidden from preaching on any text that condemns homosexual behavior. |
| Christians in the Crossfire |
| Mon, 29 Jul 2013 15:04:42 EST In the wake of military coup in Egypt earlier this month, media reports frequently recount the violent clashes between the military and supporters of the ousted Muslim Brotherhood regime of Mohammed Morsi. What is not often reported, however, is the brutal treatment of Coptic Christians, usually at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. "Members of the Muslim Brotherhood have taken their anger out specifically on Christians because many Christians wanted the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi out of power and were speaking out, including the Coptic pope," said Jerry Dykstra, spokesman for Open Doors USA, one of the leading organization reaching out to the persecuted Christian church. "So in the last three weeks or so, we've seen Christians targeted, especially a Coptic priest who was killed in northern Sinai. An Egyptian businessman was killed and beheaded in northern Sinai. Churches were also burned and Christians were driven out of their communities," he said. "Whenever things get bad, Christians are almost doubly in the spotlight and the cross hairs and we're seeing this now as things get even worse." Dykstra says Coptics had good reason to want the Morsi regime removed from power. "They were being more marginalized than ever before. Of course, they had no protection from anybody. They were sort of on their own, so there was more violence against Christians. There was more use of the blaspheming laws. There was real concern of the Muslim Brotherhood putting together Sharia Law down the road," said Dykstra, who saw the major dilemmas facing Christians when he was in Egypt last year. "It was very hard for Egyptian Christians to see their family members and many of their friends from their churches that fled the country. It's a very hard position to be in. Should we flee? Should we seek asylum some other place? Should we stick it out? I think that's still a question today," said Dykstra. Despite the grave danger facing believers in Egypt, Dykstra sees political and spiritual upsides there. He says Christians are finally getting a bit of their voice back inside the government. "Last week, there were three Christians appointed by the new interim cabinet among 33 that were appointed. So that's a good step," he said. On the spiritual side, repressed believers saw their faith grow as a result of the government restrictions. "One of the neat things I saw was the coming together of many different Christian organizations, churches and denominations for a weekend of prayer. Also, different faiths coming together. Coptic Christians, Catholics and Protestants need to come together," he said. "Last fall, there was a tremendous seminar. Thousands and thousands of people in the desert came together and prayed and worshiped the Lord and many came to Christ. So even in the midst of despair and violence, you see the Lord working." Open Doors USA is also sending relief to the beleaguered believers in Syria, who are caught between a brutal regime and a rebel alliance that is even more hostile to Christians. "There is just a despair among many of the people. They have been displaced from their homes and children from their schools," said Dykstra. "We did a report last week that said of the 100,000 killed, five to seven thousand of them have been children. We also know that millions of children are displaced inside and outside of the country. "Christians are also targeted by some of the rebels. We know that's happening because have contact to many of the pastors and Christian communities that we serve," said Dykstra. "We are reaching out with relief packets. We encourage the Christians there to share their relief packets to everybody and that includes Muslims." |
| Don't Know Much |
| Fri, 26 Jul 2013 16:44:32 EST President Obama says he knew nothing about the IRS harassing conservatives and giving their information to liberal groups. He also claims to have no advanced notice of the Justice Department targeting a Fox News reporter, any insight on the Benghazi terrorist attack or knowledge about several other controversies. The Capitol Steps try to find out why in their new parody, "Don't Know Much". Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| Fund Government, Not Obamacare |
| Wed, 24 Jul 2013 16:16:46 EST Utah Sen. Mike Lee is spearheading a new effort to block implementation of Obamacare, this time through the power of the purse. The House of Representatives voted recently for full repeal of Obamacare. In the wake of the Obama administration delaying the onset of the employer mandate for one year, the House also voted to make that change to the law and delay the start of the individual mandate until 2015 as well. Neither bill is expected to see action on the Senate floor and President Obama would certainly veto them. As a result, Lee believes that starving Obamacare of money is the best way to protect the American people from the effects of the laws. "What I think anyone who opposes Obamacare should do is fund the government but refuse to fund Obamacare. The American people are overwhelmingly against this bill," said Lee, who says the reality of rising premiums and Obama's efforts to selectively implement the law mean the American people should not be forced to fund it. The political reality, of course, is that Democrats still control the Senate and Obama is still in the White House. So how would Lee's plan be any different than other attempts to scrap Obamacare? "The best way to do it is to start with a funding mechanism, a continuing resolution, passing in the House of Representatives that funds every other function of government at current levels but just excludes Obamacare funding," said Lee. "That would come over to the Senate and once it became apparent that was the way to keep the government funded, (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid would have to make a difficult decision. I think it would be hard for him to explain to the American people why he would be willing to shut down the government simply to defend, doggedly, this very unpopular and unfair law that's going to make health care more expensive in America." Lee says going down this path serves multiple purposes. First, he reiterates that since he and his allies are willing to fund the rest of the federal government at current rates, it would be Democrats who would be responsible for shutting down government in this fight. In addition, he says this is an important gut check for Republicans to prove their commitment to stopping Obamacare. "The effort has got to be to persuade Republicans to stand against Obamacare funding, to say if you're against Obamacare funding you need to prove it, not just by voting for the thirty-ninth or fortieth time to repeal it in the House knowing it's going to go nowhere in the Senate," said Lee, who counts between 65-70 House members and about a dozen senators who back the Obamacare defunding plan. Current government funding Democrats may be the biggest hurdle to Lee's plans but they may not be the first. The senator admits GOP leaders will be a tough sell on this as well. "We've got some convincing to do there but we believe we're on the side of the people in this one. Republicans were elected in record numbers in the House and to the Senate in 2010 with an mandate to undo Obamacare," said Lee. Despite Lee's hopes that Democrats will agree to defund Obamacare in order to keep the rest of the federal government operating, they will likely mount a vigorous defense if necessary. Obama's recent refrain when criticizing Republicans on economic issues, and may be applied to the Obamacare funding debate as well, is that the GOP is intent on fighting old battles and pursuing phony scandals. "This isn't old at all. Obamacare has yet to really kick in. It doesn't kick in until January of 2014. So this is not an old government program. This is not an old fight. This is a new one. This is one that we've got to stop now if we want to save the American people from the unfairness of this selectively implemented law and the unfairness of the higher premiums that this is going to bring about in the health care market," said Lee, who also rejects the White House contention that Congress is digging into "phony scandals". "Ask that to the family members of victims of what happened in Benghazi. Say that to the people whose rights were violated either by the NSA or by the IRS," he said. |
| Monstrous Surveillance State |
| Mon, 22 Jul 2013 16:13:05 EST Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced she would resign her post later in the year. Reaction from both Democrats and Republicans largely heaped praise upon Napolitano, but a longtime constitutional attorney says there is not much to applaud for anyone concerned about preserving freedom and limiting government intrusion in their lives. "What the Department of Homeland Security became under Janet Napolitano is this monstrous surveillance and very intimidating group," said Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney for the past 40 years and author of "A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State "I think originally there were some good intentions with the Department of Homeland Security but what happened under President Obama is that it accelerated rapidly," said Whitehead. "I criticized George Bush's policies. Under President Obama, we're zooming." Whitehead says the Napolitano legacy of reducing freedom is evident across the board, starting in early 2009 when the department issued a report listing returning soldiers as one of the greatest threats to American security. "Another program Napolitano set up is Operation Vigilant Eagle, which is a surveillance system done on all returning veterans from overseas, where they watch Facebook posts, text messages, emails of returning veterans to see if they're going to be disgruntled," said Whitehead. "There are quite a few disgruntled veterans. In fact, one that we helped just filed a major lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security." "They arrived one day at his door, arrested him and actually put him in a mental institution for his Facebook posts criticizing the government. We got him out and then we sued the government," said Whitehead. Another outrage, according to Whitehead, is the harassment of Americans living on or somewhat near our national borders with Mexico and Canada. He says law-abiding citizens have been forced to hand over their laptops while the government officials download the information. The Rutherford Institute has also received reports of Americans being removed from their cars and searched without probable cause. These allegations, and criticism of drone use near the borders, comes as Congress hotly debate immigration reform legislation. Whitehead says the problems he's talking about have nothing to do with border security. "The people coming over from Mexico are not coming over at checkpoints. Incredibly stupid, and that's where a lot of emphasis has been placed," said Whitehead. "Obviously, they're not focused in the right direction. They put drones on the border but the drones obviously have not been very effective. In fact, what we found our about those drones now, on the Canadian border, turned the drones in. They're flying inland, photographing and watching what American citizens are doing and surveillance on American towns." Whitehead says that sort of activity will only get more common and more intrusive until the American people stand up and refuse to accept what he considers a major infringement on our constitutional liberties. "Drones are coming in 2015. They're going to be awesome. They'll have scanning devices, rubber bullets, sound cannons. They can look through the walls of your home," said Whitehead. "They're just going to bypass the fourth amendment and they already are doing that." A change at the top of DHS doesn't give Whitehead any hope that the government will rein in its activities. He says potential replacements, like New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, will likely be no different from Napolitano. |
| Bush-Cloned Cowboy |
| Fri, 19 Jul 2013 15:02:59 EST Last week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced he would not run for re-election in 2014 and leave office after more than 14 years as governor. Perry won't say if he will run for president again, but the waiting game has the Capitol Steps looking back at Perry's 2012 campaign and speculate about his political future. |
| 'Seal the Borders First' |
| Thu, 18 Jul 2013 15:58:40 EST Florida Rep. Daniel Webster is viewed as a key player in the immigration debate, with Democrats hoping he can be persuaded to back the Senate version of the legislation. However, Webster makes it clear he wants nothing to do with the Gang of Eight approach to the issue. House Democrats think Webster can be flipped since he represents a competitive district, and 14 percent of the voters there are Hispanic. The idea is to get about 23 House Republicans to back something very close to the Senate bill and squeak a compromise bill through both chambers But it seems Democrats will have to find one of their votes somewhere else. Webster sees plenty of fatal flaws in the Gang of Eight bill, beginning with the process. "We have made a huge mistake in this Congress by accepting the fact that comprehensive bills are a solve-all. They're not. Look at what's happened with Obamacare. Look at what happened with the stimulus package. Look at what happened with Dodd-Frank and all these other bills that are major, all-encompassing bills," said Webster. "What the House plans to do is, one-by-one, step-by-step, in a methodical way, take up each individual issue and pass it as a separate bill." So which small bill on immigration should come first? "I think we have to seal the borders first. That was the mistake made in 1986," said Webster, who says doubts about border enforcement nearly stopped a heavily Democratic House from passing the bill and changes were made that still didn't result in a secure border. Republicans and Democrats both insist they want border security, but how to verify a secure border remains a major point of contention. Although Webster did not explain who should be tasked with declaring the border secure, he did lay out what criteria he wants to be met before that can happen. "You set thresholds. We would say 90 percent secure means that we have reduced the number of people coming across by 90 percent. You have to put the plan in place first. Then you fund it. What the House would be proposing is to come up with a way where we can build the fence, build the wall, hire the right people and come with the number it takes to do that and then implement the plan," said Webster. "That becomes the trigger. You've got to have that first before you do anything else." Efforts to recruit GOP support for immigration reform generally follow along two lines. One is that the party needs this to attract Hispanic votes. The other argument is that bringing illegal immigrants out of the shadows will be good news for our economy. Opponents of the current version of reform say passage will result in exactly the opposite both politically and economically. Webster says whether an immigration bill passes or not, President Obama is making economic progress and job creation extremely difficult. "This administration has turned its back on jobs. It's turned its back on building the (Keystone) XL Pipeline. It's turned its back on producing oil in North America and not across the seas. It's turned it's back on businesses by putting extra regulations. It's turned its back on the coal industry. When you do things like that, you're killing jobs day by day by day," said Webster. "To me, the key is to get our economy rolling and I think (immigration reform) doesn't play that much into it," said Webster, who blasted Democrats for trying to convince Americans to accept 7.6 percent unemployment as the new normal. |
| What Will the House Do? |
| Fri, 12 Jul 2013 16:11:37 EST Pressure is mounting on the House of Representatives to pass the Senate immigration bill, but Texas Rep. Steve Stockman says the Senate plan is unconstitutional and is not nearly focused enough on border security. House Republicans met on Wednesday to get a sense of where the members stand on immigration and what the GOP strategy should be? Rep. Stockman says Republicans don't feel much pressure to pass the Senate bill . He says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has not submitted the bill to the House because he knows the GOP believes it's unconstitutional. "The bill is unconstitutional because Article 1, Section 7 says quite clearly that all taxes are to be started in the House, not in the Senate. The thing is loaded with taxes, loaded with pork, so Harry Reid to my knowledge has never sent it over to the House," said Stockman. The congressman says if Reid does submit it, the House GOP will request a point of order on the alleged constitutional violation. He believes that would be followed by the House "blue-slipping" the bill. "When the Senate creates a tax and it doesn't come from the House, we have a right to send the entire package back to the Senate and tell them to rework it and remove all the income tax and all other taxation related to the bill. They have to remove it, and if that happens usually the bill dies," said Stockman. In the meantime, Stockman is confident that House Speaker John Boehner will keep his word and not allow a bill opposed by a majority of Republicans to reach the House floor. "We were promised by the Speaker that this scenario would not happen. We asked privately if it would happen. Publicly, we asked him. So, if the Speaker goes back on his word...I think he'll have major problems in maintaining his leadership position and I think it would backfire. Ultimately, I don't think that's going to happen," said Stockman. Several conservative lawmakers fear a solid House bill would get weakened in a House-Senate conference and a bad bill could end up passing both chambers. As a result, they don't want to see the House pass anything on the immigration front. Stockman shares their concerns but not their strategy. "Being from Texas in a border state, we have to control our borders. This bill that my colleague, (House Homeland Security Committee Chairman) Mike McCaul has introduced is comprehensive border security. We need to do border security first before addressing any other immigration issue," said Stockman. Stockman says the McCaul bill would create an independent commission to certify whether the border is secure rather than leave that determination to the discretion of the Department of Homeland Security. The recent decision of the Obama administration to delay implementation of the employer mandate in the health care law is another concern to border security advocates, who fear the president would simply refuse to enforce tough border security provisions in the law. Stockman worries about that as well. "I absolutely agree with that. In fact, I would like to see it taken to court and someone sue the administration. You can't just pick what bills you want to enforce," said Stockman, who cited Obama's refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in addition to selectively implementing the health care law. "This administration continues to act more like a monarchy than someone that's in a democracy or a republic," he said. As for the fate of Obamacare, Stockman says he would like to see the individual mandate permanently shelved. "It should be delayed forever. It's a wreck on our economy. It's now two trillion. Of course it's supposed to be under a trillion and I think they should permanently delay the whole implementation. It's a train wreck. Fixes will be made constantly in order to fix this huge, huge bill," he said. Stockman also cheered the impending passage of the new abortion laws in Texas that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks, require abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges and force greater health standards at abortion facilities. "I think Texas took a logical step in protecting women and protecting life and unfortunately there are those they had to bring to Texas. A lot of them weren't even from Texas to be disruptive while we tried to pass our law. So I'm glad it passed. I praise our governor for taking a bold step," said Stockman. |
| 'Gasoline on the Fire' |
| Thu, 11 Jul 2013 16:14:08 EST The Justice Department spent thousands of dollars and dedicated manpower towards efforts to convince Florida authorities to press charges against George Zimmerman, a revelation a former Obama Justice Department attorney says is taking a racial agenda to a new level. According to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, the Justice Department spent more than $5,300 after being "deployed" to Florida to "work marches, demonstrations and rallies related to the shooting death of an Africa-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain." It was all related to the public pressure for prosecutors to charge Zimmerman with murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The effort was conducted by the Community Relations Service within the Justice Department. Its job is traditionally to maintain calm in the midst of a volatile atmosphere, influenced by race or any other factor. "They go down wherever there's a hot spot and they're supposed to act as a buffer between the two sides. They're supposed to explain to people how to behave, explain to the opposing sides what to do and what not to do, essentially just to calm things down. They've been doing this since the 1960s," said J. Christian Adams, who served in the civil rights division of the Justice Department under President Obama. Adams says it's clear the Justice Department had no intention of being a buffer in this case. "What's troubling about it is that Justice only showed up after jokers like New Black Panther Malik Zulu Shabazz were holding press conferences demanding bounties be put on George Zimmerman's head. Did Community Relations Service come down and lecture Malik Zulu Shabazz about such incendiary language? I very much doubt it. This is the same Malik Zulu Shabazz whom I sued in federal court and (Attorney General) Eric Holder cut loose in the voter intimidation case out of Philadelphia. Like so many other things with this Justice Department, the Community Relations Service seems to be on one side, stoking racial resentment," said Adams. Adams says the bias on the Zimmerman case within the Justice Department came early and often, including public comments from Holder and even President Obama stating that if he had a son, he would look like Martin. "This is a Justice Department that should have kept its hands off things in Florida but instead seemed to pour gasoline on the fire," said Adams. The actions of the Justice Department have frequently troubled Adams over the past few years, particularly within the civil rights division, but he says this type of involvement takes the activity to a much more troubling level. "In all the other scandals involving the civil rights division, usually what happens is a state like South Carolina gets blocked from their voter ID or a business gets sued. In this particular case, however, an innocent man might go to prison. That raises the level of the Justice Department taking sides to a whole new mode of misbehavior that Eric Holder, in the past, has not even done," said Adams. |
| 'One Mistake After Another' |
| Tue, 9 Jul 2013 15:21:55 EST The Obama administration has botched its Egypt policy for years and its handling of the recent coup is more of the same, according to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. The administration made very few public statements up to and during the coup. In his main remarks following the ouster of former President Mohammed Morsi, President Obama chided Morsi for not responding to the demands of the people but also scolded the military for removing a duly elected leader. He also told Americans and the world that the United States cannot dictate the course of events in Egypt. Bolton says the president was unimpressive in response to the crisis but he claims that's nothing new. "I think he's handled it badly in the last few days but I think he's handled it badly for the last two and a half years. It's been one mistake after another," said Bolton. "By the time you get to evaluating how we have done in the past week, you'd have to view it against a long, long period of mishandling before that." Bolton says there is some truth in Obama's comments about the extent of U.S. influence, but the ambassador says the president is underestimating what clout we do have. "It is true. We do not have unlimited influence in Egypt. We can't snap our fingers and have it turn out the way we want. But saying we don't have unlimited influence is not saying the same thing as saying we have no influence. There, I think, the absence of clear American leadership has cost us a great deal," said Bolton. "Not only have we not had public statements by the president or the secretary of state, we haven't had much behind the scenes activity either. That leaves people very uncertain about what is to come next and it gives some support to the Muslim Brotherhood and the idea that if they just tough it out long enough, they might yet end up back in power." White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday that the Obama administration will take plenty of time before determining whether the Egyptian military's removal of Morsi constitutes a coup. The review is due largely to U.S. law forbidding additional foreign aid to any nation where a democratically elected leader is forced from power. Bolton says the administration's semantics exercise is ridiculous. "Of course it was a coup. I don't think any of us gain anything by trying to obscure what actually happened," said Bolton. "I think the way you deal with the prohibition on foreign assistance in the statute is to go to Congress directly and say we need to fix this. We need to make it absolutely clear that it's in America's national interest that we find a way to support the interim government and the military. "Yet, the Obama administration takes what appears to be its preferred route of twisting the meaning of a statute all out of proportion to what the words of the statute actually say. That doesn't benefit the United States government and it doesn't benefit, frankly, trust and credibility of the president," he said. But for all his criticism of the Obama policy on Egypt, Bolton sees the developments in Egypt as positive and a potential catalyst for change in the region. "I think it will have a ripple effect. I think the struggle between the radical Islamists, who are often allied with terrorists, and other forces that want a secular democratic government in many Middle Eastern countries. They're going to watch what happens in Egypt very carefully," said Bolton. "This is much more important than Syria. Egypt has a population of 70-80 million people, far and away the largest Arab country. So what happens there makes a huge difference and so too does the role of the United States have a ripple effect around the region as well. "So it's troubling the United States is absent, not just because of it's impact in Egypt, but because of it's impact across the region," he said. The ambassador says America has several major national security interests in Egypt, so getting this policy right is important. "We do have an interest in a stable Egyptian government that can uphold the Camp David Peace Accords with Israel, keep the Suez Canal open and ensure some measure of order in Egypt so that religious minorities like the Coptic Christians are not trampled and to get the Egyptian economy back on its feet obviously requires order as well," said Bolton. Bolton isn't sure whether the clashes between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood will escalate into something more more serious since he believes Morsi supporters are deeply divided on whether to force a confrontation with the military. He is confident that the Muslim Brotherhood instigated violence with the military in recent days in order to claim martyrs for their cause. He also favors a lengthy stretch before new elections in Egypt. Bolton says a short schedule is how the Muslim Brotherhood successfully gained power in the wake of Hosni Mubarak's fall from the presidency in 2011. In the final analysis, Bolton says the Egyptian military did the right thing and really had limited choices. "The military did not have much of an option. We saw in the days before it issued the ultimatum, millions of Egyptians demonstrating in the streets demonstrating against the Muslim Brotherhood, with every prospect that the pro-Muslim Brotherhood supporters and the anti-Muslim Brotherhood advocates would end up fighting in the streets. I think the military, which prizes order and stability, didn't want to let that happen," said Bolton. |
| The Fight Moves to Copper |
| Mon, 8 Jul 2013 16:01:22 EST On the heels of the Obama administration clamping down on oil and gas exploration and President Obama declaring what many consider to be a war on coal, environmental groups are now urging the government to deny exploration of the world's largest known copper reserve before the permitting process even begins. The Pebble Mine in Alaska could produce more than 80 billion pounds of copper, an amount that could wipe out America's need to import the element. Currently, some 35 percent of the copper used in the U.S. is brought in from foreign sources. Dan McGroarty is president of the American Resources Policy Network. He says it's no surprise that environmental groups are opposed to a Pebble Mine, but he says activists don't even want the idea to be considered. "It's entirely legitimate to examine whether any mine project that's actually put into the permitting process for it's impacts and for ways to mitigate them and weigh out the competing public goods that one has. What's dramatically different in this instance is that many environmental groups are urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to exert a unlilateral power to stop the mine project from even going into the permitting process. In other words, there will be no permitting process. They would simply say the mine can't go forward. End of story," said McGroarty, who explained that the permitting process is a very long and detailed experience that goes over every detail of a proposal. "When a mining project goes into the permitting process, there are local avenues for some of the permits, there are state avenues for some of the permits and federal as well," said McGroarty. "So it's multi-layered and it takes an average of seven to ten years for a mine to get through that process once begun. I have looked at Pebble and my understanding is that they would require upwards of 60 different types of permits from the state, local and federal levels. So there would be an enormous amount of scrutiny put on the mine plan. "What some of the environmental groups are saying is they don't want that process to even begin. Pebble has no mine plan right now. They have not submitted anything for review, so this is about stopping for the first time a mine from even entering the permitting process," he said. So does the EPA have the power to unilaterally veto a mining plan before the permit process begins? McGroarty says that's actually up to the EPA itself. "It is a matter of the EPA being urged to interpret the powers it already has to allow this sort of veto activity. They're using a section of the Clean Water Act, which dates back 40-plus years, and interpreting it in a way that would allow them to stop this project from going into the permitting process to stop it before it begins," said McGroarty. "If EPA does this, they will be granting themselves the authority to do this. I must say, Pebble might be the first mine and copper the first metal but it will by no means stop with one mine and it will effect many different metals if the EPA takes that power." McGroarty says if the EPA starts down this road, the economic impact on this nation could be immense. "There's an independent study that indicates that over $200 billion of planned economic activity in the United States actually runs through Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. That would put the EPA in a position of thumbs up, thumbs down on an enormous amount of economic activity. That is something no agency should be allowed to do without other parts of the government being able to look at that and see whether that's what they intended," said McGroarty. Beyond the alleged push for a major government power grab, McGroarty says the environmental lobby's arguments on Pebble aren't even logically consistent. In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, he quotes Joel Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council as saying, "We view (Pebble) as one of the worst projects anywhere in the world today." McGroarty says by removing our need for imported copper, the U.S. would stop doing business with mines in the Congo, where eight-year-old slave labor is brutally forced to extract the resources, or in Zambia, where Chinese-owned mines don't even provide their workers safe breathing equipment or leak-proof boots. He contends those conditions are far worse than anything that would make it through the government permit approval process. Furthermore, he contends that opposing copper mining projects like Pebble undermine the green agenda. He explains that copper is vital for transitioning to renewable energies and the environmental groups are blocking their own goals with these tactics. "Some of the environmental groups who are opposing this copper mine outright are otherwise touting on their websites and in their talking points a transition to green energy. That is they want to get their power from the sun, from the wind, geothermal for instance. Every one of those utilities actually uses copper in order to make that power effective," said McGroarty. "A single industrial wind turbine uses upwards of three tons of copper for just one wind turbine. Solar panels use a composite called CIGS. "C" for copper. "S" on the other end for selenium, a metal that is also derived from copper. And then geothermal, which basically delivers power through copper coils. Of course, all those means are delivering power to the national grid through copper cables," he said. |
| The 'Flawed Premise' of GOP |
| Wed, 3 Jul 2013 16:00:52 EST Iowa Rep. Steve King says the House of Representatives should pass no immigration bill to avoid a terrible bill coming out of conference, pro-immigration Republicans are operating under a false premise and he wants House Speaker John Boehner to be more clear on what he would allow to move forward on the House floor. King joins other conservative House members who believe they could never support a bill that is embraced by Senate Democrats so trying to find common ground now is fruitless. "If the House passed border security and interior security and sent that over to the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to take that up. Chuck Schumer has said that citizenship has to be part of the deal. It's not going to go to the president's desk, so why would the House take up anything if there's no prospect that we're going to improve the immigration situation, just the prospect that they're going to jam amnesty on us," said King, who says the Democratic agenda is transparent. "It is about documenting undocumented Democrats. Jay Leno was right. That's why every Democrat supports this, and that's why Republicans should step back and wonder why it is that Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama are trying to help the political futures of Republicans. They are not," he said. "We're better off not to pass a bill out of the House because we leave ourselves vulnerable, plus we don't accomplish anything that's good. I don't want to bring anything through the House. I don't want to do that until we have at least a Republican majority in the United States Senate again and probably a president in the White House that has respect for his own oath of office." King says he's pleased to see Speaker Boehner vow never to bring the Senate immigration bill up for a vote and require a majority of Republicans to support any House version of the bill. King says Boehner's language is more encouraging as of late but the congressman remains uneasy about Boehner's careful language about other scenarios. "When you get into allowing an amendment that doesn't have (majority GOP support), what about a conference report that doesn't have, his language has not been as clear. I can say it clearly without having to sit down and think about it. If I were making this call, and I'm not, there will be no immigration legislation coming to the floor, no amendment allowed and no conference report allowed that doesn't have, at a minimum, a majority support of House Republicans," said King. "Hopefully, we'll be able to hear that from our leadership in the next week or two." The path of the debate in the House may well be established next week at a closed-door meeting of House Republicans. King is hopeful that a majority of members deliver a loud, clear message. "I'm hopeful that enough members will stand up and say we're not going to get enforcement with this president. I'm not going to support anything that legalizes because it's a path to citizenship. I'm not going to vote to expand legal immigration because once you do that there's no place to stop. Let's get it under control first. I hope that's what we do," said King. In addition to the Democrats, King and his allies are squaring off against some traditional allies, including groups like the Chamber of Commerce and popular conservative leaders like Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who holds a position very similar to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in support of Gang of Eight style legislation. King says he has great respect for those lawmakers and organizations, but he believes they are making some critical errors in judgment. "They either do not study, remember or accept the real history of this and that's the 1986 amnesty act. Then they want to deny that the Senate bill is amnesty and Paul Ryan has said he'll debate anyone who thinks this is amnesty. He says it's not. I defined amnesty long ago and I'd be happy to have that debate. I don't know they come to that conclusion and call themselves conservatives," said King, who noted a Heritage Foundation study showing the Senate version of reform would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion." King says Ryan and Rubio are smart and likable men but they start from the wrong point on this issue. "If they start with a flawed premise, the smartest of people will still end up with the wrong conslusion. The flawed premise is that there's an economic benefit to legalization and that there's a political benefit to Republicans to legalization. Neither one of those is true. In fact, it's the exact opposite," said King, who says despite the assumption that Hispanic voters would embrace conservative principles on abortion, marriage and the free market, multiple surveys show Hispanics overwhelmingly backing the liberal positions on those issues. |
| 'Mob Rule Won't Be Tolerated' |
| Tue, 2 Jul 2013 15:25:27 EST Texas Gov. Rick Perry was right to call another special session of the state legislature in response to boisterous pro-choice protesters disrupting the end of the previous session to kill pro-life legislation, according to State Sen. Brian Birdwell, who also defended the bill as beneficial to women and babies. Gov. Perry called a second special session for lawmakers after a chaotic end to June's special session. Democratic State Sen. Wendy Davis held an 11-hour filibuster that Republicans were finally able to end through procedural measures. However, the final vote on the bill was delayed by persistent protests from pro-choice activists in the gallery. The vote to pass the bill was not finalized before the midnight deadline. "Kind of like a visiting team coming into Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, the noise can be so loud that you've got to use hand and arm signals," said Birdwell. "So you have noise level and conduct akin to Occupy Wall Street sitting in the gallery that prevented us from concluding the legislative business that we had been gathered to do." Gov. Perry wasted little time in ordering a second special legislative session. Birdwell says it had to be done. "I was certainly very pleased he did and even more pleased that he did so the next day. This type of mob rule was not going to be tolerated. We're going to come back and take another swing at it," said Birdwell. Most of the attention in this debate has been on the push to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but there are three other critical provisions that Birdwell clarified. First, he says the legislation requires any doctors performing abortions to have hospital admitting privileges to a facility with an OBGYN department. The purpose, he says, is so women will have access to emergency care if necessary and so that any child who survives an abortion can immediately become a patient, especiall those older than 20 weeks but meeting the standards for certain exceptions. The bill also mandates higher standards for abortion clinics and requires them to meet the same guidelines as an ambulatory surgical facility, another upgrade Birdwell says can only be beneficial to women. "Today, there's'a higher standard for the medical care provider to remove tonsils at an ambulatory surgical center than there is to perform an abortion. This would raise it to that standard for an outpatient surgery center," said Birdwell. In addition, doctors who administer the abortion drug RU-486 to their patients will be required to maintain contact with those patients through the course of that treatment due to the risk of heavy bleeding. The final component of the legislation addresses the limits for how late an abortion can legally be conducted. "The bill prohibits, with certain exceptions, instead of at six months or later in the third trimester, it moves it from six months to five months because that is the delineation of the child feeling pain in the womb," said Birdwell. So how does Birdwell interpret the ferocious pro-choice opposition to the plan? "I think it's just any restriction, any at all, it viewed as territory that that side of the aisle doesn't want to cede, even though we know that life begins at conception. All these standards that we've put in place were for the life of the mother, the health of the mother, and, should there be a complication, the health of the child who is born alive," said Birdwell, who adds that a woman's choice is not impacted by this legislation and neither is any provider so long as they meet the new standards within a reasonable amount of time. Sen. Davis says she will not filibuster the bill in this new session, in part because she would have to filibuster for an entire month this time. That means the legislation is very likely to pass. "I would assume and agree that a filibuster is very much a long shot. I would always be very guarded against guaranteeing something will happen. I think the probabilities that this will pass are very strong," said Birdwell. If passed, the law would take effect September 1. |
| 'It's Clearly Unconstitutional' |
| Fri, 28 Jun 2013 16:00:31 EST Several students are demanding a Tennessee community college psychology professor be disciplined for persistently pushing her pro-gay views on her students and even forcing students to identify themselves as in favor of the LGBT agenda in a mandatory project. The Alliance Defense Fund is representing the students who objected to the classroom tactics of Columbia State Community College Professor Dr. Linda Brunton. The students say any views opposed to Brunton's were not welcome and any opposition to the gay agenda was considered to be the thinking of "uneducated bigots" who "attack homosexuals with hate". But one assignment in particular triggered the protests. "She assigned the class to wear rainbow coalition ribbons in support of homosexual behavior for at least a day on campus and wherever they went off campus. Students then had to write a reaction paper from wearing those ribbons and how they were allegedly discriminated against while wearing the ribbons," said Alliance Defense Fund attorney David Hacker. "Several students contacted us, just objecting to this. It's a very clear case of a government official, a state college professor, compelling students to speak in a way they disagree with." Hacker says it's fine for teachers to have students consider ideas from different perspectives, but Dr. Brunton clearly crossed the line. "Colleges and professors can require students to play devil's advocate in a paper or argue a position in class that they don't necessarily agree with, as long as it's an academic exercise," said Hacker. "Once the professor here, Ms. Brunton, required the students to advocate a message outside the classroom, that's compelled speech and it's clearly unconstitutional." Before seeking a legal remedy, the students brought their concerns to Dr. Brunton. Hacker says those efforts went nowhere. "She, unfortunately, just brushed aside their concerns and basically described their views as ignorant and uneducated and she said that she hoped the assignment would cause them to change their beliefs," said Hacker. "Colleges are supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, not an environment where professors are manipulating students into advancing particular political agendas," said Hacker. Alliance Defending Freedom is asking Columbia State Community College to investigate the matter and Hacker says the school has agreed to do so. He says this sort of compelled speech must be addressed but he says college campuses nationwide are actively promoting the pro-gay movement. "We're finding it's very common. A few years ago, we represented a student at Missouri State University. She was in a social work class and the class was assigned a project to write a joint letter to the Missouri State Legislature advocating in favor of same-sex adoption and fostering. The student objected, said she didn't want to do that because it went well beyond just an academic exercise. It was advocating a position to a legislature," said Hacker. "The professor turned around and filed ethics charges against her, in fact the worst ethics charges a student can receive at the school and then required her to sign an agreement saying she won't allow her her personal religious beliefs to get in the way of doing these sorts of assignments. I mean just a clear violation of her religious liberty, her rights of conscience and her freedom from being compelled to speak in a way that she disagreed with." |
| I'll Be Watchin' You |
| Fri, 28 Jun 2013 15:37:04 EST It's been weeks since Edward Snowden revealed details of the NSA programs that collect phone and internet data on Americans for possible scrutiny. While Snowden remains in the lam, the Capitol Steps put their perspective on just how much the NSA knows about our daily lives. |
| 'No Grounding in the Constitution' |
| Wed, 26 Jun 2013 14:48:08 EST The Supreme Court had no reason to rule on the merits of the Defense of Marriage Act but the majority opinion lays the groundwork for a sweeping, national legalization of gay marriage in the near future, according to Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed gay marriage advocates a pair of victories. In addition to dismissing a defense of California's traditional marriage amendment based on legal standing, it struck down a provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as unconstitutional that allowed federal benefits only for spouses in heterosexual marriages. That's because the 1996 federal law recognized a marriage as only the union of one man and one woman. The court preserved the DOMA provision that allows states to refuse recognizing gay marriages performed in other states. "Under DOMA, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion. "DOMA's principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal." Kennedy was joined on the opinion by the court's four liberal justices. Staver blasts the majority for ruling on the merits at all, saying the case never should have come this far since the Obama administration refused to defend DOMA. The government, the plaintiff and the lower courts all agreed on the earlier verdict so Staver says this matter never should have reached the Supreme Court. "The parties all agree that the ruling below is correct. Therefore, it should never have gone to the court of appeals and certainly the U.S. Supreme Court has no jurisdiction. This is just an advisory opinion," said Staver. "This is unprecedented that the court took this step to actually even decide the merits of the case. "And then when it decided the merits of the case, it used words such as 'bigotry', 'hostility' and 'demeaning', referring to the equal protection clause but it never did an equal protection analysis," he said. "Every equal protection clause analysis has to at least determine several things. One is the so-called right that you're after, one that is rooted in history and part of our idea of ordered liberty. Here they're asking for the right to same-sex marriage. Has that been rooted in our history? Is it part of ordered liberty? The answer to that is obviously no. The reason they didn't address that question is because they would have to have come to an opposite conclusion. They skipped it. It's unbelievable. "This is just five people that have written a piece of opinion and issued it under the guise of the U.S. Supreme Court, but it has no grounding in the constitutional text or in the history of its previous precedent," said Staver. Some defenders of traditional marriage say today's decisions weren't a total loss because the court refrained from issuing a nationwide pronouncement in favor of gay marriage. Staver is not among them. He sees today's DOMA ruling as the precursor such a ruling in a future case. "In the short term, it's not the blanket same-sex marriage across the country. That's something that we actually could have had from this case today. On the other hand, this is the 1972 contraception for individual cases that ultimately laid the foundation for the 1973 Roe v. Wade case. This is the groundwork for same-sex marriage that the court laid today. There's no question about it," said Staver. "The way that they wrote this decision, while it doesn't put same-sex marriage across the country, they are telegraphing that's what they want to do. And they will open up the floodgates of litigation and they are begging for another case to come to the high court. "This decision crosses the line and the people have to respond or they're going to be under a ruling oligarchy of five individuals that have untethered themselves. They've cut the line between themselves and the Constitution," said Staver. Staver was a strong supporter of Proposition 8 in California, but believes the unusual collaboration of justices in the majority were correct in dismissing the appeal based on standing since California officials refused to defend their own law. Justices Roberts, Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan rejected the standing of the traditional marriage supporter defending the constitutional amendment. Justices Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor and Kennedy dissented. |
| Why All the Outrage? |
| Tue, 25 Jun 2013 16:25:34 EST The Supreme Court ruled on two hot-button cases this week, largely rejecting racial preferences as a factor in college admissions and striking down the current list of states and localities that must receive federal approval before changing any election laws in their jurisdiction. In the latter case, Shelby County, Alabama v. Attorney General Eric Holder, the justices ruled 5-4 to strike Section Four of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It is now up to Congress to reauthorize the list of states and localities that must receive federal permission to make changes or come up with a new list of areas where voting discrimination is a serious concern. Political observers, particularly liberals, are vehemently denouncing the decision, saying it's a major step backwards in the quest for equal rights and a dangerous decision for minority voters. But one of the leaders of a prominent black conservative organization disagrees. "I really don't understand the rhetoric from the other side because the Voting Rights Act is very much intact. What the Supreme Court is saying is that basically Congress has not done its job because the law on the books is from 1965. We're now at 2013. Demographics have changed . Issues have changed. Problems for the most part in those states have dissipated," said Cherlyn Harley LeBon, co-chair of the Project 21 Black Leadership Council, a project of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "It is Congress' job to come up with the appropriate standard based on 2013 modern-day applications. That's exactly what the Supreme Court is saying." Critics of the decision contend that the court is not sensitive to the discrimination efforts that persist to this day. They also worry that Congress may not be able to agree on a list of jurisdictions that require federal oversight, meaning no states or localities will receive it. LeBon disagrees. "Congress is going to be motivated to do this and all the Supreme Court has said here is it's really difficult to enforce this unless Congress comes up with a new way of determining which states and localities require federal monitoring of elections," said LeBon, who says several counties listed in the Voting Rights Act have undergone major demographic change and no longer need the watchful eye of government. "In some of those counties that we noted in the Shelby County Supreme Court decision, some of those counties are now 90 percent white. Why would we need to apply the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to a county which is 90 percent white. That doesn't make any sense at all," she said. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 to send an affirmative action case back to a lower court. The suit stemmed from a white woman who claimed the University of Texas declined her application solely because of her race. |
| Obama Renews 'War on Coal' |
| Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:50:49 EST President Obama is vowing to lead the international effort to combat climate change and he is not waiting around for congressional approval of his agenda. Obama says climate science is settled and he will enact major policy through executive actions that will bypass the scrutiny of lawmakers. Obama says the planet is clearly warming, makes severe weather events more common and urgent action must be taken. He rejected skepticism about climate science, saying, 'We don't have for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society.'" Reducing "carbon pollution" is at the heart of the Obama plan. In addition to doubling investments in clean energy technology, the administration will seek to impose tougher emissions standards on conventional, coal-fired power plants. One of Obama's climate advisers is even publicly embracing the idea of a "war on coal". "The one thing the president really needs to do now is to begin the process of shutting down the conventional coal plants. Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they 19re having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what 19s needed," Harvard University Center for the Environment Director Daniel P. Schrag told The New York Times. Washington Rep. Doc Hastings is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. He says this approach from Obama should come as no surprise. "This administration has pursued a war on coal, with the Stream Buffer rule that has gone through a couple of changes," said Hastings. "It would essentially strangle the coal industry." Hastings also says further crackdowns on coal production and coal-fueled power plants would be economically devastating. "These jobs are very good paying jobs. In a sluggish economy, that's the last thing we need to do is to take good American jobs away from Americans. And yet, that seems to be what this administration is doing," he said. Obama and his allies blame fossil fuels for threatening the earth's climate, but Hastings says that position ignores the benefits of using our own resources and fails to consider the clean technologies already put to use in the energy sector. "Let's talk about the abundance of coal we have in this country for goodness sake and let's talk about the technology that we have proven time and again that we can burn our fuels in a cleaner, more environmentally friendly way. We have proven that over the last half-century and there's no reason to believe we can't do it again. But to simply say we're not going to burn any coal at all does not make any sense to me at all," said Hastings. In addition to lost jobs, Americans in many parts of the country could face much higher energy costs as more and more coal-fired power plants risk closure under tighter environmental regulations. "There's no question that they would go up because at the same time that the president is strangling the coal industry, he is attempting de facto to do exactly the same thing with oil and natural gas production, especially on federal lands," said Hastings, who is among the House Republicans championing the Offshore Energy and Jobs Act, a bill that supporters say would create 1.2 million jobs. Hastings says the bill is in response to Obama closing access to 85 percent of the areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts that were identified as areas for potential energy exploration. "What we say in this legislation is that this president and future presidents shall offer leases where they know there are known resources. What a novel idea, offering leases where you think you can get oil and natural gas," said Hastings, who says additional domestic production is also a positive step away from dependence upon foreign oil. The chairman says it is possible that increased exploration could mean another disaster like we saw in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, but he says safety standards make such an event very rare and energy companies have already developed faster, more effective response plans in the event of another crisis. |
| Why Roberts Was Wrong |
| Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:58:02 EST As America waits for the final Supreme Court rulings of this session, Utah Sen. Mike Lee is revisiting the landmark Obamacare ruling by the Supreme Court from last June and explaining why Chief Justice John Roberts failed to follow the Constitution in upholding the individual mandate. Lee is the author the the ebook, "Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare: A Conservative Critique of the Supreme Court's Obamacare Decision". Lee is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is a former assistant U.S. attorney and a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Samuel Alito. "I wrote it first and foremost to explain to people that what the court did in that case was to make law, to legislate. The chief justice rewrote Obamacare in order to save it. He amended it no just once but twice in order to save it from an otherwise inevitable finding of unconstitutionality and that's a problem," said Lee, referring to Chief Justice Roberts ruling that the mandate failed several constitutional tests but survived as a tax, which is within the power of Congress. Democrats have always insisted that the fee imposed for not complying with the mandate is not a tax. The majority opinion also altered the Medicaid provisions within the law. "I can't think of any other instance in which a court so blatantly rewrote legislation in order to save it. There have been instances where a court will look the other way, where a court will pay short shrift to this or that aspect of the analysis before it. But I can't think of another case where the court has rewritten a statute not just once but twice in order to go to obviously great lengths to avoid a finding that it's unconstitutional," said Lee. Roberts defended his decision by saying a court's role is to save a statute if there is a way to plausibly claim it's constitutional. Lee says that was one of the chief justice's major mistakes. "That's where he went wrong. It's true that when courts are reviewing a statute against a constitutional challenge, to the extent that there are ambiguities, to the extent that you can read a provision one way or the other, the court's supposed to favor any possible reading of the statute that would save it," said Lee. "The reading that he adopted was not fairly possible. It was unambiguous based on the text that what Congress did contravened the Constitution. And that's why he messed up." Shortly after the 5-4 ruling was handed down last summer, reports surfaced that Roberts originally sided with the three conservative justices and swing vote Anthony Kennedy to find the individual mandate unconstitutional. Sometime between the oral arguments in March and the final verdict in June, Roberts flipped his vote to uphold Obamacare. Speculation at the time suggested public pressure from President Obama and other supporters of the law succeeded in convincing Roberts to find a way to uphold Obamacare. Lee believes that's largely correct. He says the construction of the minority opinion demonstrates that it was the majority opinion at one time but Roberts ultimately succumbed to the pressure. "This change in his vote likely occurred about the same time when I saw a big uptick in the public criticism against Chief Justice Roberts. It was sort of preemptive criticism from Democrats in the Senate and from the White House counseling him, pleading with him, warning him , insisting that it would be a form of judicial activism if he invalidated a law that was 'duly enacted by an elected Congress'. So yeah, it does appear to have had that effect," said Lee. Roberts was first nominated to the Supreme Court as a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the summer of 2005. When Chief Justice William Rehnquist died just weeks later, Bush shifted the nomination for Roberts to become Chief Justice. In almost eight years in that role, Lee says Roberts has honored his oath very well but the one exception to that record could not have come on a more important case. "For the most part, he has been consistent with his oath to uphold the Constitution. He has been a judicial conservative, what you would call a textualist, someone who tries to read the law based on what it says rather than what he wishes it said," said Lee. "This case was an aberraton, not only in its outcome but also in the fact that I'm not sure there's ever been another case that he's decided that was as prominent and as far-reaching in its implications as this one. Nor was there any other case in which there was so much attention paid to him personally related to the outcome of the case." |
| Greece: The Musical |
| Fri, 21 Jun 2013 14:50:40 EST President Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel twice this past week, once at the G-8 Summit in Ireland and again in Germany. The two leaders disagree over how best to jumpstart staggering economies, with Obama favoring stimulus spending and Merkel preferring austerity measures. Germany has mandated strict austerity measures as a condition for aid to cash-strapped nations like Greece. In light of the ongoing Eurozone unrest, the Capitol Steps highlight their hit "Greece: The Musical". Our guest is Steps star Elaina Newport. |
| It's Still Amnesty |
| Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:46:57 EST The bipartisan Gang of Eight immigration reform coalition is embracing a new border security amendment they say should assuage any lingering concerns that border enforcement will take a back seat to legalization or leave America open to further illegal immigration. The amendment from Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven had not been released as of late Thursday afternoon. The lawmakers and press reports indicate the language calls for a major increase in border security agents and completion of the border fence along with other technological upgrades included in the original bill. They also say these provisions must be completed before any green cards are issued to current illegal immigrants. Louisiana Sen. David Vitter says the provisions appeal to him but the priorities of the legislation haven't changed. "The first thing that still happens under the amendment is a big amnesty, a big legalization, then the enforcement comes after," said Vitter. "That's a fundamental problem with the bill and this amendment wouldn't change that in any way." Vitter says another major problem is the assumption that implementing these provisions will actually secure the border. "The amendment talks about what you would call inputs or spending money. What the Gang of Eight completely rejected is any test of results, any metric, any test like we have 80 percent border security, we have 90 percent border security. So they absolutely rejected any real measurement of results," said Vitter. "Washington knows how to spend lots of money, particularly the Obama admnistration, but it often doesn't get results. It's never gotten results in this area. Results are what matter." Vitter admits the amendment may be enough to clinch victory for the bill in the Senate and he says Republicans are evenly split on the issue. He says if the vote were held today, the plan would likely pass but he stresses that public response might make a difference. The senator says lawmakers need to hear this bill will not solve our immigration problems. "I don't think this fixes the bill. I want to fix the bill and fix the problem, not just have some political exercise," he said. Vitter is sponsoring a number of amendments to the Gang of Eight bill. In additional to his efforts to make border security the top priority of the bill, he also wants stronger language against legalizing anyone convicted of a crime against women and children. "This is an example of a bigger problem in my opinion with the bill. The Gang of Eight made various promises and put out various principles. One was that folks involved in any sort of serious crime don't get an amnesty and are actually deported. The problem is when you look at details of the bill, these promises don't pan out including this one," said Vitter, who says the current language of the bill would allow perpetrators of domestic violence and child abuse to stay in the country. "We're simply adding those crimes under the Violence Against Women Act as disqualifiers for making folks legal and as requirements when somebody commits that crime that they be deported," said Vitter. The senator says he would still vote against the final bill even if this amendment were approved. |
| Ripping Rubio |
| Thu, 20 Jun 2013 15:11:10 EST The Tea Party got Marco Rubio elected to the U.S. Senate his leading role in the Senate immigration reform bill shows he is "bankrupt morally" and greatly endangering his political future, according to Florida-based talk show host Joyce Kaufman. Kaufman, who hosts a daily talk show in WFTL radio, admits she has never been a Rubio fan because she considered him to be untrustworthy when he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. She got behind Rubio's insurgent U.S. Senate bid after strong listener support and because she considered anyone better for the job than then-Gov. Charlie Crist. Rubio visited Kaufman's program numerous times during the campaign, and Kaufman says he gave very clear answers on where he stood on immigration. "He told me he was against amnesty, no pathway to citizenship, secure the borders that's all we've got to worry about. Blah, blah, blah. It was a lie," said Kaufman, who says she has a very simple approach to the illegal immigration problem. "Just enforce the existing laws and be conscious of the fact that every nation has a right to its sovereignty. No other nation on earth allows people to come in without registering, without signing the guest book, and then affords them a pathway to citizenship as a reward when they sneak in. This is absolutely anathema to what America stands for," said Kaufman. As their differing views on immigration reform became evident over the past several months, Kaufman says Rubio is much harder to find than during the campaign. "He refuses to appear on my show. He refuses to take my calls. We took a posse up to his office in D.C. and we were politely asked to stand in the hallway. We were summarily dismissed while we watched members of SEIU and La Raza welcomed with open arms," she said. "He is bankrupt morally. He is a horrible example of what happens when a party decides that they really like the way a guy looks and sounds and could care less if he has any principles." "I just think it's an example of how we ended up with Barack Obama in the White House. He looks good, but he really doesn't stand for what he says he stands for," said Kaufman. Rubio, the rest of the Gang of Eight and numerous other lawmakers claim a new amendment on border security should alleviate concerns that the bill focuses on legalization and not enough on border enforcement. The amendment reportedly calls for a major increase in border agents and requires completion of the border fence before any green cards are handed out. Kaufman isn't impressed. "Been there, done that. In 2006, they authorized a border fence and three months later they refused to fund it. All this talk is nothing unless there's appropriations," said Kaufman. "I know these guys. I know Chuck Schumer. I've been doing this a long time. As soon as they get what they want, they will not appropriate the funds for the border patrol agents, therefore there won't be any. They will not appropriate funds to build any more fence, therefore there won't be any more fence." Kaufman says anti-amnesty and pro-legal immigration groups are making their voices heard and don't need much help from her. She joined them in protesting at Rubio's office in Miami-Dade County, even holding a mock funeral for the American worker in connection with the unveiling of the immigration bill. "Marco Rubio's people had us thrown off the premises. He works for me. I helped get him elected. I pay his salary and he treats me like garbage. He treats all his constituents like that unless they have a checkbook," said Kaufman. 2016 holds multiple options for Rubio. He is up for re-election that year and many also expect him to seek the GOP presidential nomination. Kaufman says Florida conservatives have little enthusiasm more more Rubio and he should expect a fierce challenge if he runs for re-election. "Absolutely, he'll get a fierce primary challenge. He won't be able to beat back Charlie Crist if he decides to run as a Democrat, only because of this issue. He has ruined his political future," she said. |
| 'Wrongheaded and Dangerous' |
| Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:24:58 EST President Obama told a crowd in Berlin that we are "citizens of the world" and that he plans to reduce our nuclear arsenal by as many as 500 additional weapons, declarations that former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney says are a diminishing of American sovereignty and tantamount to unilateral disarmament. Speaking to about 6,000 people in the German capital, Obama said the world is becoming a smaller place and people everywhere need to be thinking of the common good. "We are not only citizens of America or Germany, we are also citizens of the world and our fates and fortunes are linked like never before," said Obama. "We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe." Gaffney, who is president of the Center for Security Policy and served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, says that kind of talk is dangerous. "It speaks to the idea that American sovereignty, and for that matter American exceptionalism, is all really secondary to just being a good member of the international community," said Gaffney. "My personal feeling of it is that's both wrongheaded, dangerous and had we pursued it in the past, we probably wouldn't see a free Berlin today." "There are lots of people in the world today, both at the nation-state level and sub-nation actors, who are deeply hostile to us and who view such statements, and particularly commitments by the president to engage in unilateral disarmament as evidence of weakness," said Gaffney. "History tells us that, typically, thugs, tyrants, bullies, despots of various kinds, are emboldened by such evidence of weakness on our part or even simply irresolution. That makes the world are more dangerous place by far." Obama stated that the 2010 START II Treaty reduced our nuclear arsenal to its lowest level since the 1950s, but he says a careful review of our program can allow for the reduction of one-third of our stockpile, which would mean the destruction of 500 additional nukes. The president says such a move would not limit our deterrent and he will encourage other world leaders to follow the same course. Gaffney isn't buying any of that. "The president didn't actually, I think, reach this decision on the basis of a review. I think he reached this decision on the basis of pre-ordained decisions about what he wanted to do, which is to rid the world of nuclear weapons starting with ours. And I think what he has done is try to get a study that will help him justify making these sorts of cuts," said Gaffney, who says this decision carries the same red flags that pop up in his mind when Obama refers to world citizenship. "The cumulative effect of this is that we're looking at behavior that suggests the United States is essentially determined to remove itself from the role of the greatest power in the world and make itself just one of a number of other nations," said Gaffney. Gaffney also says Obama has "reneged" on a key provision of START II that required the U.S. to modernize our nuclear weapons in order to ensure reliability of our arsenal. He says Obama "double-crossed" Republicans who were key to the treaty passing the Senate with two-thirds approval. Gaffney further fears that Obama will try to circumvent Congress on future arms reduction agreements because he knows the Senate is unlikely to go along. |
| Parsing Boehner |
| Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:25:50 EST Just days after stating he might bring an immigration bill to the House floor without support from a majority of Republicans, House Speaker John Boehner says that will not happen but a prominent critic of the Senate immigration bill says the devil is in the details. Following a meeting with House Republicans, Boehner tried to quash the buzz that he might buck his own conference to find common ground on immigration. "I don't see any way of bringing an immigration reform bill to the floor that doesn't have the majority support of Republicans," said Boehner. However, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says that firm statement may only apply to a bill that starts in the House. "He has been consistent on that as far as a bill coming to the floor of the House that the House generates. That is not the concern that (Iowa Rep.) Steve King, (Minnesota Rep.) Michele Bachmann and others and I have had," said Gohmert. "Our concern has been that even if we pass a very good bill, like (South Carolina Rep.) Trey Gowdy's bill, if the Speaker sends that to a conference committee and the report comes back and that's the one we're concerned may not have a majority of Republicans." A House-Senate conference committee is convened to reconcile different versions of legislation in the House and Senate. Once the conference agrees on a final version, the two chambers vote on that bill with no opportunity for amendments. That's the scenario that has Gohmert and others worried. "If we get a bill back that has amnesty and 99 percent of the Democrats vote for it and the Speaker can put the pressure on 30, 40, 50 of our guys, people that are committee chairs or in leadership positions, then they can still pass it even without a majority (of Republican support)," said Gohmert. "We have understood that the Speaker didn't want to bring a bill to the floor of the House originally . Our concern is bringing a conference report to the floor that a majority of the Republicans do not support," he said. According to press reports, Boehner was noncommittal on Tuesday when specifically asked whether his vow to require a majority of GOP support would apply to a House-Senate conference report. Even though Gohmert says there are several aspects of immigration policy that desperately need attention, the best move for the House is simply to avoid passing any legislation and avoid the creation of a conference. He is pushing for a party resolution to hold off on any bill until specific criteria are met. "Until the president secures the border, which is his legal obligation, as confirmed by the border state governors, then we do not, should not, will not take up any bill that provides any kind of legal status," said Gohmert. "This president has had plenty of time and he has not secured the border despite what they're saying. So once he gets amnesty for people that are here, what incentive does he have to ever secure the border?" Members of the Senate's "Gang of Eight" say they are also opposed to amnesty and insist their bill is something very different because of the taxes, fees, English language proficiency, delayed citizenship and other conditions that illegals would need to address. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio frequently declares the current immigration to be "de facto amnesty" because illegal immigrants are permitted to stay indefinitely since we have no idea that they're here. Gohmert rejects that assertion. "That's simply not true... Because the president is not using the money and the forces he has to enforce the law, he's basically given them amnesty himself. This has never happened before in the history of the country where the president has refused to follow the law and so Congress has come along and changed the law because the president refused to enforce it. I'm not aware of any time in our history where Congress has caved in because the president won't follow the law," said Gohmert. In addition to border security, Gohmert mentioned changes he would like to see in the visa program. Specifically, he is open to expanding visas, particularly, for agricultural workers, with one key condition. "There are a number of things that we can do with regard to the numbers of visas or the types of visas. I would love to see a temporary visa for farm workers that requires that sure, we'll give you a visa for temporary farm work but you have to provide an umbrella health insurance policy so the rest of the country doesn't provide all the health care for people who come in to do the farm work. We know we need workers in some areas, but there ought to be health care that the rest of the country doesn't have to pay for," said Gohmert. The congressman is also reacting to Monday's Supreme Court decision, which declared that states cannot require proof of citizenship from people registering to vote since federal law does not have the same requirement. The ruling was 7-2. Gohmert says Arizona deserves credit for trying to enforce the laws the federal government won't, but he says one of the most cherished rights in America is endangered because the court's decision. "It is a scary proposition, as noted by some of the international observers of our last election, who could not believe how lax we were in allowing the potential for fraud in our elections. Third world countries take more care to make make sure that people who vote are not voting more than once," said Gohmert. "There is no one in the world that is as lax as we are over something so critically important as voting. And so the people that are disenfranchised are all the legal voters." |
| No Money, Wrong 'Friendlies' |
| Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:15:05 EST President Obama is making a big mistake by arming the Syrian rebels because the administration still cannot identify the ones we can trust, according to retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney. McInerney also wonders how there can be any talk of a U.S.-led no-fly zone in Syria since the Obama administration has grounded a large percentage of the Air Force, allegedly over sequestration. The general rose to assistant vice chief of staff in the U.S. Air Force and was vice commander-in-chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe. He is currently a Fox News military analyst. Last week, the Obama administration publicly concluded that the Bashar al-Assad regime deployed chemical weapons against the rebels earlier in the year and the U.S. will begin arming the rebels and helping to effect regime change McInerney says it's hard to see the compelling U.S. interest in getting involved in another nation's civil war but he's even more concerned that the administration can't even identify the trustworthy actors in a rebellion featuring forces loyal to Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. "What are our interests in Syria today? They want to back Gen. (Salem) Idris of the Free Syrian Army? That's the wrong part of the Free Syrian Army. They don't even know the right part of the Free Syrian Army that they want to back," said McInerney. "So that makes it even more troubling and we're going to get into what we got in in Libya and resulted in Benghazi, supporting a radical Islamist state when we already had a tyrant there who was supporting us." McInerney says it is possible to find the right factions within the rebellion and deal exclusively with them but he says the Obama administration seems to have little interest in correctly identifying those elements. "This administration doesn't want to listen to the people who know who the reputable allies are , so that's the real difficulty," said McInerney. The general also scoffs at the idea of a no-fly zone in Syria thanks to what he considers wrong priorities by the administration in response to some modest belt-tightening. "You know where the no-fly zones are today? Over all the U.S. Air Force bases," said McInerney. "We have grounded one-third of the United States Air Force because of sequestration and the lack of the administration's initiative to ensure that these units are not standing down. So we have a huge problem there? "If we tried to do a no-fly zone against a rather sophisticated air defense system in Syria, it would cost a lot of resources that, frankly, aren't available right now because of the sequestration and the stand down driven by the Obama administration," said McInerney. So what should we do? McInerney largely agrees with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who says that containing the threat posed by any remaining weapons of mass destruction is by far the top U.S. national security interest in Syria. McInerney says it is especially critical to make sure the weapons don't get to Hezbollah. The general says the public is also giving thumbs down to the Obama policy, an assessment backed up by a new poll showing 70 percent of Americans oppose arming the rebels. "The American people do not want to get involved, particularly with boots on the ground, with any forces in Syria right now. And they're right," said McInerney. "Should we take out Bashar Assad? Yeah, I'd take him out, but that still won't solve the problem. You've got Russia, Iran and Hezbollah all backing Bashar Assad right now. So that's the difficulty." |
| 'Betrayal of the American People' |
| Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:22:14 EST California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is ripping Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and other Republicans for facilitating the Democratic approach to immigration reform and deceiving the American people about what's in the legislation. Rubio stated repeatedly in recent weeks that effective border security was essential to getting his vote for the final version, despite his role in drafting the original bill. Earlier this week, however, Rubio told a Univision audience, in Spanish, that the effort to legalize the millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. was the top priority. Let 19s be clear, 1d Rubio said. 1cNobody is talking about preventing the legalization. The legalization is going to happen. That means the following will happen: First comes the legalization. Then come the measures to secure the border. And then comes the process of permanent residence. 1d Rohrabacher is not impressed. "Rubio is so mixed up and so confused. I think he has given up his rightful place to advise any of us in Washington what to do and he's given up any right to be trusted by the American people," said Rohrabacher. Rubio tried to clarify his comments by saying that effective border security would be need to trigger permanent legal status or citizenship on current illegals, but that temporary legal status would be conferred as soon as the bill is passed. "This is just a lot of weasel words that Rubio and these people are throwing in. They're going to legalize the status of people here illegally. Once they do that, that is an amnesty. And once they do that, there will be no border security improvements. It'll all be a facade," said Rohrabacher, who says this bill would only attract tens of millions more illegal immigrants. Also this week, the Senate voted down an amendment to the immigration bill by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley that would require border security to be in place before any legal status is given to illegals. All four Republicans in the Gang of Eight voted against the amendment. "That shows you exactly what the intent of the people pushing the legislation is, the fact that they couldn't put legitimate triggers into the bill so we'd be able to determine whether the more had been made more secure. So the fact they had to vote that down in the Senate shows you that they're not serious and they're lying to us when they say otherwise," said Rohrabacher, who says he will not vote for any bill that legalizes the status of anyone who came to this country illegally. But it's not just the Republicans in the Gang of Eight who are pushing the GOP to get behind the bill. Rohrabacher says it's coming from all angles. "We have been in an era of massive propaganda and pressure on each and every one of us, from the big moneyed interests in our districts who want cheap labor to the liberal news media that want to further the cause of the liberal left. They've been pushing, pushing, pushing," said Rohrabacher. House Speaker John Boehner says immigration reform is his top priority and may not necessarily demand a majority of support from Republicans before bringing a bill to the floor. Rohrabacher says that would be completely unacceptable. "I would consider that a betrayal of the Republican members of the House and a betrayal of Republicans throughout the country," said Rohrabacher. "If Speaker Boehner moves forward and permits this to come to a vote even though a majority of Republicans in the House oppose whatever is coming to a vote, he should be removed as speaker." Roohrabacher also fears House and Senate leaders may try to ram this bill through before summer recess, giving members little time to read the bill and Americans no chance to confront their lawmakers over the break. He says doing that would be a "declaration of war" against opponents of legalization and a "betrayal of the American people." |
| Faith and Freedom in the Military |
| Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:27:47 EST Religious freedom in the military is a hot topic following the controversy that followed a meeting between Pentagon officials and a noted advocate for removing God from the military, and now Congress is on the verge of preserving those freedoms through the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The furor over the rights of service members to share their faith peaked in April and May after Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation held a meeting with Pentagon leaders and reportedly received assurances that members of the military found sharing their faith would be prosecuted. The Pentagon tried to tamp down criticism of those stories by saying expressing one's faith is fine but proselytizing is not. Now, Louisiana Rep. John Fleming is advancing an amendment to the NDAA that would guarantee service members not only the right to believe as they wish but to express those beliefs freely as well. "It allows for military members to exercise their first amendment right within appropriate limits, so that not only can they maintain their beliefs of conscience...but also they can express it and they can take action, which means they can have a bible on their desk or they can speak in a non-coercive fashion with other members," said Fleming, who adds that the amendment would not allow service members to disobey orders. "If your commanding officer says, 'Get in that tank and go shoot,' you can't say all of a sudden that it's against my religion. You can't do that," he said. In addition to the Pentagon meeting with Weinstein, several stories of religious freedoms being infringed concern Fleming. He says service personnel have been reprimanded for having a bible on their desk, been denied promotion because of their beliefs, expressing their beliefs in blogs and other forums or even serving Chick-fil-A at a promotion event. Fleming says that's just the tip of the iceberg. "It was pretty clear that there was a common thread of suppression for free speech, particularly for those who express religious beliefs and even particularly more for those who express Christian beliefs," he said. "In some of their training at the Pentagon, they claim that evangelical Christianity is an extremism and consistent with the KKK and Al Qaeda." The restrictions on military chaplains are also alarming to Fleming. "Chaplains have to have their speeches reviewed and accepted and certainly have words like "Jesus" removed from a Christian chaplain's prayer or a situation where they're not even allowed to hand a bible to someone or share their faith with someone. That's really what we've become," said Fleming. However, Fleming is encouraged that his amendment has sailed through the House Armed Services Committee and was part of the NDAA that passed the full House on Friday. He says there was strong bipartisan support for it. In addition, Utah Sen. Mike Lee is advancing the amendment in the Senate. It has passed the Democratically controlled Senate Armed Services Committee and now awaits consideration from the full Senate. But not everyone is on board. The Obama administration released a statement in recent days urging rejection of the amendment to protect the sharing of faith, claiming it would have "a significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale and mission accomplishment." Fleming says that's simply untrue and he is not fazed by the White House opposition. He believes if the Senate approves the NDAA with the religious freedom language, Obama won't be in the mood to pick a fight with so many members of his own party and will sign it into law. |
| UN Treaty Latest Gun Battle |
| Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:06:46 EST Gun rights advocates successfully fended off efforts to expand background checks, limit magazine capacity and ban certain firearms weeks ago, but a United Nations treaty that President Obama vows to sign could have the same impact even if the Senate rejects it. The United Nations Small Arms Trade treaty passed the UN General Assembly earlier this year. Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry announced President Obama would sign the treaty, noting it is an "important contribution to efforts to stem the illicit trade in conventional weapons, which fuels conflict, empowers violent extremists and contributes to violations of human rights." Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt says the impact of this treaty would be far more damaging than the relatively benign language suggests. "First of all, it's probably helpful to understand who's the good guys and who's the bad guys at the UN," said Pratt. "Most of those governments are at best crooked and often dictatorial, tyrannical and just horrible to have anything to do with. "When they talk about keeping guns out of the wrong hands, they're talking about keeping guns out of the hands of the people that might seek their freedom from these horrible governments. So for us to sign a treaty like that is for the United States to, in effect, sanitize, to approve of these governments, which we do anyway by being part of the UN, and give them morally a stronger hand in oppressing their people," said Pratt. Pratt also contends that the UN has a terrible track record in protecting human life. He says the horrors in Rwanda are a perfect example of why the UN has no business deciding who should and ahould not have access to guns. "Among its other distinctions was to preside over the genocide that occurred in Rwanda, taking nearly a million people's lives. UN, quote, peacekeepers would actually send the people fleeing the massacres back into the hands of those they were fleeing from. That's how horrible the UN is," said Pratt. "For us to be part of it means we don't have a problem with genocide. That's exactly why the peoples of the world need their guns, so that they can protect themselves from their own government. That's why we have a second amendment." Pro-second amendment groups like Gun Owners of America are heartened to know the treaty will never be officially binding on the United States. Even with Obama's signature, the treaty must be ratified by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate. That has virtually no chance of happening. In fact, 53 senators rejected the treaty on a recent vote. Sixty-seven senators are needed for ratification. But even if the Senate votes down the treaty, Pratt says Americans could still see their second amendment rights infringed. "Once 50 countries have signed in a treaty, then it's considered to be part of international law. While it doesn't technically bind countries that have not signed it, it puts them under increased pressure. Some of these countries. Some of these countries would, of course, welcome the opportunity to say, 'We've got to conform to international law.' I kind of suspect that the current government here in the United States would love to make such an argument," said Pratt, who notes two justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have cited international law in past rulings. Sixty nations have already signed the treaty, so it will be recognized by the UN as international law. Pratt previewed how life could change for existing and future gun owners if the U.S. courts bow to the UN position. "Our government, if it were to implement the terms of the treaty, would have to set up a national gun registration and licensing scheme so that it could make its due diligence in knowing where every gun is sold and bought. The idea being that if you lose track of them inside the country and who knows, they might end up in the hands of some poor Rwandan trying to save his life from his own government, and we can't have that," said Pratt. "Our own government hasn't had a problem putting guns in the hands of the Mexican cartel, leading to the death, the murder, of at least 400 Mexicans. It seems to me that if there's any gun control that's needed, it's control of our own government by we the people," he said. |
| Girls Pay Price for Politics |
| Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:19:18 EST The Obama administration is rescinding its opposition to a federal judge's ruling that all age restrictions should be removed on girls seeking to obtain the so-called Plan B morning after pill and the Family Research Council says the health of young girls is at risk as a result. Until this year, girls younger than 17 could not purchase Plan B on their own. Federal judge Edward Korman ruled in April that no age requirements should be in effect. The administration appealed that ruling at the time. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius subsequently lowered the minimum age to 15. Now the administration is allowing Judge Korman's ruling to stand. "The Obama administration is really caving into political pressure and putting those politics ahead of the health and safety of young girls and the rights of parents," said Anna Higgins, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council. So where did the pressure come from? "First of all, Judge Korman put a lot of pressure on Secretary Sebelius in his April decision. He basically gave her a scathing review saying she was politically motivated but really offered no hard evidence to prove that," said Higgins. "In addition to Judge Korman's decision, you have quite a few reproductive rights groups who are very supportive of the president pushing for this access over and over for years. I think they finally got to the point where they didn't want to fight this anymore." Higgins says this ruling will have consequences in multiple ways. She says making it simple for kids to keep their parents in the dark on an issue like this is a recipe for disaster and supporters of this decision have no good answers for why this is a good idea. "(Pro-choice groups) really have glossed over the issue. I think it's something that's not been sufficiently addressed. They say that they are going to encourage parents to talk to teens. Well, teens are going to have absolutely no motivation to talk to parents about this if they don't need to," said Higgins. "They have to have their parents' permission to obtain an aspirin at their school, yet we're going to allow them unfettered access to high dose contraceptives that are associated with premature sexual behavior. Not only will parents not have a say in a health decision affecting their child, they're also not going to have a say in, perhaps, the sexual behavior or decisions affecting the sexual behavior of their teens." So what impact could unsupervised use of Plan B have on the health of young girls? Higgins says the answer ranges from uncertainty to substantial risk. "No one knows what effects taking this high dose of hormones have on girls during puberty. There have been no studies on the effects of Plan B on these young girls, so we don't know what it's going to do to their bodies," said Higgins, who says a 2011 study in Britain discovered loosening Plan B restrictions resulted in a higher rate of sexually transmitted diseases in young girls. "Additionally, over the counter sales encourage repeat usage of the drug which is not safe. And there's no clear indication that young girls understand this is a one-dose use requirement," she said. Higgins says other problems emerge as the law tacitly encourages sexual activity among the very young. "We have young girls who are most at risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases or being sexually abused, who are going to be bypassing necessary medical screenings and guidance from parents that could detect these kinds of issues," said Higgins. |
| Further to the Left? |
| Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:50:11 EST Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says the nomination of Samantha Power to serve in his former position is an act of defiance to Republicans and a sign that Obama could be moving further to the left now that he doesn't have to face the voters again. Bolton further says the appointment of outgoing Amb. Susan Rice to be national security adviser is not as big of a deal. He says that should not be interpreted as a slap in the face because the move does not require Senate confirmation and if Obama really wanted a fight he would have nominated Rice to be secretary of state. When it comes to the UN post, Bolton says Senate Republicans should be willing to grill Power over what he considers an extreme record. "I think her view is very radical in a whole range of issues. Some of her public comments she's tried to back away from, but speaking as someone who wrote a lot and spoke a lot before my nomination, I remember how Democratic staffers and their senator bosses pored over articles and speeches that I've read, looking for one thing or another that they wanted to try and highlight," said Bolton, who was filibustered by Democrats despite having support from a majority of senators. He was later elevated to ambassador through a recess appointment. "If Republicans are inclined to do it, there be even more material in Samantha Power's background than there was in mine. I think the direction of her views on multilateral diplomacy and the role of the United States, I might say the reduced role of the United States, in the world and the increased role of the United Nations. If senators want to inquire at length about it, they will certainly have an opportunity," said Bolton. Power will almost certainly face stiff questions controversial statement she made about using U.S. forces to protect Palestinians from Israel. "She talked about preventing human rights abuses by Israel against the Palestinians, not protecting Israel from terrorist suicide bombers from Hamas and other terrorist groups but protecting the Palestinians from the Israelis," said Bolton. "There was blowback over that comment and she retracted it. It's one of these things when you make the mistake in Washington of being candid and people being candid and people actually hear what you think. Then when you say, 'Oh, I was misquoted or I was misconstrued or I didn't state it as well as I should have,' it's probably what you said first that you really believe and not the retraction." Bolton says the Power nomination will also move the administration further to the left on international issues, a direction Obama likely wanted to move from the start of his administration. "If anything, she's to the lefty of where the administration has been and I think she will try to move it further to the left," said Bolton. "That's the act of defiance to Republicans in the second term, to say, 'I don't have to face the voters anymore. I'm going to try and move in the direction ideologically I would have liked to move in before 2012 but wouldn't or couldn't do for fear of the political consequences. Since I never have to face the voters again, now I'm going to tell you what I really think." As for Rice, Bolton says Obama has the right to name whoever he wants as his national security adviser but he believes it's a consolation prize after the Benghazi controversy forced the president to abandon his plan to make Rice Secretary of State. He says it's unclear whether Rice was used in the Benghazi explanation or knowingly pushed the YouTube narrative. Either way, Bolton says Rice's political ambition came back to bite her. "Susan Rice was eager to volunteer to help advance her campaign for secretary of state. The White House thought that Rice would be an excellent person because she didn't know anything about Benghazi. She couldn't possibly make a mistake or reveal something they didn't want to reveal because the only thing she knew was what was in the talking points they gave to her," said Bolton. "Like all solutions that are too cute by half, it ends up hurting everyone involved." But just because Rice didn't get her preferred job, Bolton says she will have immense influence because of her close relationship with Obama and because of how the administration conducts foreign policy. "I don't think there's any doubt that the second Obama term will be like the first Obama term in that all key foreign and defense policy issues are going to be decided at the White House, not the Defense Department, not the State Department," he said. |
| Rolling Kidney Stones |
| Fri, 7 Jun 2013 16:13:59 EST The Capitol Steps salute the Rolling Stones and their 50th anniversary U.S. tour with an updated version of their classic parody "The Rolling Kidney Stones". |
| China's Big Grab |
| Thu, 6 Jun 2013 13:16:05 EST China is claiming control over the vast majority of the South China Sea in it's latest effort to challenge U.S. authority and President Obama has to make it clear that cannot happen, according to retired U.S. Navy Admiral James "Ace" Lyons. The New York Times reported last weekend that China is quietly distributing official maps to foreign diplomats showing it controls 80 percent of the South China Sea, considerably more than it has publicly claimed in the past. Six different nations have competing claims for various parts of the sea, which is rich in oil, gas and minerals. If China were recognized as controlling 80 percent of the sea, foreign planes and ships would have to seek permission to enter those critical waters. Lyons, who served 36 years in the U.S. Navy and completed his career as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, says this simply cannot be allowed to happen and it's incumbent upon President Obama to stop it. "President Obama has to be very clear and let China know we will not tolerate their illegal claims to these vast ocean areas that have been recognized for centuries as international waters," said Lyons, who says Obama has a golden opportunity to set things straight this week, when he meet with the Chinese leader in California. "This will probably be one of the first issues discussed at the summit and I'm sure that our allies will be watching carefully how President Obama handles this issue." According to Lyons, the U.S. Navy policy on the South China Sea has been consistent from the beginning of our nation and he says China benefits from the longstanding policy as well. "The United States Navy has stood for freedom of navigation and the right of innocent passage for over 236 years and we're certainly not going to change course now. And we're certainly not going to back down on that recognized principle. China has to recognize they've benefited greatly from that principle," said Lyons. The admiral says this move by the Chinese is a major step toward a larger, more disturbing goal: surpassing the United States on the high seas. "China has built a navy specifically to fight the United States Navy. You know, their anti-ship ballistic missile is not to go against the Bangladesh Navy," said Lyons. "We should consider that an unfriendly act. By their actions, they have thrown down the hatchet. They really are signaling to us that we are entering the 21st century where we're in another Cold War with another communist, totalitarian regime," said Lyons. So what would the best U.S. strategy be to make the Chinese reverse course? "First of all, we have to make clear to China that we will stand by our mutual defense treaty with our allies over this issue should hostilities develop," said Lyons, who is very critical of what he sees as decreasing of our military might. "We have to stop this unilateral disarmament that we've been going through. When we have five carriers tied up at the piers in Norfolk, Virginia, that's unconscionable because we don't have the funds to operate them. So sequestration has got to be reversed," said Lyons. Most of America's nuclear focus since the end of the Cold War centered on the Asian subcontinent, North Korea, Iran and other rogue states. Lyons says the U.S. needs to appreciate just how much of an arsenal China likely holds. "The Russians estimate that the Chinese have over 1,800 strategic warheads. That's much more than the 300 we give them credit for. So when we sit down with the Russians on any future arms limitations talks, the Chinese need to be forced to participate and be at the table," said Lyons. "And to further put teeth in that, President Obama has to live up to the commitment that he made when he got Congress to sign off on the last arms treaty agreement with the Russians and that was to modernize our strategic infrastructure and the development of a new warhead." Lyons admits China holding a sizable chunk of our debt hurts U.S. efforts to demand policy changes, but he says it's not as big of a factor as some suggest. "I think that works both ways. That's one side of the equation but we also have leverage on the other. I believe China needs us more than we need them. They need this market here and they can't afford to lose it," said Lyons. |
| Hasan Admission Embarrassing for Obama |
| Wed, 5 Jun 2013 17:04:23 EST A military judge had no choice but to allow Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan to represent himself at trial and probably couldn't stop Hasan from turning the courtroom into a platform for his radical Islamic views, according to former U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy. McCarthy, who led the successful prosecution against the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, also says the Obama administration looks increasingly bad for refusing to call the Ft. Hood attack an act of terrorism now that Hasan is admitting why he carried out the massacre. The attack in November 2009 killed 13 people and injured 32 others. Earlier this week, Hasan was granted permission by Judge Col. Tara Osborn to act as his own counsel in the upcoming trial. McCarthy says Osborn really had no choice. "I don't see how the judge could avoid it. As the Supreme Court has held, if you make a knowing and intelligent decision before the trial starts that you want to represent yourself, you have an absolute constitutional right to do that," said McCarthy. "I think that the objections that people have or the fears they have that by representing himself he's going to turn the proceedings into a circus are a little bit overblown. Let's face it, even if he weren't representing himself he could try to turn the case into a circus if that's what he was determined to do. "Whether he'll be able to do that or not is really going to be a function of how strong the judge presiding over the trial is, not whether (Hasan's) just a defendant at the table or the defendant who represents himself," said McCarthy. McCarthy says Hasan's strategy is most likely to lay the grounds for an appeal of a likely death sentence. "What a defendant is always trying to do is sow error into the record because that's the best chance you have of getting the outcome reversed on appeal. I think what he's really trying to accomplish here is get the death penalty off the table one way or the other. This is a way that makes the trial a little bit more chaotic," said McCarthy, who says if Hasan is convicted and sentenced to death he has a good chance of finding a sympathetic appellate court that could save his life. Another issue in the case is what discovery evidence Hasan will have access to as he prepares his defense. McCarthy says the government's cautious charges in this case should limit the amount of sensitive information provided to Hasan. "It would concern me more if he were being accused as an Al Qaeda operative because then there would be an argument that he should be given the discovery about the overall Al Qaeda conspiracy," said McCarthy. "The way the prosecution has a way of regulating how much or how little a defendant is entitled to in terms of discovery is how you plead the case. "In this case, the prosecution has plead the case narrowly. They've gone out of their way not to accuse him of terrorism, which I think is a mistake but I think they have made it a simple, straightforward homicide case. Therefore, I would say that he should not be entitled to any discovery about our enemies," said McCarthy, who says the only Al Qaeda-related content the prosecution will likely mention is Hasan's relationship with radical cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki. Hasan is also asking for a delay in the start of the trial because of his intent to pursue a new, "defense of others" strategy. When asked by Judge Osborn who he was defending, Hasan mentioned the leadership of the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. McCarthy says he would not delay the trial any further and hopes the judge will rule that way. He also says Hasan's admission of carrying out the killings and why he did it put the Obama administration in a bad light for refusing to call the Ft. Hood attack an act of terrorism and referring to it instead as "workplace violence". "It was always preposterous for the U.S. government to claim that they couldn't acknowledge that this was terrorism because to do so would prejudice his trial. It wouldn't have had any bearing on his trial whatsoever. To make an accusation that's simply accurate is never something that is prejudicial to a trial," said McCarthy, who believes Hasan is trying to make the government squirm as a result of its reticence to accurately describe his actions. "This simply underscores that this was a a jihadist terror attack. It should never have been looked at in any other way. And it's kind of embarrassing for the Obama administration to be insistent that this is workplace violence or to bend over not only backwards but to contort themselves unrecognizably in order to avoid acknowledging what's perfectly obvious, which is that this is Islamic supremacist-driven terrorism," said McCarthy. |
| Twice As Bad As Watergate |
| Mon, 3 Jun 2013 15:00:37 EST FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe says the IRS scandal is twice as bad as Watergate because of the breathtaking extent the agency was used to target conservative organizations filing for tax-exempt status as well as their donors. "Watergate was an example of abuse of power by a few very powerful people, including the Chief Executive and the specific targeting of a few specific enemies," said Kibbe. "In this case, you have an institution-wide bias, a widely-known understanding that the IRS was targeting people based on their politics and their political philosophy. It was known for several years and yet it continued and it continued, and so you have one of the most powerful agencies of the federal government, as policy, going after the citizens, the mom-and-pop community leaders. They weren't powerful. They weren't in a position to fight back. It was a widely known thing among tea partiers for years and now the rest of America is finding out about it." Kibbe says the more details we learn about this scandal suggest far more high-ranking officials were aware of the IRS policy toward conservative groups than the Obama administration is willing to admit. "The story coming out of the White House and the trail back to the top of the executive branch continues to grow and the story continues to change and we still don't know who knew what," said Kibbe. "The path of authority is quite clear here. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department. The head of the Treasury Department reports directly to the President of the United States. For the Obama White House or even the Treasury Department to claim that they knew nothing about that, either they're grossly incompetent or they're not being honest and that's what we need to get to the bottom of." What may lead to a very different conclusion than Watergate is the lack of a paper trail. Kibbe says he would be surprised if there is an actual email or voice mail suggesting Obama was personally involved in developing this policy, but he says all you need to see are Obama's public statements on Tea Party groups. "I think this was broadcast right on the evening news when Obama questioned the right and the motives of tea partiers and conservative donors who were out there fighting for what they believed in," said Kibbe, who says administration officials kept the story from going public before the 2012 elections. He believes Obama likely would have lost to Mitt Romney if the story had come to light before Election Day. FreedomWorks received its tax-exempt status years before the dawn of the Tea Party movement and has not been audited as part of the IRS scrutiny on conservatives. But Kibbe says FreedomWorks donors were targeted and that aspect of the story might be an even bigger scandal. "That is probably the bigger scandal when we work our way down the food chain, that individuals are being targeted, and not just by the IRS but by various agencies of the federal government, for their political beliefs, for who they've decided to give money to," said Kibbe. "It gets to our first amendment rights and I do think that we need to understand that the institutional difference today is that the most powerful institutions of he federal government now have the ability to go after citizens that they disagree with. And that's the definition of tyranny." Kibbe says donors have not been intimidated by the IRS and news of the scandal. He believes forced government transparency is emboldening activists and the actions of the IRS only fuel the desire for smaller, more open government. |
| Capitol Steps Scandal Special |
| Fri, 24 May 2013 16:42:02 EST Scandals are dominating the headlines in Washington and in the music of the Capitol Steps. This week, a double feature from Washington's premiere musical satirists. They target the IRS targeting of conservative groups in "When IRS Guys are Smiling" and the Benghazi scandal in "Lie,Lie,Lie." Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| DOJ Demands Gay Advocacy |
| Fri, 24 May 2013 15:46:28 EST The Justice Department continues its promotion of the homosexual agenda and now commands managers to publicly affirm that agenda because "silence will be interpreted as disapproval." A DOJ employee forwarded written and electronic communication from the department that spell out the pro-homosexual expectations of all employees. "The brochure is a list, a series of dos and don'ts for managers in dealing with homosexuals and cross-dressing employees," said Matt Barber, vice president for Liberty Counsel Action and director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel. Barber wrote about this development in his most recent weekly column. In an email and brochure entitled, "LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers," employees are warned to verbally affirm homosexuality. "DON'T judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval," the email reads. It also quotes a homosexual DOJ employee who says, ""Silence seems like disapproval. There's still an atmosphere of LGBT issues not being appropriate for the workplace (particularly for transgender people), or that people who bring it up are trying to rock the boat." "It's a complete violation of the first amendment. Why should we be surprised? This is a Department of Justice and indeed an Obama administration that has shown nothing but disdain for the first amendment," said Barber. In addition, managers are urged to display pro-homosexual materials in their office, such as a DOJ Pride sticker, in order to let homosexuals know that office is a "safe space". They are also urged to attend LGBT events. Using terms like husband or wife is also discouraged in favor of terms like spouse, partner or significant other. As for transgenders, affirmation is demanded for them as well. A transgender worker in the email is quoted as saying, "I want people to understand that I'm real. I want to be recognized as the gender I really am. . . . Just imagine if people were constantly debating YOUR bathroom privileges. Imagine how humiliating that would be." "So this is the DOJ picking sides, choosing sides, in a highly controversial, highly polarizing cultural debate and essentially threatening without proscribing specific punitive measures," said Barber. "This is how clever they are. They know they can indirectly threaten any managers but if the included any specific threats the lawsuits would fly. "It's out position this is enough. This creates a chilling effect, not in the sense that it silences managers. This is even worse. This is a chilling effect in the sense that it bullies and intimidates managers to violate their conscience and speak positively about aberrant sexual behavior within the Department of Justice. It's Orwellian that they would even think they would get away with doing this," said Barber. Barber says this is an even more extreme example of how the homosexual lobby is not content with getting what they want but their intention to demonize anyone who disagrees with them. "This just illustrates the homosexual activist lobby's insatiable appetite for absolute affirmation of something that I believe intuitively and they know in their hearts is wrong. It's sin," said Barber. "It's immoral behavior. It's unnatural behavior and I believe they know that intuitively, so they have to compel others to affirm, even if they don't agree with, their lifestyle choices. "So this is really 'The Emperor's New Clothes' in the sense that they have to affirm a delusion. I mean a man dressed as a woman, a woman dressed as a man, that that is actually a third or fourth or ninth or whatever kind of gender. It's 'The Emperor's New Clothes' meets George Orwell," said Barber. Liberty Counsel is urging any Justice Department employees to share their stories of intimidation on this front. The group can be reached by phone at 800-671-1776 or by email at liberty@lc.org. |
| 'New and Troubling' |
| Thu, 23 May 2013 14:22:00 EST Famed constitutional attorney Floyd Abrams is deeply troubled by the Justice Department's controversial seizure of Associated Press phone records and the targeting of a Fox News reporter as a criminal and he says the White House reaction to the stories is woefully insufficient. In his lengthy career of trying first amendment cases, Abrams defended the publishers of the Pentagon Papers, Al Franken against the Fox News Channel and tobacco companies against the Food and Drug Administration. The Justice Department is under heavy scrutiny for seizing phone records for more than 20 phone lines connected to Associated Press reporters without trying to secure cooperation from AP in the first place. Days later it was revealed that James Rosen of Fox News was branded a criminal and a co-conspirator in a State Department leak over a story on North Korea. Abrams says there is always a tension between the prying role of the press and the protecting role of the government, but he believes the recently revealed actions of the Justice Department go beyond previous federal attempts to limit information seen by the public. "The notion that in the name of finding out who leaked information that more or less anything goes in an effort to find that out. That's something new. That sort of breaches the wall that has historically existed," said Abrams. "It's a new and troubling development." White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to both the Associated Press and Rosen stories by saying the administration respects the right of an unfettered press to pursue stories but that there needs to be a balance with national security concerns. While optimistic that federal officials will shape up as a result of these controversies, Abrams says the reaction from the White House is less than reassuring. "Yeah, I mean that's true that you need a balance and it's true, of course national security matters a lot, a lot, a lot. The fact is it's just not an answer to what they've done. They can protect national security by giving AP notice in advance and letting them go to court and fight it out. They can protect national security without defaming and branding journalists as criminals," said Abrams. "I think they've got to lighten up a little bit and be a little more realistic about the proposition that leak investigations are not the single greatest priority of any administration, or they shouldn't be." According to Abrams, leak investigations are often justified but the Justice Department made a big mistake is never trying to solicit cooperation from the AP. "As a general proposition, you've got to tell the press organization. You've got to talk to them. You have to try to come to some sort of agreement," said Abrams. "If you can't, and I don't think they could have here, that gives the press organization a chance to go to court and have a judge decide how to weight this factor and that factor, you know how much does the government need it as against what is the intrusion into the freedom of the press. "I do fault the Justice Department for not giving them notice, for not giving them a chance to go to court. The only possible justification that I can think of, certainly on the record here, is that the department said they were doing it because it would interfere with the investigation. I don't know how. I'm not persuaded of that at all," he said. His skepticism was bolstered by subsequent reporting that the Associated Press honored CIA requests to hold the story on a terrorist plot to bomb an airliner out of Yemen near the one-year anniversary of the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden. The AP honored that request and held the story until the CIA confirmed the security threat had passed. The Obama administration then requested a delay of another day so it could break the news. The organization rejected that request and ran the story ahead of the White House announcement. "The AP really played by the rules and by the rules I mean the responsible rule of journalists behaving the way we would like them to," said Abrams, who says the AP was fully justified in rejecting the White House request and publishing the story whenever it wanted once the CIA gave clearance. "Whether any of this after that was in retribution is hard to tell but it just makes the whole thing even more suspicious in terms of whether there was that sort of national security need to behave as the department did. It's not a little thing for them to go to the telephone company and gather records of a news organization without permission," said Abrams. As alarmed as Abrams is by the Justice Department's treatment of the Associated Press, he's even more uneasy about the department declaring Rosen a criminal and getting a warrant for his phone and email records and those of Fox News executives and even Rosen's parents. "I think this one's even worse than the AP story. I've read the redacted version that is available of the application that the Department of Justice made in court. They basically accused the journalist of being a criminal, literally a criminal, for doing the interviewing that they did and trying to persuade someone to give them a story," said Abrams. "Journalists at their best are prying, are asking questions, are trying to get information. Treating them like criminals, branding them as criminals is absolutely unacceptable." |
| IRS Trampled Over Rights |
| Wed, 22 May 2013 16:48:33 EST Washington Rep. Dave Reichert says outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller failed to honor his oath before the House Ways & Means Committee last week and that the congressional investigation into the government targeting and harassing conservative organizations is just getting started. Reichert was one of several committee members who grilled Miller on Friday and came away frustrated by Miller 19s chronic memory lapses. In one exchange, Miller could remember who he spoke with about where responsibility lies for this scandal but couldn 19t remember who that person believed was ultimately responsible for the policy. 1cI think that Mr. Miller was not abiding by the oath that he took right before his testimony began. He was asked to stand and hold his right hand in the air and testify to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Mr. Miller, I believe, was not true to that oath, 1d said Reichert. 1dI don 19t know if his attorneys were advising him to be vague in his answers and answer 18I don 19t know 19 because of some concern there may be some future implications legally for Mr. Miller, but that 19s my guess. 1d 1cIt was really a disservice to the American people and shows an arrogance. In fact, when I asked Mr. Miller if he felt any duty on his part to share the information he knew with Congress, he said that he saw absolutely none. He also mentioned that he really didn 19t feel any compulsion or any responsibility in going to his boss, 1d said Reichert, who says that same attitude seems to be rampant in the White House as well. 1cI think that the unfolding events of the White House timeline shows, if not deception, at least a great amount of confusion that leads one to suspect that there may be some lack of memory purposefully from some of the persons representing what the White House knew when, 1d he said. Reichert says we are just seeing the early stages of this investigation since one hasn 19t been done yet - even by the IRS. He says it 19s important to note that the IRS inspector general 19s report was not at all exhaustive. 1cThe IG has only done an audit and that audit is still in the process. The actual investigation of who knew what and when is really just beginning, 1d said Reichert. 1dThere are a number of avenues that this investigation will follow and then determining the outcome of who will lose their jobs, who may be charged with a crime, if anyone. That 19ll all come at the conclusion of these investigations. 1d In addition to getting to the bottom of the scandal, many members of Congress are urging policy changes such as stripping the IRS of Obamacare enforcement powers or reforming the tax code to minimize the role of the agency. For Reichert, the most important thing is reining in the imperial attitude of the IRS and others in government. 1cThe biggest issue for me is the arrogance of our IRS leadership, that they can do anything they want to do. The issue really boils down to our civil rights as Americans guaranteed by the Constitution. The IRS in my opinion has trampled all over those rights, 1d said Reichert. |
| The Untold Military Sex Scandal |
| Tue, 21 May 2013 16:14:24 EST A recent military report on sexual assault in the military shocked many in Washington and around the nation, but a leading expert on military personnel says the prevalence of men assaulting other men is one of the major headlines in this study. The extended analysis of the report first appeared in Monday's edition of the The Washington Times. The Defense Department survey of sexual assault in the military during Fiscal 2012 estimated 26,000 assaults took place in the Armed Forces. Nearly three thousand of them were formally reported. Just over six percent of women reported being victims of assault and 1.2 percent of men said the same. Given the much larger number of men in the military, those numbers suggest 14,000 of the assaults in the Pentagon study happened to men. In the assaults formally reported, 88 percent came from women and 12 percent from men. The numbers are getting dramatically worse. "The number of reports of sexual assaults among military personnel have actually increased by 129 percent since 2004," said Center for Military Readiness President Elaine Donnelly, who points out the number of formal reports of sexual assault jumped from 1,275 to 2,949 in just eight years. She says when factoring in civilians working for or around the military, the increase in that time is 98 percent. Women are identified as the attacker in just two percent of all assaults, meaning the vast majority of men who suffer assault are targeted by other men. "So we've got a male-on-male problem here. The Department of Defense doesn't want to comment on this. They know that the numbers are there. They say that they care, but all the attention is usually given to the female members of the military who are subjected to sexual assault," said Donnelly. The Washington Times article, which also includes analysis from Aaron Belkin, who heads The Palm Center. He says the rise in male-on-male sexual assault does not reflect the increase of homosexuals in the military but rather those assaults are "somewhat similar to prison rape." "Well, that's a great slogan to use for recruiting young men into the military, isn't it? It's outrageous. And yet, the Department of Defense doesn't quite know what to do with these figures and so they just sort of put them in there and hope nobody notices," said Donnelly, who points out The Palm Center is a gay activist organization. While Donnelly fiercely opposed repealing the ban on gays in the military, she says we need to keep monitoring the numbers to determine how much that policy change specifically contributes to the problem. She says the increase in sexual assaults against female service members should not be diminished either. Donnelly says a lot of work lies ahead to reverse this trend but the military and the federal government are kidding themselves if they don't think some major policy decisions aren't contributing to the rise in sexual violence. "I think we have to start with the basics and that means basic training. Back in 1998, unanimously, the Kassebaum-Baker Commission came out with recommendation to separate basic training for Army, Air Force and Navy trainers, (to) do it like the Marines do. The Marines train basic training separately, male and female at Parris Island. That's a good thing to do. It's a good first start," said Donnelly. "Second, they should stop pretending that sexuality does not matter. You cannot solve a problem by extending it into the combat arms. The big push for women in combat, this argument that we have to have women in the infantry so they'll be respected more and they won't be assaulted," said Donnelly, who says the push for women in combat that started more than a generation ago from then-Colorado Rep. Pat Schroeder has been thoroughly discredited. "Respect for women in the military today is higher than ever, but the sexual assault numbers keep climbing up. I think before we start implementing a theory that's been discredited. The members of the Pentagon and the people who make policy in Congress as well, they need to stop. They need to assess where we are, what has happened in the last two decades and they need to stop pretending that a lot of sensitivity training or highly paid consultants, that that is going to make a difference in the sex problems we're seeing right now," said Donnelly. |
| 'Solution in Search of A Problem' |
| Mon, 20 May 2013 15:44:13 EST The Interior Department is proposing new federal rules for hydraulic fracturing that the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee says is unnecessary and will only limit energy production and economic growth. Hydraulic fracturing, known more commonly as fracking, is an increasingly effective method by which oil and gas are extracted from rock formations. Estimates suggest the energy production potential in fracking is massive and states like North Dakota and Pennsylvania have already enjoyed significant economic benefits. And while the concept is somewhat new to many Americans, it has actually been in practice for decades. That's exactly why Washington Congressman and House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings says new rules from Washington are not needed. "For a long time, 60-70 years, the states have regulated hydraulic fracturing. So there hasn't been a nationwide rule. Frankly, it's for that reason that I think that this proposed regulation is a solution in search of a problem, because the states have done it very, very successfully for a number of years," said Hastings. Now, the Interior Department's proposed rule would require compliance with mandates such as "requiring operators to disclose the chemicals they use in fracturing activities on public lands; improving assurances of well-bore integrity to verify that fluids used during fracturing operations are not contaminating groundwater; and confirming that oil and gas operators have a water management plan in place for handling fluids that flow back to the surface." The government would also mandate which type of tools extractors could and could not use. Hastings says these and other proposals just prove the federal government is meddling needlessly. "What they're getting at is trying to, at least on federal land, have a nationwide, one-size-fits-all regulation," said Hastings. "All of those three concerns are covered by states with their laws on hydraulic fracturing, so there's nothing new here. The states have been doing it. They've been doing it very well and I think we need to respect that." While noting that states already have tough environmental standards in place, Hastings says different states have slightly different regulations because the conditions in each state are different - something a sweeping federal rule fails to take into account. "Not every state is exactly the same," said Hastings. "All states are different as to the make-up of their geology. Each state knows their geology than other states. This is a solution looking for a problem." Hastings says the Department of the Interior has allowed states to pursue their own regulations in other areas, which makes this decision all the more confusing. But he also believes there are politics involved by some in the administration. "They don't like the development of the oil and gas industry. In fact, they have said that indirectly with their promotion of green energy. I suspect that eventually this could be some sort of tool to slow the process down. It's slow enough on federal lands already. This could be a way to slow it down even more," said Hastings. "If this goes into effect, I think it'll probably slow down energy development on federal lands. I can't draw any other conclusions because any time you look at other federal regulations, even in other industries, the end result tends to be a slowdown in production or a slowdown of activity with whatever those regulations are trying to regulate and I suspect that'll be the same in this," said Hastings. Hastings and other GOP members are also furious that after some three years of putting this new rule for federal lands together, the Interior Department is allowing just 30 days of comment before making a final determination on implementation. "We will be asking, officially from the committee, that they extend the comment period to 120 days. I suspect there will be other groups asking for the same, because 30 days on a rule or regulation like this that's been three-some years in the making is too short of a time period. There's too much at stake with this," he said. |
| Richmond Tea Party vs. IRS |
| Fri, 17 May 2013 16:10:22 EST The IRS and the entire Obama administration are under scrutiny after revelations last week that hundreds of conservative organizations suffered undue harassment and intrusion by the IRS after applying for tax-exempt status. Groups with "tea party" or "patriot" were made especially uncomfortable. Larry Nordvig is executive director of the Richmond Tea Party and explains how he first suspected the IRS was going far beyond its normal duties in delaying and demanding information from the group. "There were two things that tipped us off. Number one was the length of time. Our organization figured it would take maybe six months to a year. We were willing to put up with that. They do need to take a good, hard look to make sure you are who you say you are. That's fine. That's legitimate," said Nordvig. "But after it went past a year, it felt like stonewalling, especially when you're coming up on over two years. The time element was one. "The second thing that tipped us off was the second round of questions that they sent and that was a 12-group set of a total of about 55 questions. But those questions had sub-questions and those sub-questions had bullets. It was extremely hard information to try to dig up. It produced over 500 pages of documents and they only gave us two weeks to do it. We knew something was wrong right there," said Nordvig. Many of the questions demanded very personal information, including every piece of literature ever published, background on every speaker and copies of every speech from each event, lists of donors and how much they contributed. Nordvig says there was much more. "They wanted all of our communications, so any kind of email of Facebook communication with any of our members, which obviously would tip off their identity. They wanted to know who we associated with, who our members associated with. One of the most alarming ones was they wanted pictures of our web pages, including the member log-in only pages, which would have been very private. We did not give that to them," said Nordvig, who says the demand for donor information was also greatly disturbing. "The entire purpose of us filing for that 501 (c) 4 status is so that our donors can remain anonymous. If they can't remain anonymous, they don't donate money. I think whoever set this up, this was one of their primary goals," said Nordvig. He says those behind this IRS strategy succeeded in part to limit the impact Tea Party groups could make. "It knocks you off your mission because instead of doing what we're supposed to be doing, which is political education and advocacy, we're dealing with miles and miles of red tape and stacks of documents of more than 500 pieces," said Nordvig. "We lost a lot of donors because of this whole cloud hanging over us. People either didn't want to touch it or they were afraid their information would be made public. So we literally lost money." "Now we find out that was on purpose. It definitely impacted our ability to accomplish our mission," he said. The Richmond Tea Party subsequently sought legal counsel from the American Center for Law and Justice. It didn't take long for the group to learn there were plenty of like-minded organizations dealing with the same IRS meddling. Thus far, two IRS officials have been asked to resign. President Obama insists he didn't know about the scandal until last Friday. Nordvig isn't buying that explanation and he does not see these early actions as anywhere close to being severe enough in terms of punishment. "No, we are absolutely not satisfied at this point. That has to be made clear. This is an extremely serious event that every single American should be very, very worried about. What you're talking about is the government knowingly targeting political groups using the second most powerful arm of the government, second only to the military is the IRS. They can destroy your lives," said Nordvig. "All you have to do is replace Tea Party with your individual name or you can put in Green, Justice, Progressive, whatever. Put yourself in our shoes. If the power flip-flopped up in the White House, I don't think you would want this kind of attention." Nordvig also explained what needs to happen before he is satisfied. "We need to find out how high this goes, how wide it goes, how deep it goes. The more we find out, it's like peeling back those onion layers. The more we find out, the worse this thing gets. That's why we won't be satisfied until we have a complete, thorough congressional investigation because they're not coming clean otherwise," said Nordvig. |
| 'An Unconscionable Bridge Too Far' |
| Thu, 16 May 2013 15:56:18 EST Just days after the IRS admitted making life miserable for conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status, Georgia Rep. Tom Price says the agency cannot be trusted to enforce the Obama health care laws and is pushing legislation to strip the IRS of any new powers connected to the law. The "Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013" would bar the IRS from "implementing or enforcing" any components of the health care laws. "We always opposed utilizing the IRS in this fashion. They have no expertise in that area and we just think that it's inappropriate to have the IRS involved in people's health care," said Price, a physician and member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee that will hold hearings on IRS abuses on Friday. "When it became clear that the IRS has been abusing it's privilege of gaining information from folks and treating certain Americans differently than other Americans, then that was just an unconscionable bridge too far and we said, 'Well, we've got to do something about this," said Price. "This bill, H.R. 2009 simply says that the IRS may not be involved in any aspect of the president's health care law." Updated reports on the depth of the IRS scandal suggest the politically motivated activities were far more widespread than the IRS admits. Price says the rampant bullying of Americans based on political beliefs proves the agency should be nowhere near our health care system. "It was not just targeting groups that were applying for a tax exempt status but that they were asking for information about who were the donors to those entities and then going after the donors themselves. This is much broader than picking an organization or two," said Price. "If you let your mind draw a parallel to health care, then it's wholly possible that the IRS could then determine whether or not the health care you were purchasing or where you were going was the kind of health care they wanted you to have or they wouldn't allow you to have or didn't comply with their dictates or their mandates in something so very, very personal as health care. "As a physician, I can tell you that is absolutely irresponsible and unconscionable, and we're going to do all that we can to make certain that the IRS doesn't get that power," said Price. Not surprisingly, many House Republicans are enthusiastically backing Price's bill and the congressman says Texas Sen. John Cornyn intends to introduce the bill on the Senate side. Democrats are not lining up behind the legislation yet, but Price believes some of them might. "Many of them are also disgusted by what the IRS has done and I think the next step for them is to answer, 'Well, in that case, don't you believe that the IRS ought to be strictly confined to its original mission and do so in a transparent way as opposed to expanding its mission to get into people's health care?'" said Price. The congressman does not believe that the IRS will suddenly play by the rules just because it was caught in the current scandal. He says a "trust but verify" approach would be needed to determine whether the IRS really cleaned up its act and there's not enough time for it to prove real reforms have taken place before Obamacare is implemented Price does not believe the explanation that this targeting of conservative groups and individuals was the work of a few rogue, low-level staffers. "This had to come from somewhere up the chain. Was it the individual in charge of the tax-exempt division? Was it the secretary of the treasury? Or does it go further than that? That's what we need to answer with our oversight," he said. Price does not buy President Obama's carefully worded denials about what his staff knew about this scandal. "Call me skeptical, but I believe the White House was involved in this activity," he said. |
| Criminalizing IRS Harassment |
| Wed, 15 May 2013 16:55:48 EST Ohio Rep. Michael Turner says the IRS hassling and prying into hundreds of conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status is outrageous but may have actually been legal, so he is introducing legislation to criminalize such activity. "Unfortunately, it currently isn't a crime if a political appointee or a faceless bureaucrat gets up as a supervisor and walks over and instructs a bunch of employees to begin targeting the American public. That's wrong. It should be a crime," said Turner, who adds this was a crime if the directive to make life miserable for conservative groups came from the White House. Turner's legislation, the Taxpayer Nondiscrimination and Protection Act of 2013, would make it a crime for anyone else to do it. The bill calls for five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for anyone found to be targeting organizations as a result of their political ideology. "By making it a crime, we hope to stop it. When that supervisor walks in that employee's office and gives him that direction when they know it's a crime and that they themselves could go to jail for five years and pay a $5,000 penalty, they're going to think twice and hopefully stop," said Turner. In addition to forbidding the IRS from targeting those of a particular political persuasion, the bill affords the same rights to religious organizations. "This covers the gamut. Although they have targeted conservatives this time, we want to make sure that it's all inclusive. If that is undertaken, then they have committed a felony," said Turner. The House Ways and Means Committee will hold the first hearings on the IRS abuses on Friday. Turner says there a lot of questions that still need answers. "We need to to find out where was this initiated, who started it, who directed it, who participated in it and also who knew about it. Those people are all complicit and bear responsibility," said Turner. "In addition, now we're getting information that some of the confidential information that was solicited from these groups may have been leaked to other political organizations. Now that is a crime and these investigations should include that and people need to be pursued and held accountable." Turner isn't ready to accuse President Obama of any involvement in the scandal at the this point, but he says Obama's reaction to the IRS scandal was underwhelming. "The president's reaction is also appalling because we hear from the White House not the the type of outrage that you would hear if these were groups that were supportive of President Obama. So it sort of sets a tone that I think everyone should be very concerned about," said Turner. The IRS apology did not impress him either. "When the IRS apologized, I remember thinking, 'That's it? That's all they have to do is apologize?' said Turner. "The fact that they used an investigative arm of the government to target the American people based upon their political beliefs. It is outrageous and it's the type of activity that can weaken our democracy," said Turner. The congressman does not buy the explanation that just a few rogue IRS staffers got carried away and are responsible. "This is so systematic and it's not just, 'Let's send somebody a letter.' They had a very systematic process by which they investigated these groups and persecuted these groups and individuals. This doesn't sound to me like a handful or certainly doesn't sound like people who are low down on the chain," said Turner. Turner says Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is trying to attach Turner's legislation to pending Senate bills. He hopes to see quick House action as well and expects broad bipartisan support whenever the vote comes. The bad press for the IRS comes at a politically critical time, since it will be the primary enforcer of Obamacare starting next year, "I think everyone should be concerned about that. Now that you see what has happened with the IRS and their political bias, to trust them now with your medical records certainly would cause everyone to have some concern and a pause," said Turner. House Republicans recently announced their latest efforts to repeal Obamacare. Turner says this new scandal is a perfect example of why the law has to go. "I think that goes right to the heart of it. The moment that government steps in between you and your doctor and also between you and private and confidential information, I think we all know that there is a possibility that information could be misused and it shouldn't be in the government's hands," said Turner. |
| Failed Venture After Failed Venture |
| Tue, 14 May 2013 15:56:48 EST Lower taxes, less spending and fewer federal and state regulations are the key to creating more jobs in Virginia and strengthening the ones already there, according to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor in this year's campaign. Cuccinelli also slammed likely Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe for talking a lot about jobs but actually being a consistent failure in creating them. His economic plan is pretty straightforward. Cuccinelli wants to lower the state's personal income tax from 5.75 percent to five percent. First, he would also lower the state corporate income tax from six percent to four percent. "The reason we targeted those (rates) is because they have the most impact on job creation and it offers the best opportunity for us to improve job creation and the rate of job creation in Virginia," said Cuccinelli, who also wants to study reforming some local taxes in areas he believes job creation is being stifled. Reducing the regulatory burden is also a major goal. Cuccinelli fought very public battles with the federal government over the individual mandate in Obamacare and defeated the the Environmental Protection Agency in federal court after the government declared storm water a pollutant. Cuccinelli says government rules, particularly from Washington, are worrying business owners. "If you talk to a lot of business folks today, what you would find is that, whatever the tax rates might be, the biggest problem they have right now is the uncertainty being imposed through the regulatory process. We want to take as much of that out as we possibly can that we're responsible for here at the state level," said Cuccinelli. Virginia, like many states, is required to balance its budget. In addition to the expectation that his tax cuts would spur economic growth and more jobs and revenue, Cuccinelli says there's one place he expects to find a lot more money for the state coffers. "The other way we're going to finance the tax cut, because we have to balance our budgets unlike the federal government, is going to be to take a meat ax to all of the corporate loopholes and exemptions and we literally have hundreds of millions of dollars of them in Virginia. We're not unique in that respect, but we're going to try to level the playing field and make the whole system a lot more fair," said Cuccinelli. The roll-out of Cuccinelli's economic plan comes as term-limited Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell signed a major transportation bill that includes six billion in new taxes. Cuccinelli opposed the law but says other than the personal and corporate income tax rates, he would not try to reduce the other tax rates involved. "I didn't appreciate the course that all took with the large tax increases. However, the General Assembly decided that. The governor signed it and I'm going to be facing pretty much the same General Assembly so we need to work with them to spur job creation rather than to fight old fights," said Cuccinelli. McAuliffe touts himself as the candidate with real job creation experience and tries to brand Cuccinelli as being from the extreme right wing of the GOP. Cuccinelli says the facts speak for themselves. "What he cites for his business experience is failed venture after failed venture. I think that's going to be a little bit difficult for him to build a campaign on. In fact, I'd say they've actually abandoned it. They're still flopping around on the deck for a new rationale for why Virginians should vote for him because he said he was creating jobs while it turns out he wasn't," said Cuccinelli. "He said he would create many more jobs and it turns out he didn't. That raises all sorts of questions. One, if that's his credential of being a job creator, he failed and he wasn't accurate with people about what he was doing and whether or not he was succeeding. If that's the track record that I'm being compared to, I'm being compared to a negative on the job creation front," said Cuccinelli. "The last big venture he had with Green Tech Automotive, he was taking taxpayer dollars to try and do it and even then he failed." Virginia is economically healthier than most states, but Cuccinelli says the state will need to adapt to the likely reduction in federal government spending in the state. "With sequestration and what must be the shrinking of the federal government, we need to diversify our economy. There's a lot of great businesses and human capital that's already here and we want to keep them here. So part of what we're doing is competing to keep some of the good businesses we've got as they move away from as much federal business as they've had in the past. So we have a unique challenge ahead of us that other states don't have," said Cuccinelli. Cuccinelli also addressed the recent battle of words with McAuliffe over new standards for Virginia abortion clinics. Cuccinelli and other pro-life advocates say clinics should adhere to the same rules for other health facilities while Democrats like McAuliffe say the new guidelines could shutter many of the state's abortion clinics and restrict women's rights. Cuccinelli says McAuliffe is trying to change the subject to social issues but he will remain focused on Virginia's economy. McAuliffe's tax returns are a point of focus for Cuccinelli, however. Cuccinelli has released his returns for the past eight years and is pressuring McAuliffe to do the same. |
| 'Bigger than Benghazi' |
| Mon, 13 May 2013 14:55:03 EST The families of three fallen Navy SEAL Team VI members say President Obama and Vice President Biden are culpable for the deaths of their sons for publicly identifying the unit that killed Osama Bin Laden and pursuing policies that coddle Muslims and put our own troops at a tactical disadvantage. SEAL Team VI carried out the daring raid in Pakistan in early May 2011. Three months later, three members of the unit were among 38 killed in a Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Twenty-five of the dead were special operations forces. Larry Klayman is founder of Freedom Watch and is the attorney representing three of the families who lost their sons. He says the Obama administration carelessly and illegally revealed the role of SEAL Team VI shortly after announcing the successful mission to kill Bin Laden. "Shortly after that successful raid on Bin Laden, the president - through the vice president for political purposes - released the name of SEAL Team VI. That's classified information that even (then) Defense Secretary Robert Gateswas critical of that. So that was like putting a target on the backs of the sons of my clients," said Klayman, who says the helicopter may have been infiltrated by the Taliban before the crash because the Afghans on board were last-minute changes from the names on the original flight manifest. Klayman says Vice President Biden deserves special blame for these deaths. "Biden did something which was more than irresponsible. He served on foreign relations committees, intelligence committees. He knew or should have known what he was doing. He should be held accountable. Frankly, he should even be held criminally accountable for doing that," said Klayman. In addition to the identification of the the team, Klayman says the Obama administration is culpable for these deaths due to a policy of coddling Muslims and putting tremendous restrictions on U.S. forces. "This president has set a tone that Muslim outreach...is more important than protecting the lives of our servicemen and that's crept into the military brass to the point where they can't engage in preemptive fire,. They can't engage in return fire until they're fired upon once. They're sent into battle without adequate equipment," said Klayman. Perhaps the greatest insult to the families was at the funeral for their sons in Afghanistan. The military refused to allow a Christian minister or chaplain at the service and instead brought in a Muslim cleric who proceeded to slander the fallen. "For some bizarre reason, probably this Muslim outreach again of Barack Obama, they had a Muslim cleric give a prayer. Why the heck you would have a Muslim prayer and the servicemen are Christian is beyond imagination. So it has to come from the top down. And this cleric then proceeded in Arabic. No one understood it at the time, but we have a video of it and it was translated by certified translators. It proceeded to damn my clients' sons, and others who died, as infidels and that they should go to Hell under Allah, the Muslim god," said Klayman. "That's unbelievable. We've never even gotten an apology from the military that they did that," said Klayman, who is demanding a congressional investigation and says an announcement of litigation will be coming soon. "This is a major scandal. This is as big if not bigger than Benghazi because it concerns all of the military," said Klayman. "The mid-level military brass are not serving the interests of the brave fighting men that serve behind them. But the problem is that the tone and substance of these policies come from Barack Obama himself." |
| Don't Cry, I'm in Argentina |
| Fri, 10 May 2013 16:02:19 EST Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford scored an unlikely political comeback this week, as he rebounded from a major sex scandal to win an open Congressional seat in South Carolina. The Capitol Steps observe his victory with the parody they recorded in the wake of his scandal, "Don't Cry, I'm in Argentina." |
| 'The Dam Has Burst Here' |
| Fri, 10 May 2013 13:31:06 EST Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says the courage of three Benghazi whistleblowers may well trigger more critical revelations about what happened before, during and after the terrorist attack. He also says Democrats are unified at the moment in defending President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton but are getting increasingly worried. At the end of a week focused on Benghazi, including dramatic testimony Wednesday on Capitol Hill, new revelations are calling the Obama administration's actions into question. ABC News reports the CIA talking points drafted in the wake of the attack were changed 12 times before UN Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday morning talk shows. According to ABC's Jonathan Karl, all references to Al Qaeda and terrorist attacks were scrubbed. Karl says the order came from State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, who did not want congressional critics to "abuse" the information in the original talking points. Bolton says this latest news further confirms the critical testimony offered by former Libya Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks. "This is what happens when you finally allow people who actually were involved in the events of 9/11 to testify," said Bolton. "I think the most dramatic aspect of the testimony on Wednesday was the repeated assertion by Gregory Hicks and the others that this was never believed by anybody on the ground in Libya to be anything other than a terrorist attack. "As Mr. Hicks said, the YouTube video was a non-event for us in Libya. He said all the embassies reporting from the get-go was that it was a terrorist attack. He said that he had said this to Secretary Clinton when she called him at 2 a.m. his time," said Bolton. " So there was no question here of conflicting intelligence, no question here of what the White House calls the fog of war. You don't need intelligence reports when you can talk to your own employees in the State Department and other agencies who were right there on the ground. That's why I think not just the re-writing of the talking points but the entire administration approach, including what Secretary of State Clinton said and including what the president said at the United Nations about the Mohammed video, were false and known to be false right from the outset." Bolton says it seems increasingly clear that the story of the YouTube video was a political concoction designed to minimize the damage of Benghazi during the final stretches of a presidential campaign. He says as bad as that sounds, the only other plausible explanation would be far worse. "It was either a political cover-up or it was a demonstration of willful ideological blindness, the refusal to see facts that contradicted their theology that the war on terror was over," said Bolton. "For the security and safety of our country, I hope that the explanation is that it was a political cover-up, because that you can expose and fix. But if it's an ideological blindness and an unwillingness to see terrorism for what it is, we've got four more years of it in front of us." Bolton says the retaliation of the State Department against Hicks is nothing new in terms of how the government responds to whistleblowers. However, he says the fact that Hicks, Mark Thompson and Eric Nordstrom came forward to tell their stories means that this investigation is only beginning to ramp up. "I'm hoping their courage will inspire others to come forward. Within the bureaucracy, once people start talking and pointing fingers it's amazing what comes out, and the effort to maintain message discipline, which the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton's State Department have been so good at, I think will just blow up in their faces," said Bolton. On Friday, congressional Republicans announced they are working to bring CIA operatives to Capitol Hill for testimony or to arrange media interviews for them. Bolton says there are still some critical questions that remain unanswered. "There are a lot of questions, why there was a consulate in Benghazi to begin with that didn't meet State Department security standards, why after two years of turmoil in the Arab world there weren't more pre-positioned assets to protect against exactly what happened in Benghazi," said Bolton. He also says we need answers as to why Clinton was still publicly condemning the video at the ceremony to receive the bodies of the murdered Americans. Bolton suggested earlier this week that Benghazi could be the downfall for the entire Obama administration. With Democrats unified in defending Obama and Clinton, that seems unlikely at the moment. But Bolton says Obama is quickly losing credibility as a result of his handling of Syria and Benghazi and the Democratic solidarity on this issue is getting substantially weaker. "The behind-the-scenes conversation among Democrats on the hill is while they've still got the the front up because they're trying to protect Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, they are very worried. They could see the dramatic, emotional effect that that testimony on Wednesday had on anybody who watched it. I think the more the American people hear from these three witnesses and others that might come forward, the more profound the effect will be," said Bolton. The mainstream media is spending more time covering the Benghazi investigation, and Bolton contends that will weaken the Democratic instinct to protect the administration even more. "They see Jonathan Karl of ABC News, a major network, coming out and reporting and Sharyl Attkisson of CBS, who's been on this and I think now finally vindicated, that they've failed to contain this in the blogosphere and on Fox News. With the mainstream media now having their competitive juices unleashed, I really do think the dam has burst here," said Bolton. |
| Hope, Frustration in Cancer Fight |
| Thu, 9 May 2013 17:27:08 EST Rapid progress continues on oral chemotherapy treatments that are far more effective and far less toxic than conventional alternatives, but the inability of Medicare and insurance companies to offer comparable coverage is draining the resources of many patients and leaving others unable to pursue treatment. The mapping of the human genome has allowed doctors to determine which parts of cells are compromised by cancer and responsible for spreading it. As a result, oral chemotherapy allows for much more effective treatment against killers like myeloma, breast cancer and pancreatic cancer. It's also far less toxic than traditional chemotherapy because the targeting of the medication requires far smaller dosages that wreak far less havoc on the immune system. "What we're seeing as a result of the new oral medicines is what we saw with HIV when you give a combination of treatments that's matched to the way your genes respond to the disease and drug and you're saving lives of people who otherwise would be dying early," said Robert Goldberg, founder and vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, who wrote on the promise and financial frustration of these advancements in the May 8 edition of the New York Post. So why are Medicare and insurance companies content to cover virtually the entire tab for conventional chemotherapy but not for the more effective and less harrowing oral drugs? Goldberg says it mostly comes down to money. "There's this disconnect between medical innovation and how insurance and Medicare are paying for things. First, it's easier to get more payment for injections than it is to get for oral medications. Also physicians tend to get reimbursed more for injections than they do for dispensing a pill. They actually get paid for infusing, whereas for running a prescription there's no extra fee that they can collect," said Goldberg. "The second reason is, unfortunately, an obvious one. If you can shift the cost to the consumer, you see just how much you can get away with paying. "It's been hurting many, many patients. Twenty-five percent of all patients don't even fill their prescriptions for these products at the first crack. Many doctors are putting people on less effective and less personalized medicine because it's not affordable. Because these medicines keep people out of the hospital and extend their lives with less toxicity, they're actually saving money. So in effect, the oral medicines are being subsidized by consumers and they're saving insurers money," said Goldberg. While Goldberg is frustrated by the lack of coverage for oral chemotherapy, he strongly rejects assertions by The New York Times and others that the real problem is how much drug companies are charging for the medicine in the first place. In a May 2 editorial, the Times points out many oral chemotherapy drugs cost upwards of $100,000 per year. The editorial references a group of oncologists that considers those costs as "profiteering, like jacking up the price of necessities after a natural disaster." Goldberg says that blame is wrongly placed. "I'm hoping that over the next few months and into the campaign season that we will have a discussion about what the value of medical innovation really is and we get off this silly attack on prices from The New York Times and from physicians and focus on the value," said Goldberg. "The value of people living longer and added income and better health and less disability is about $4.2 trillion over the life of an individual, collective lives. Drug spending is about one percent of all that. So it's a great great investment that goes to the bottom line which matters most, which is having more time on the planet to do the things you love and be with the people you care for." Goldberg is also hopeful that a solution to the coverage problems on oral chemotherapy drugs is near. He is strongly supportive of The Cancer Drug Coverage Party Act sponsored by Democratic New York Rep. Brian Higgins. "You're not telling the companies what to use but at least give the insurance companies and consumers a choice based upon what's best for them. I think that's a pretty straightforward proposition," said Goldberg. "This is a smart 21st century way to reform health care and I'm hoping that this is just the beginning of reforming health care around what people want and what people can do rather than what the government wants the rest of us to do." Goldberg says the bill has bipartisan support and he says the Congressional Budget Office has recently alleviated concerns that this legislation would result in additional federal spending through Medicare and other programs. "To spend something in Washington, in theory you're supposed to cut somewhere else. Well the Congressional Budget Office has finally realized that if you spend money on these new medications, you're going to save money by what you don't spend in hospitalizations and having to deal with hospice and so on which are also very very expensive," said Goldberg. The Cancer Drug Coverage Parity Act of 2013 was introduced April 26. It has been referred to the House Energy & Commerce, Ways & Means and Education & Workforce Committees for consideration. The bill is officially known as H.R. 1801. |
| The Persecution of Greg Hicks |
| Thu, 9 May 2013 15:09:04 EST The chief witness in Wednesday's congressional hearings into the Benghazi terrorist attack was threatened and ostracized by the State Department for protesting the White House narrative on the deadly strike and largely ignored and disrespected by Democrats in the hearing, according to his attorney. Former Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and had nothing to do with a YouTube video as suggested by President Obama, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. Hicks further testified that his superiors rejected all efforts to launch a rescue mission during the attack and effectively ruined his career when he objected to the official explanation behind the strike. "He was not a team player. He protested about Susan Rice's talking points being false...and he had a reason for being upset about it. Not only were they false so our government was speaking with forked tongue, but it was causing problems with the Libyan government. The president of Libya had been on one of the same shows with Ambassador Rice and he had been humiliated in that he said it was a terrorist attack and she said no, it's a video. Can you believe that lack of decorum?" said Hicks' attorney Victoria Toensing. Toensing says the next great frustration for Hicks came through State Department restrictions on his visit with Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, when the congressman came to Libya to investigate the attack. She says the administration refused to allow Hicks to meet with Chaffetz without a State Department "minder" who was there to monitor and potentially object to the conversation, but the private discussion happened anyway. "The lawyer minder was kicked out of a meeting, a classified meeting, because he didn't have the right clearances. So my client then got a nasty phone call from Cheryl Mills, who was the chief staff person for Hillary Clinton, and she just chewed him out," said Toensing. "Then he's told by another superior after that nobody likes him in Libya and nobody wants him to come back. With that in mind, plus the fact he couldn't bring his family over there now because conditions had changed, he would not go back there but he was assured by the then-ambassador there that he would not be punished. He has been in an office in Siberia ever since November. "He does not have meaningful work. He cannot get an assignment abroad, and if he doesn't by September 30, they want to shove him out," said Toensing, who says Hicks was never given a reason for any of the unusual restrictions imposed on him by the State Department. She says it's clear the treatment of Hicks is designed to send a clear message to others who might consider coming forward. "He, because he wasn't a team player and because he did all these things about letting Congress know about the security problems, was made an example of to the rest of the people. 'Here's what's going to happen to you. You're going to go back and sit in a desk in Siberia if you cross us so don't cross us. That's the threat. That's the threat for government integrity because it's keeping all these people back," said Toensing. Congressional investigators say there are at least two other State Department employees being heavily pressured not to come forward. Toensing also says the Accountability Review Board did not bring a stenographer when interviewing Hicks and investigators only took notes. Hicks was subsequently blocked from reviewing those notes or the unclassified version of the ARB's report. "That's just a sloppy way to do an investigation," said Toensing. Toensing sat behind Hicks throughout his testimony on Wednesday and was taken aback at the very different approaches of the two parties. "I had wished that there had been a photographer from my viewpoint because as I looked up at the hearing, all the Democrats were gone, except whoever was on the podium next to ask questions. It was empty on the left-hand side and all the Republican members were there," said Toensing, who contends the Democrats had a strategy for the hearing. It just wasn't to learn what happened in Benghazi. "They had a theme. They would always open up by saying we really respect you guys but you guys are being used, which I thought was insulting," she said. Toensing says House Republicans should be prepared to issue subpoenas as the investigation moves forward, specifically for the chairman of the Accountability Review Board and Ambassador Rice. |
| The Biggest Scandal |
| Wed, 8 May 2013 17:17:05 EST Revelations in Wednesday's Congressional hearings on the Benghazi terrorist attacks prove it is a massive scandal that will carry significant consequences for those involved in the cover-up, according to retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney. McInerney served at the highest levels in the Air Force, including time as assistant vice chief of staff and vice commander-in-chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe. He believes the Obama administration deliberately misled the American people on the motivation for the attack and is now covering its tracks on decisions to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi. He says that is more clear than ever following Wednesday's testimony of former Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks and two others before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "This is going to be the biggest scandal. It is going to make Watergate look like kindergarten because Watergate was primarily limited to the Oval Office. This cuts across the whole national security apparatus, where people were lying and covering up," said McInerney. "It is a dereliction of duty that this nation has never seen before." So type of consequences could that mean for the highest levels of the administration? "Well, just see what the consequences were in Watergate. If it's far worse than Watergate, the consequences will go right into the Oval Office," said McInerney. McInerney says the tell-tale sign of Obama's dereliction of duty can be determined in the admitted White House narrative of the president's actions as the terrorist attack played out the night of September 11. 2012. "When is the exact minute he knew? We don't have the timeline and it was well before the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff went over there. He only talked to the secretary of defense one time, so it's obvious he knew that he had given the stand-down order and did not need to talk to the secretary of defense or anybody else after that," said McInerney. "Then he goes the next day out on a fundraising campaign to Las Vegas. That is a low for the Commander-in-Chief of this great nation." He also insists the stand-down order could only come from one source - the president. "The only person who could have given it was the president and he had to give it through the secretary of defense, secretary of state. The word came out so it came from the combatant commands and other unites below, but nobody could have given that except the President of the United States and that is very clear," said McInerney, who notes the State Department's own Accountability Review Board likely reached a similar conclusion in its report, which is why so few have seen it and the leaders of that study refuse to appear before Congress. McInerney believes they should be subpoenaed. While he believes Obama has a lot to answer for, McInerney makes it clear that many top-level subordinates deserve a lot of the blame too and that's what makes the scandal so troubling. "It's going to have significant consequences because it impacts two CIA directors, two secretaries of state, two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two secretaries of defense that are all involved now with the cover-up," he said. The general also singled out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her comment at congressional hearings in January in which she bristled severely at accusations the administration concocted a plan to blame the attack on a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Islam YouTube video that got out of hand. Clinton slammed Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, saying, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" McInerney sees that as a low point in American history. "That is one of the most despicable statements that any American has said about such a tragic incident when you lose people like that. It makes a huge difference that our troops know that they will always be protected as much as they can and we'll do anything to protect them," said McInerney. "She says what difference does it make? That will live with her til the day she dies. I can tell you, all the people I know, both active and retired, think that is one of the most despicable statements we have ever heard a civilian leader say in our country's history," said McInerney. McInerney says the administration's story is full of holes on a number of fronts, including the narrative about the supposed video protests. But the general says his own experience serving in that theater convinces him there was plenty of time and opportunity to deploy U.S. forces to protect Americans in Benghazi. "We have never done that, that I know, in our military history, where we just abandoned and did not try to send in rescue forces. They could have gotten there from Aviano (Air Base in Italy) the F-16s. I used to fly F-16s out of Aviano when I was vice commander-in-chief of U.S. Air Forces in Europe. I know that scene very well. They could have made it. They said they didn't have tankers. They could have dropped their tanks. They could have recovered at a nearby Italian air base on an island," said McInerney. "So it is unacceptable to me that we didn't send those forces from Tripoli that we had there. We didn't send F-16s and the FEST team to go in and to try to rescue those people. That was unacceptable, but from the get-go they had a narrative that they wanted to stick with that was a political narrative that the war was over, they had defeated Al Qaeda," he said. |
| The Price of Amnesty |
| Mon, 6 May 2013 16:35:22 EST The cost to the U.S. taxpayers of legalizing at least 11 million illegal immigrants would be $6.3 trillion, according to a detailed new study from the Heritage Foundation. Entitled "The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer", the study examines current statistics on illegal immigrant families and determines their lack of education combined with the resources they are likely to consume over their lifetimes would total approximately $9.4 trillion. Heritage estimates tax revenues from those same people would total about $3.1 trillion. Dr. Jason Richwine studies empirical data for the Domestic Policy Studies Department at Heritage and is co-author of the study along with Robert Rector. He says the math is pretty simple. "We looked at all spending that's federal, state and local and we looked at all the taxes that immigrants pay in. After that it's a matter of subtraction, the taxes that are paid and the benefits that are received," said Richwine. "The biggest categories that contribute to the fiscal deficit are public education and the federal means-tested programs that immigrants will receive after amnesty as well as what happens in the future with retirement, especially Social Security and Medicare." Richwine also fought back against the two biggest criticisms of the report. Supporters say it fails to account for future generations being net contributors to the government because of improved educational opportunities. Richwine says that isn't true. He admits that subsequent generations will be less of a burden but points out $6.3 trillion is a huge hole to climb out of and the next generation will only add to the problem when we can least afford it. Critics also allege the Heritage study fails to account for the economic growth that legalizing these millions of people will bring to the U.S. and counter the outflow of money through public assistance programs. "It's very frustrating to hear that point made because it's essentially citing magic as an excuse to ignore the study, which annoys me," said Richwine. "There's no doubt that more immigration will lead to a larger economy in general. We will certainly have a higher GDP the more people we bring in. That's not the relevant issue though. The relevant issue for natives is to what extent does immigration benefit natives specifically. What economists have found when they look at this question is that immigrants do increase the size of the pie, but they eat almost the entire increase." "The idea that some kind of tiny efficiency gain accruing to natives on the order of something like 0.1 percent of GDP is going to somehow come anywhere close to the major fiscal cost that we have identify is really rather absurd, and that's why it frustrated me so much that people will cite this. It's a way of just kind of avoiding the question," said Richwine. "I would much rather them try to take this on more directly. Tell us what these amazing magical benefits are because I certainly don't see them anywhere in the economics literature." The Heritage report projects a great deal of red ink, but Richwine says the $6.3 trillion in deficits is probably a best-case scenario. He says the report was done under the assumption that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who would be granted legal status, but he admits the government really has no idea how many people we're talking about and the 11 million number could well be low. He also points out that the numbers assume that only people already here would be receiving benefits over time and that the flood of illegals along the southern border would be dealt with effectively. "What we're looking at is the number of illegal immigrants who were here in 2011, these are the ones who are eligible for the amnesty. That's the group we're looking at. We are not looking at any additional immigrants. That leads to my thinking that we are being rather conservative about this. Not only could this encourage further illegal immigration down the road, which will cost money, but the the bill being proposed right now actually allows for more people to come here to get what's called registered provisional status who are not even here currently," said Richwine. "If you have been deported from the United States. In other words, you came here illegally and because you were here illegally you were deported. We spent all the money and time on judicial proceedings and so on to deport you, you may now come back to the country and get amnesty as long as you have a close relative here who's here legally," said Richwine. The report is available at heritage.org. |
| Expanding Online Privacy |
| Mon, 6 May 2013 15:02:22 EST The U.S. Senate is moving towards greater electronic privacy protection in an effort to update a decades-old law and draw clearer boundaries for the federal government in the ongoing tension between national security and personal freedom. Utah Sen. Mike Lee is teaming up with Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy to sponsor amendments to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Lee says the need for updated laws is obvious given the technological explosion in recent years and adds that without the changes, Americans may be surprised and upset with what the government can do with their private messages. "The law at the time was written so that emails would basically lose their Fourth Amendment protections once they got to be older than 180 days. Once they got to be about six months old, the government could gain access to their contents without a court warrant," said Lee. "This legislation, in essence, moves to get rid of the 180-day distinction and would require a warrant if the government wants to gain access to the content of emails older than 180 days." The 9/11 attacks thrust the liberty vs. security debate front and center in the U.S. and the recent Boston Marathon terrorist attack has re-ignited the controversy to some extent. Lee says there doesn't need to be a lot of hand wringing about this because the Constitution protects our rights and the government has ways to obtain otherwise private materials if national security is at stake. "Most lawmakers approach this with an understanding that people expect their emails to remain private. They understand their are circumstances when government law enforcement agents might need to gain access to our private communications but they also understand, as in other areas, this ought to require a court order," said Lee. "Sure, it makes the government's task a little more difficult but we have procedures in place to expedite that or even allow it to be bypassed altogether through existing case law whenever life and limb is at great risk and there's no other way to deal with it. If those conditions can't be met, then government agents just need to go and get a court order. "The Constitution was not designed to make things more efficient for the government. It was put in place to protect the rights of individual citizens and that's what this bill does. That's why I expect it to pass overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, through the Senate," said Lee. The Senate legislation follows contentious debate over a House bill known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Supporters say it constitutes a critical upgrade in providing the federal government tools to ward off cyber attacks and protect computer networks. Critics allege that is is a huge erosion of electronic privacy. CISPA passed the House easily but is now stalled and likely dead in the Senate. Lee says a final bill never made it to the floor so he never took a formal position on the issue. "CISPA has been a moving target and I've had some privacy-related concerns with it," said Lee. "It really would depend on the form in which it ultimately got to us. It's premature to say what that might look like if and when it ever comes to us." House Republicans were the driving force behind CISPA. Lee, as a sponsor of legislation expanding privacy rights, says he's not surprised at how the votes lined up. "These things are difficult to predict in all circumstances and these are very difficult areas to navigate because you have unusual cross-currents that develop within the two parties. Sometimes you have unlikely allies on the right and on the left," said Lee. |
| Kim and Kim |
| Fri, 3 May 2013 14:04:06 EST So far, the only American to meet young North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un is eccentric ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman. However, with North Korea threatening to attack its neighbors and the United States, the Capitol Steps take a closer look inside the world's most repressive nation. Our guest is Capitol Steps impressionist Mark Eaton. |
| History vs. Gang of Eight |
| Thu, 2 May 2013 15:47:12 EST Utah Sen. Mike Lee says the bipartisan Gang of Eight is in danger of making the same mistakes of past immigration reform efforts by trying to do everything at once and putting illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship before we ever know if border security efforts are successful. Lee is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and has waded through much of the 844-page bill. He says the biggest problem with the bill is that is doesn't approach the key issues one at a time, which he believes is essential if Congress is going to do reform correctly. "Immigration reform that I tend to envision would include real border security, visa modernization, employment verification, robust guest worker programs for high low-skilled workers and a compassionate approach to dealing with those people who are currently in the country illegally," said Lee. "But history has taught us that each one of those vital components needs to be addressed incrementally and in sequence to ensure we get meaningful results, the kind of results that we want. And that's why I'm concerned about this bill. That's why, in it's current form, I can't support it." Lee was not overly critical of how the Gang of Eight addressed each of the issues he would take on separately, but he says doing everything at once is a prescription for disaster. "I'm pleased that the bill does address as many of these issue as it does. The biggest concern I have is that it attempts to do so all in one fell swoop. In other words, it puts the legislative framework in place for a pathway to citizenship to the 11 million before we even know whether the border has been secured. Once we enact that legislation, then that's in motion. That's going to happen unless we legislate again, regardless of whether we in Congress are convinced that the border is in fact secure and that our visa system is working properly," said Lee, who is worried that green-lighting the legal status of millions of illegals before confirming the border is secure would make our problems even worse. "That is a very significant concern. That's a concern that is based on historical experience, based on what we saw in 1986, when we ended up granting legal status to those illegally in the country at the time and putting them on a pathway to citizenship. The promise was made then, 'OK, we're going to secure the border once and for all. We're going to solve the illegal immigration problem once and for all and, all at the same time, we're going to legalize those currently here illegally.' Of course, those who were here illegally were legalized but we didn't fix the underlying problem," said Lee. Lee says he can't gauge the level of support for the Gang of Eight plan yet because the bill still needs to go through the committee process. He suspects most Senate Democrats will back the plan but does not believe it can pass the Republican-led House of Representatives. As a result, Lee says the smart thing would be for lawmakers to build a bipartisan consensus around smaller bills in a proper order to address the problems in our immigration system. |
| 'It's About Control' |
| Wed, 1 May 2013 16:43:23 EST A simple Twitter message triggered an avalanche of criticism for Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III on Tuesday, a reaction that black conservative author Deneen Borelli says is typical of liberals and demands more bold speech from those who dare to step away from the acceptable lines of liberal thought. The tempest began on Tuesday, when Griffin tweeted, "In a land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness." Subsequent messages from Griffin clearly suggested he was getting plenty of criticism for that initial statement. Griffin never specifically spelled about what example of political correctness he meant, but most observers believe it was in response to a member of the Washington D.C. City Council urging the Redskins to scrap their nickname that he finds offensive and replace it with "Red Tails" - an homage to the famed Tuskegee Airmen. Deneen Borelli is outreach director at Freedomworks and is author of "Blacklash: How Obama and the Left are Driving America to the Government Plantation". She says Griffin deserves praise for speaking out against America's political correctness problem. "You have too many people who don't believe in independent thought . They'd rather have individuals who follow the crowd and fall in lock-step with a certain mindset," said Borelli. "I applaud RGIII for being vocal because this isn't the first time that he's done so. I applaud him for speaking out because there is a big concern about too much political correctness going on in our country and there are way too many people who are just staying silent on the issue." Borelli says the liberal culture fiercely condemns anyone who dares to challenge the ideology of the Left, but she says there is special venom reserved for conservative blacks who dare to speak their minds. "It's all about control. The people on the Left are unable to control people's words and their actions. When you have someone like RGIII or someone like Dr. Benjamin Carson, even myself, who was vocal about liberty and people being independent and not relying on the government for example. That's a problem for those on the Left who want to control the message," said Borelli, who says the liberal fear of independent thought is especially evident in the hostility aimed at Dr. Carson. She says his life is the embodiment of what is great about America, but his personal ideology makes him a target of scorn from the Left instead. Borelli says the intensity of the criticism aimed at black conservatives comes with a very clear message to all blacks from the liberal establishment. "That is to set an example for others to not do the same thing, for anyone else to not be vocal about what they really think. Unfortunately that works. It's something that is very effective, making people an example of something and no one else is going to step up and challenge the so-called status quo," said Borelli. "I wrote my book "Blacklash" really to call out the failures of the liberal Left and to set an example for any American - not just black Americans but any American - to be vocal, be true and speak out about what you believe in, your core values, and not just follow the crowd," she said. Despite the predictable vitriol, Borelli says she believes the climate for free speech is gradually getting better. "I think it is getting better. I am in contact with a number of black conservatives who are looking to me as an example of what they can also do and what they can achieve and what they can be vocal and write about free market, write about liberty and talk about the importance of independence and smaller government. I think it's taken a long time for us to get to where we are but I do see a change coming about and I do believe there will be more people who will be vocal and hold the Left accountable. Anytime something like this situation arises, I do feel that that is happening," said Borelli. Griffin was silent on Twitter for most of Wednesday, but a late afternoon tweet suggests he's ready for the furor to go away. After a follower suggested political conclusions were being drawn from yesterday's tweets, Griffin replied, "You can twist it, spin it, and try to find the basis of your next article in the words of anything that anyone says..." |
| Army's PC Disgrace Gets Worse |
| Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:34:09 EST The U.S. Army has further punished a highly respected and decorated officer in the wake of Muslim groups complaining about the approved course he taught on radical Islam at National Defense University. In October, we reported that Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley was fired from his position at the school for the way he conducted a class on how to respond to a variety of scenarios instigated by radical Muslims. A visitor to the class found the discussions offensive to Muslims, informed some 57 Islamic organizations which then complained to Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition to the firing, Gen. Dempsey promptly orchestrated a negative Officer Evaluation Report against Dooley that deeply tarnished a career that had received only sterling reviews from West Point through nearly 20 years in the service. Dempsey never discussed the incident with Dooley. On Sunday, The Washington Times reported Dooley has been punished again, this time as he pursued the role of battalion commander. According to the Times, an Army command selection board studied Dooley 19s record and candidacy for a command assignment. The five-member panel agreed to keep Dooley under consideration. Shortly thereafter, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who at the time was Army vice chief and subsequently became head of U.S. Central Command, overruled the board in a brief memo. His actions could effectively spell the end of Dooley 19s career. 1cThere was no reason given and that 19s also a very disturbing aspect of it, 1d said Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, who is representing Dooley in his original appeal of his firing and negative review. 1dThe way they 19re treating him now is not only a total miscarriage of justice on a personal level, but it also is really removing an effective combat leader from the Army and it ultimately effects the national security of the United States. 1d Thompson says he doesn 19t believe this order originated with Gen. Austin. Instead, he believes Gen. Dempsey gave the order and Austin chose to follow so as not to impair his own career. However it happened, he says LTC Dooley is the victim of a dangerous policy. 1cInsread of being loyal to the people that are loyal to you, they would rather throw LTC Dooley under the bus for their own advancement or to appease the Muslims, which ultimately could lead to the destruction of the United States internally. If we cannot accurately describe who the enemy is, how can we win a war? 1d asked Thompson. Dooley 19s appeal of his initial punishment is still processing through the military bureaucracy. Thompson says Dooley will file a federal suit to defend his constitutional rights if the Army appeal is denied. |
| Obama's Red Line Blunder |
| Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:38:25 EST Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says President Obama was wrong to ever publicly draw a red line on involvement in the Syrian civil war and U.S. credibility will be damaged as a result. Obama stated months ago that the U.S. would not be getting directly involved in the conflict but that would change if the Assad regime resorted to using chemical weapons against the rebels. Intelligence from multiple nations, including the U.S. and Israel, recently concluded that Sarin gas was likely used in some attacks. However, Obama now says the U.S. has to take a closer look at the situation. Regardless of the specific policy, Bolton says drawing a red line and then waffling on it has major repercussions for the U.S. "I think it's a big problem. I think that's why presidents should be very careful before they set red lines," said Bolton. "Having set the red line, not to follow through on the implicit threat to do something when the Assad regime crosses the red line is a terrible blow to the president's credibility and, even worse, to the United States itself. It's unfortunate, but it fits a pattern for this president, that he speaks in national security matters he doesn't fully understand the implications of what he says. I'm trying to be charitable and diplomatic here. And then when he crashes into reality, that's when he begins to think through the implications of what he said, rather than thinking first and speaking later." Bolton believes Obama still has no intention of intervening in Syria and will kill time by asking the United Nations to investigate the claims of chemical weapons deployment. "As I said (Monday) morning in a Wall Street Journal article, there's about as much chance of the UN conducting a thorough investigation as there is of the Israeli National Symphony Orchestra conducting a thorough investigation in Syria. It's not going to happen," said Bolton. "So if the president's trying to cover himself and give a reason why he didn't do anything, certainly throwing it to the United Nations is the perfect way out." So what is the right policy? Some advocates for military action, like Arizona Sen. John McCain, believe the U.S. has a responsibility to help the rebels, topple Assad and prevent a further humanitarian crisis. Others counter that we are essentially watching a satellite regime of Iran go to war with Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical components so there's not much downside to watching them destroy each other. Bolton largely subscribes to the latter view, with one major caveat. "The way you answer a complex question like this is to say, 'What is America's fundamental interest here? What do we have at stake? How are we threatened by this situation?' What we are really threatened by is the chemical weapons getting outside of Syria, falling into the hands of terrorists, whether Al Qaeda or others, who would then have the capability to use them worldwide against us, against our citizens, against our friends and allies. Preventing that from happening is a very vital national interest," said Bolton. He says a light military footprint would be needed to deal with the weapons threat, but he says a limited number of special operations forces would be able to handle the job. Bolton says Syria had a chemical and biological weapons program at the time Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor there in 2007. He also says it's possible that some of Saddam Hussein's weapons ended up in Syria. He says that cannot be verified but, if true, could mean we could be dealing with a much bigger arsenal than first thought. He is sensitive to the humanitarian crisis spawned by the war in Syria, as more than 70,000 people are now reported dead from the fighting. But Bolton says that should not be enough to put U.S. troops in harm's way. "To put American service members' lives at risk purely for humanitarian purposes there when nobody else is stepping up to the plate, nobody else is volunteering to do anything about it, I don't think is warranted," he said. Besides, he says, there's no good outcome to this war. "There are no white hats. I have nothing good to say about Assad. He is basically a satellite of the ayatollahs in Iran, but unfortunately the opposition, basically from the beginning, has been shot through with terrorists and radical Islamists. I've been waiting for two years for the people who saywe should arm or assist the opposition to name the opposition leaders who would adhere to western values, who would be in favor of representative government, against conducting a bloodbath if they won. I still don't know who those opposition leaders are," said Bolton. "I think it would be a big mistake for the United States or for the West as a whole to give weapons and capabilities to people we don't know and don't have any basis to trust." |
| 'Gosnell Is Not Alone' |
| Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:22:03 EST A Pennsylvania jury will soon render a verdict on whether abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell murdered four babies who survived abortions as well as a woman who was one of his patients, but a new series of videos from Live Action suggest that Gosnell's actions are not out of the mainstream. Live Action President Lila Rose says her group has already released two videos showing abortion providers in New York City Washington, D.C. explaining how they would do nothing to help a baby who survived an abortion to survive. The 10-year Planned Parenthood adviser tells an undercover Live Action investigator that if she were to deliver her baby alive while at home between the stages in her two-day abortion, that she should just "flush it". The female official also said that the woman definitely should not call a hospital because it wouldn't help her since the abortion had already started. She further asserted that any surviving baby would die once it was submerged in a toxic solution inside a jar. In Washington, Dr. Caesare Santanegelo admits that he is legally bound to help a baby who survived an abortion to stay alive but that he would not. Santangelo says he would call 9-1-1 but do nothing on his own to save the child's life. He also criticizes Virginia hospitals for their policy of trying to save those lives. "Gosnell is not alone. This investigation shows already those in the Bronx and in D.C., abortion workers talking about how they would commit infanticide and how this is either the tactic they would use, whether to expose the infant or put it in a jar of toxic solution so that it will stop breathing," said Rose, who says these first two videos are just the beginning of this series which she contends will repeatedly show abortion practitioners having detailed knowledge of exactly what they would do if a baby survives an abortion - a description that almost never follows the law. The Gosnell trial was part of the motivation for this video series, but Rose says personal stories and cold statistics prove this situation plays out far more often than the pro-choice movement would have Americans believe. "We've had our eye on the late-term abortion industry because of the stories that have emerged of victims that survived abortion attempts and then lived to tell about it or the stories of women who suffered or are even killed because of the abortion," said Rose. "Then we came across statistics like out of the UK, where the study was done about one in ten children in the late term survive their abortion attempt. This is because you're inducing labor at this stage and the child supposed to have been killed with forceps or poison may come out alive," she said. While Rose would love to see proper enforcement of existing laws on late-term abortions in addition to new laws, she says real progress will come when abortion is no longer illegal in America. She is also pushing hard against the conventional wisdom that the right to an abortion empowers women. "The abortion movement is built upon this false protection, supposedly, of women's rights, but how does this support or empower women to have them involved in ghastly 2-3 day procedures that literally rip their children from their wombs and endanger their physical and psychological health. This is not good for women just as this is clearly not good for our society because we're killing our weakest children when they're in their most vulnerable state," said Rose. Rose says new videos could come in the next week or even in the next couple of days. |
| A Pattern of Incompetence |
| Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:46:59 EST Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is blasting the Obama administration for the timing of the charges against surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokar Tsarnaev. He's also exasperated by what he considers Obama's tendency to downplay the threat posed by radical Islam and the relentless push for immigration legislation despite some issues that arose in the wake of the bombings. Gohmert is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and is vice chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. He is flabbergasted by the Justice Department decision to formally charge and read Miranda rights to Tsarnaev while he was cooperating with the FBI. Tsarnaev stopped talking as soon as his rights were read to him. "If they never gave the Miranda warnings ever, the result would be that anything that he said after he was taken into custody might be subject to being excluded from evidence at the trial. If a prosecutor could not prove this guy guilty of numerous crimes that would put him behind bars for the rest of his life, then they're just not competent. So the concern was not about gathering evidence to use against him after he was picked up. The concern should have been to get more information about the threat against America," said Gohmert. "I guess with our attorney general having spent more time before being AG trying to help terrorists than trying to corral them, the first impulse was let's get him to stop talking because they filed charges they didn't have to file that quickly. Somebody made sure the judge shows up with lawyers and gives him his rights and shuts him up, while he is in the process of giving invaluable information. It is unbelievable. If it's not bad enough that they bungled getting this guy picked up and his brother picked up and questioned before they blew up people in Boston, then now to get him to shut up when he has invaluable information potentially is just really egregious," said Gohmert. Gohmert says Attorney General Eric Holder had to know that issuing Tsarnaev his Miranda rights at that point would only result in the defendant ending his cooperation with interrogators. He says it's just the latest head-scratcher from Holder and the Obama administration as a whole. "Between the Department of Justice actions that resulted in people being killed in Fast & Furious, the result of this administration's backing Al Qaeda-backed rebels to run out Ghaddafi so that then they end up killing our people there and then the people being killed in Algeria. I mean one after another we've had incidents where this administration has shown incompetence. So it seems to be a real pattern," he said. The congressman stresses that he is not accusing anyone in the administration of sinister motives, but he does believe Obama tries to diminish the threat posed to the U.S. by radical Islamists. "It's very clear to everyone but this administration that radical Islam is at war against us. I'm hoping either this administration will wake up or a new one will come in at the next election before irreparable damage is done," said Gohmert. "This administration has so many Muslim Brotherhood members that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America." The immigration process employed for the Tsarnaev brothers is also impacting the debate over proposed immigration legislation in the U.S. Senate. Critics of the Gang of Eight plan say more time is need to study how current law may have failed and whether the new bill would do much that's different. But defenders of the comprehensive reform approach, from New York Sen. Chuck Schumer to Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan contend that the issue is just a distraction meant to slow down the progress of the legislation. Gohmert says the right way forward on immigration law should be clear. "The president has refused to do his job in securing the border. It's his obligation. He has an oath to fulfill. But he is holding off adequately securing the border until he can get what he wants. The right thing to do would be to say, 'Mr. President, enough. There are enough dead Americans from people who have been let in wrongly,'" said Gohmert. "Let them secure the border and we will have an agreement within a month that will be in law, but he has to do the job of making sure that we're secure in our persons and in our homes. He's going to need to make sure that people that come in, come in legally. Until he starts actually doing his job, there should be no discussion about doing anything with people who are here illegally," said Gohmert, who says there are several reforms that would attract widespread support once the border is secure. Gohmert acknowledges that the Senate version of immigration reform has quite a bit of bipartisan support, but he says that was also the case with TARP, which he considers one of the worst things to happen to our economy. He says the momentum would change quickly if lawmakers would listen to the people who sent them to Washington instead of the political experts. "You get people dutifully lining up, saying, 'Well, we're told this is what the people want.' Well, go talk to your state. Go talk to the people in your district. Don't be listening to CNN. Nobody's watching them," said Gohmert. "These people need to go home and talk to the people that live in their states and districts before they go rushing headlong into something that is not going to be good for America." |
| Texas-Sized Life Fight |
| Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:40:13 EST Pro-life activists are slamming a plan advancing through the Texas legislature that they say would allow doctors to give "Do Not Resuscitate" orders regardless of the wishes expressed by patients or their families. The legislation, known as Texas S.B. 303, is sponsored by State Senator Bob Duell, vice chair of the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. Duell is a Republican and the GOP holds the majority in the chamber. The bill has already been approved by the committee. "This should scare a lot of people because what this bill says is that a doctor can impose a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order, write it into the patient's chart even over the patient's objection," said Burke Balch, director of the National Right to Life Committee's Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics. He says the patient would be left with few options. "The patient could then appeal to an ethics committee. In the meantime, until that appeal is registered, if the person goes into cardiac arrest then that person will die. And more to the point, you don't even have the right to appeal to the committee if the doctor says, without being checked by anybody else, that in his opinion your death is imminent," said Balch, who says that classification is not as clear-cut as people might think. "The problem is that there's no definition of imminent, There used to be a definition in the law that said your death is considered imminent if you're going to die in minutes to hours. Now we've got some people who say if you're going to die within six months or you're going to die within a year, that means your death is imminent. So what this bill is saying, essentially, is that if the doctor thinks that you're going to maybe die in six months, maybe in a year and they say, 'We think this is imminent,' then you don't even have the right to try to go somewhere and ask that this Do Not Resuscitate order be lifted," said Balch. Balch says the bill gets worse. Family guardians and surrogates would also be overruled by the doctor's decision. In addition, the language could also endanger people with non-threatening conditions if medical professionals determine their quality of life is too poor. "That means if you've got diabetes, all sorts of things that you're not necessarily going to die of, but if somebody else thinks that person's quality of life is too poor, we shouldn't let them live. In fact, this committee is able to make decisions, not just about resuscitation, but about any other sort of life-saving treatment, even providing food and fluids to you with medical assistance," said Balch. "If they say that they think that giving you this treatment would 'seriously exacerbate other major medical problems not outweighed by the benefit of the provision of the treatment, then you can be denied this treatment so that you die.' " Balch says the provision leaves it up to doctors to make the value judgment whether a person's life is worth living because they have a long-term health challenge. Sen. Duell and his allies say the NRLC is missing the point in the bill. In fact, he says the legislation gives patients more options when appealing a medical order from their physician. Balch says the only part of that defense that rings true is a 10-day period that patients and their families have to find a doctor or hospital that will provide the treatment being denied by the original physician. On the other hand, current Texas law requires doctors to explain to patients and their loved ones how to challenge the decision. The new bill would make an official from the same hospital that patient's advocate. Balch says that would simply result in hospital administrators trying to convince patients and family members that their lives are not worth living. Sen. Duell was sought for comment. His office declined the request. |
| Baucus to Blame for 'Train Wreck' |
| Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:33:15 EST Less than a week after declaring the health care law he largely wrote a "train wreck", Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus says he will not seek a seventh term in 2014. The news comes as a surprise to many, given that Baucus was actively fundraising until very recently. However, Baucus has dipped significantly in popularity, due in part to his prominent role in authoring and helping to pass the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. "He really does live with this around his neck," said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner, one of the leading health care policy analysts in the nation. "He was to have been up for re-election in 2014 for the first time since shoving this through. He has five million dollars in his campaign treasury, which in Montana should be plenty of money." Baucus is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Last week, the panel heard from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sebelius heard plenty from Chairman Baucus about concerns with the implementation of Obamacare. "Small businesses have no idea what to do, what to expect. They don't know what affordability rules are. They don't know when penalties may apply. They just don't know," said Baucus to Sebelius. "I just see a huge train wreck coming. You and I have discussed this many times and I don't see any results yet. I just see a huge train wreck." Turner doesn't have much sympathy for Baucus when he can't tell small business owners what to expect. "Well, maybe like Nancy Pelosi, he should have read the bill before he passed it so they can find out what was in it and see why people are so unhappy," she said. "It's coming home. He's finally having to say, 'I can't face the voters, having been instrumental in getting this miserable law enacted.'" Turner says the law was doomed from the start, noting that the Baucus bill was never supposed to be the final product. "That was never supposed to have been the final bill. This was supposed to have just been anything they could cobble together, literally a Christmas tree to try to get 60 votes in the Senate and they'd work on it with the House version and put it together," she said. That plan blew up when Scott Brown won the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts and Democrats no longer had 60 votes to push a final version through the chamber. That's when the House passed the Senate plan and added changes which the Senate then approved through reconciliation on a simple majority vote. Now, Turner says the nightmare of implementation is showing more inherent flaws in the system. "What this hearing was about last week was about implementation. A lot of the Senate Democrats who are facing the voters for the first time since voting for this law are very worried that the implementation is going to be a train wreck. It is monstrously complex. They don't have the resources. They don't have the people. They don't have the expertise. They virtually cannot be done right. And they're going to try to slap it together, and a lot of them are very worried that it's going to be a sloppy mess," she said. Turner says the application process for joining one of the new health care exchanges is a microcosm of the bureaucratic nightmares to come. "One component of that is gathering information from people so that they can then run that information past half a dozen different organizations - Homeland Security to make sure they're a citizen, the IRS, their employer, the Department of Treasury to figure out what their subsidies are going to be, the state Medicaid and S-CHIP rolls. There's no system that can aggregate all that data for 20 million people that are going to be figuring out how to file a 21-page application that has a 61-page appendix. How is that even possibly going to work," said Turner. Meanwhile, Turner is defending House Republicans for moving to shore up funding for Americans who had previously been denied coverage due to preexisting conditions. The new health care law allotted five billion dollars to help cover higher premiums for those patients but the cost estimates came in far too low. Many conservative activists blasted the GOP for what they believe is aiding and abetting Obamacare, but Turner says it's the right move. "The administration said we can't take any more enrollees. We're going to stop enrollment now and only take care of the people who are enrolled. The House said, 'Well, you've got this other slush fund over here that's called preventive care but it really can be used for anything by the secretary and let's redirect that money to help people so that the people that could enroll by the end of the year can continue to get coverage.' The administration, instead, wants to use this money to advertise all the benefits of Obamacare and to hire what I'm sure will be a lot of community organizers to help enroll people in this coverage," said Turner. Turner says the money would only run through this year and would not be an ongoing program, so she says it's simply a choice between Obamacare activism and advertising or helping people get the coverage they need. |
| Miranda, Immigration & Boston |
| Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:40:12 EST Surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev was formally charged with two crimes in connection with last week's terrorist attacks that left three people dead and more than 180 injured. If convicted, Tsarnaev could face the death penalty. According to the Justice Department, Tsarnaev was arraigned in his hospital room on one count of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death and one count of malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death. The charges come as no surprise but the timing is a bit odd, according to Andrew C. McCarthy, the lead U.S. prosecutor in the case against Omar Abdel Rahman and his collaborators in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. "It would have been good to keep him out of the criminal justice system for as long as they could have," said McCarthy. "There was no question he was going into the civilian criminal justice system. I would have held him out for as long as it took to get effective intelligence , an effective interrogation of him. I have no way of knowing what information they actually got from him. I wouldn't have been in a rush to bring him into the system, but I don't think there was any question that he was going to be in the system." McCarthy who also rejected calls for Tsarnaev to be quickly labeled as an enemy combatant. He says it's not a clear case, given the definition of that term dictated by Congress in the wake of 9/11. But McCarthy is puzzled by all of the hand wringing over whether Tsarnaev was read his Miranda rights, something he assumes happened at Monday's arraignment so long as the accused was lucid enough to understand those rights. "I think the people in the public debate are a lot more concerned about Miranda in this instance than I am," said McCarthy. "I really don't think that they need a statement for him, and as (former) Attorney General (Michael) Mukasey has pointed out publicly, if they wanted to question him they could question him for national security reasons whether he's got a lawyer or not." McCarthy says the apparent mountain of evidence against Tsarnaev makes the Miranda debate even more inconsequential since prosecutors likely won't need his own statements to obtain a conviction. Nonetheless, he says government prosecutors will be very diligent in making sure they have the strongest possible case in such a high-profile matter. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has publicly declared that the plot does not extend any further than the Tsarnaev brothers. Other observers are convinced that radical elements in Chechnya are involved and some insist the Saudi national questioned shortly after the bombing was highly involved. McCarthy urges everyone to let the course play out on this. "All pronouncements about who's involved and who's not involved that are made within days of the event have almost always been wrong. People who have been through this kind of a process before know that you have to roll up your sleeves and start doing real, comprehensive investigative work. Remember, we didn't even know who these guys were. We didn't know their names until Friday," said McCarthy. The Boston case is also reverberating in the immigration debate as well, with both sides claiming the details prove their side is right. Members of the Gang of Eight contend this story is proof that the system is broken and needs reform. Critics of the Senate bill argue that giving legal status to those who slipped in the country and may wish to harm us only makes us more vulnerable. So does McCarthy see one side having a much stronger argument than the other? "Yeah, the people who think reform is crazy, who were right the day before yesterday and are right today. The Gang of Eight, it's kind of dizzying to listen to their argument because up until five minutes ago, it seems, they were saying the system is broken. Now, after this massacre that we had last week, they're saying the system worked this time and they have provisions in there to make sure it continues to work. I can't understand where there coming from, whether it works or it doesn't work," said McCarthy. "What doesn't work about it is that we don't enforce the law. You don't need a comprehensive reform to do that. You can start enforcing the law. I know that's a radical idea, but maybe they want to try it," he said. "The other thing that I think is clear is that before you even think about 12-20 million illegal aliens, as John Fonte from the Hudson Institute argues in an important new research paper, our patriotic assimilation system is broken even for legal aliens. That's obviously a problem that needs to be addressed before you start talking about increasing the legal alien population by 10 or 12 million people," said McCarthy. The FBI is coming under scrutiny following reports that Russia tipped off the U.S. about Tsarnaev. The bureau did investigate the elder brother but closed the case after finding nothing overly alarming. McCarthy says some changes definitely need to be made on that front. "We really need a major rethinking of the FBI's protocols that say we're not going to take any notice of the straight line nexus between Islamic supremacist ideology and terrorism committed by Muslims, which is a terrible mistake. They basically take the position that unless you've gone from radical ideology to radical activity, they don't have any right to continue investigating you," said McCarthy. |
| Inside the Senate Gun Fight |
| Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:02:11 EST Gun control opponents won a major victory this week when the Manchin-Toomey bill to expand background checks failed to advance, but a leading lobbyist says the behind-the-scenes wrangling was far more dramatic than the final vote suggested. The final vote was 54-46 in favor of Manchin-Toomey, but 60 votes were needed to advance the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed his vote at the last moment in a parliamentary move that gives him the right to bring the bill up for consideration again. That leaves a five vote margin, but Gun Owners of America Chief Counsel Mike Hammond says it was actually much closer. "We didn't win it by six votes. We won it by one vote. Had the Republicans not provided 41 votes in opposition to that, Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, Baucus, Montana Democrat, Begich, Alaska Democrat, and Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat, would have all provided the deciding vote to pass it," said Hammond. In previous interviews, Hammond insisted the the biggest vote was the motion to proceed because once that happened Democrats could add other amendments with less resistance. He had been confident gun control opponents would win that vote as well, but the motion to proceed easily advanced 68-31 once Toomey-Manchin was introduced. So what happened? "There was an eruption in the senators' luncheon, which was precipitated by Sen. Sue Collins, who was whining because gun groups were running commercials against her in Maine. As a result, there was just an imbroglio and a lot of senators decided that they were going to show the gun lobby and vote to go on to the bill," said Hammond. He says the damage may have already been done, however, because the bill is now on the Senate calendar and Reid can bring it back anytime he wants. So how did we go from 68 senators voting to proceed with the bill to only 54 actually supporting it? "I think (Collins) was able to convince them to vote wrong on cloture on the motion to proceed but not throughout the process. I can tell you that as a result of what happened as a result of moving to proceed to it, we had a week of nail biting, of excruciating fear as we worked senator by senator to put together the votes necessary to win that," said Hammond. Hammond is also firing back at President Obama for suggesting that the gun lobby blatantly lied to lawmakers and the public about Manchin-Toomey leading to a national gun registry. "That's called projection in psychological terms. That means he accuses other people of being guilty of what is in fact his own moral deficiencies," said Hammond. "This group of people traveling with Barack Obama were up in Hartford, Connecticut, the day before, smiling and waving as Gov. (Dan) Malloy signed into law a statewide gun registry and a statewide gun ban which came only precipitously short of confiscation. So having endorsed and loved and claimed victory over gun registration and gun confiscation, they then fly down to Washington, D.C., and the next day they say, 'Oh, no one is talking about confiscation and registration.' I mean, do they think we're stupid?" The text of Manchin-Toomey contained no explicit language on registration, but Hammond says close scrutiny raised major red flags with him. "The bill would require a very large number of people, anyone who published an intent to sell a gun. And we all know what "published" means. In libel-slander terms, it means communicated to a single other person. Does it mean published in a newspaper, church newsletter, put up a sign? No one knows. And you can bet it'll be interpreted as broadly as it can conceivably be interpreted," said Hammond. "So anyone who now comes under the rubric of this has to have a 4473. That's the little file card the gun dealer is going to keep on you when you buy that gun. What the Obama administration is doing is going around from dealer to dealer and copying the content of those 4473's, so they have a list of all the gun owners who bought a gun through that dealer, which from here on out will basically be all gun owners. So if they have that list sitting in regional offices, guess what the slimy Toomey-Manchin language says. You can't consolidate it," said Hammond. "They don't know anything about computers. The way computers work is it doesn't matter whether the data is sitting in Tucson or whether it's sitting in Washington, D.C. If it's accessible by the push of a computer stroke, it's a national gun registry. So they don't call that a national gun registry, I think for the same reason Satan doesn't like the word sin, but it is," said Hammond. |
| Amnesty Disaster |
| Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:56:35 EST The U.S. Senate Gang of Eight unveiled its immigration reform legislation, promising stronger border security, much-need reforms on visas and legal immigration practices and a path to citizenship. But Iowa Rep. Steve King says the only thing guaranteed in this bill is a reward for those who came here illegally. "The big comprehensive amnesty plan is a disaster and a big mistake," said King. "What are we trying to fix here and why? We have an executive branch problem, not a legislative branch problem. The President of the United States has refused to enforce immigration law with which he disagrees. So he's seeking to write his own by executive edict." King says Obama's approach to border enforcement has been infuriating, but the likelihood of Republicans getting behind this legislation leaves him baffled. "Now I'm hearing Republicans say, 'Well, if we're ever going to have enforcement of the border, we have to make this agreement with the president and the Democrats or we're never going to have border security.' When I read this bill, I wonder what's the point in having border security if you're going to legalize anybody that can come into America that is here and send an invitation to those that have been deported to apply to come back in," said King. The congressman is also not impressed by the severe penalties the Gang of Eight is promising to impose on those willing to go through the legalization process. "In the bill, they have to pay a fine. That's supposed to be the penalty for unlawful entry into the United States or a visa overstay. That's a $500 penalty fee that's good for six years. You can renew it for another six years for another $500. So the cost to stay in the United States to get legalized is $83.33 a year. That's one of those onerous provisions that they point out," said King. King says the criminal background checks are also a Gang of Eight fantasy. He says the only way to review the backgrounds of illegals is to have trained investigators interview them or get the fingerprints of everyone unlawfully in the country. King says those who have committed crimes simply won't step forward to become legal and they'll stay here anyway. He also says America's experience with amnesty in 1986 foreshadowed the mess that would come in the Gang of Eight plan. "In the '86 amnesty act, only about half of the people who were eligible came forward, but a whole lot of people that weren't did and there was about 70 percent fraud in that system. Eight hundred thousand to a million people became three million people," said King. "This bill simply opens it up even more. It doesn't tighten down. It doesn't learn from our mistakes in the past. It doubles down and triples and quadruples down on the mistakes of the past. For me, I'm not speechless, but I'm having a hard time explaining how it is that otherwise smart people could come to these conclusions." King's first step towards solving our immigration problems would be to enforce the border security laws that the Obama administration, and others, refuse to execute. "If I had (Homeland Security Secretary) Janet Napolitano's job and I wasn't tied down by a leash from the president, I could give you something like 98 or 99 percent operational control of the border. I could do that with the resources we're spending now. If I can tell you that, then I don't know what we're trying to accomplish here. Why don't we utilize the laws that we've passed and the resources that we have," said King, who says most of the border fence is still not done despite Congress passing legislation to do so. "This is a political battle that's going on and so far the rule of law side hasn't been winning," he said. This immigration push seems to have more momentum than previous efforts, with the Republican National Committee specifically saying in its 2012 campaign report that the GOP needs to get behind immigration legislation in order to win back some of the Hispanic vote. King says that logic is deeply flawed. "That 44 percent of the Hispanic vote that in that report they claimed George Bush got in his 2004 election, he did not receive that. Any objective scrutiny of that number takes you down to no more than 40 percent, most likely between 38-40 percent of the Hispanic vote," said King. "Could George Bush receive 44 percent of that vote today? That answer is probably and very likely no. They leap to a conclusion and build a generalized case around it." King says most Republicans have been quiet on the issue as they waited for the Gang of Eight to come up with a bill. He says he took a leading role against the plan when no one else stepped up and House leadership seemed to deride their position. "It even went so far as one of the leadership's voices almost taunted the conservatives in that we wouldn't do anything or speak up and they specifically mentioned myself and (Texas Rep.) Louie Gohmert. So I decided, 'Lets meet. Let's talk. Let's plan. Let's take action, because we can't let this thing sneak through unopposed,'" said King. Since then, the congressman says many GOP members have quietly encouraged him but are not yet ready to publicly oppose the Gang of Eight plan. King admits the strong advocacy of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio hurts the efforts of conservatives to raise concerns about the bill. He says he has great respect for Rubio but fears the senator got in too deep with the likes of New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, New Jersey's Bob Menendez and Dick Durbin of Illinois to figure out how to get out of the bipartisan alliance. The House would be unlikely to take up the same version of immigration legislation as the Senate, but King fears that any tiny House reforms could lead to the Senate version becoming law. "I'm worried that the House might pass a single piece of legislation that does make sense that does make sense, like mandatory E-Verify. But it becomes the conference vehicle for a Senate amnesty plan. And as the leadership of the House and Senate appointed a conference committee, there's a risk that they would send us back a comprehensive amnesty plan for an up-or-down in the House, where every Democrat would vote for it. A handful of Republicans would. It would go to the president's desk and it would be an irreversible thing," said King. Iowa will have an open U.S. Senate seat in 2014, as Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin is retiring. King is carefully considering the race but has not decided whether to join the race. "It looks like there's a relatively open path to the nomination at least today. I have done statewide polling and gotten a look at it. I've said from the beginning it's a slight uphill battle. I know that. I know what it takes to win. I can see the path to victory," said King. "There's some significant components that we need to put together to say yes and they all seem to be doable. On the other hand, all of the systems aren't go. So now it's a 50-50 and unknown on when the decision would be, but hopefully it's sooner rather than later because many others need to have that kind of information so they can make their plans." |
| Torture, Guns and A Governor? |
| Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:15:11 EST Former Arkansas Rep. Asa Hutchinson is throwing his hat into the ring for next year's open gubernatorial race, but only after finishing up his role in leading an investigation into detainee treatment and crafting policies designed to boost school security. Hutchinson was tapped by the Constitution Project to lead what he calls a non-partisan probe into how detainees were treated at various known and classified sites. He was also the point man for the National Rifle Association in it's recent push to enhance security in every school in America. Hutchinson recently wrapped up work on both major projects and he says that work led to his decision to seek the governor's office in Arkansas once again. "The engagement on these public issues just rekindled the fire for public service that I have. We love the state of Arkansas and we think there's a great opportunity here. We had to finish these projects of the detention task force. It's been two years in the works. This was so important after Sandy Hook with the school safety," said Hutchinson. "Now I can devote attention to this important opportunity. We're learning that the governors is who are really shaping national policy and helping, whether it's health care policy or whether it's education. They're really the leading indicators and that's exciting to me." Hutchinson lost the 2006 Arkansas governor's race to Democrat Mike Beebe, who is term-limited and cannot seek a third term in 2014. As for the the work he recently completed, Hutchinson admits that the NRA's goals on improving school security, including a push towards more armed security, were not implemented into the unsuccessful gun legislation in the Senate. But he says the effort has still made great strides. "The good news is that it's being considered by every local school district in our nation. This is a local issue. They are driving the train. They are improving security. They are taking steps. States are addressing it. What happens in Washington is not going to make a big difference in the safety of our schools. They have a pittance of money that's looked at school safety and the rest of their initiatives on the gun control side really does not have an impact on the safety of our schools. As we've seen demonstrated, whether it's whether it's a knife or whether it's a legal firearm, there's always a risk in our society today. Until we get those problems solved, you've got to improve safety." In his work with the Constitution Project, Hutchinson and his team of two retired generals and "distinguished public servants", the task force concluded that the rights of detainees were regularly violated. "Our forces did engage in what would generally be accepted as torture. So it's really indisputable that that's what happened. As to how that happened, you had everything from lawyers' opinions to messages being sent down to take the gloves off. All of these things combined for an an environment in which torture was committed," said Hutchinson. "This is strictly against what our nation stands for. It's a violation of the Convention Against Torture which was signed under Ronald Reagan as president." Hutchinson says the report also makes several recommendations for future policy, including changing the role of medical personnel with respect to detainees and making sure that the Uniformed Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions are closely followed. Hutchinson says the issue became widespread because it became formal U.S. policy. The report concludes legal experts were misled on what enhanced interrogation techniques would entail and the lawyers then misinformed President George W. Bush. "I can understand fully the post-9/11 environment because I was there and our objective was to prevent the next terrorist attack. We didn't want this to happen again. But we can make bad decisions even with the best of intentions," said Hutchinson. |
| The Iron Lady's Legacy |
| Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:14:12 EST Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest Wednesday, and the "Iron Lady" is being remembered as a steadfast and principled leader. Thatcher died April 8, following a stroke. She was 87. Thatcher served as prime minister from 1979-1990. Several key figures from previous U.S. administrations attended Thatcher's funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, including Reagan administration attorney general and counselor to the president Edwin Meese III. Ronald Reagan and Thatcher enjoyed a strong political kinship, ranging from their ardent opposition to Communism to their embrace of the free markets to revitalize stagnant economies. Meese says the it was clear before Reagan took office that they were political soul mates. "He had met her earlier on a trip to the United Kingdom and was quite impressed with what she was doing and also the speed, I would say, with which she was making changes. She came in with an excellent agenda of restoring the strength of the country and she proceeded immediately in 1979 to do that when she became prime minister," said Meese. Meese says while the specific economic challenges differed between the two countries, both Reagan and Thatcher were committed to reversing years of big government programs that failed to improve the economy. He believes Reagan was strongly encouraged in pursuing his own agenda because of the results he was seeing in Britain. "The fat that she was making headway was an encouragement to him. Also, it showed something that he strongly believed and that is that conservative ideas, which had always been the strength of the United States, that they worked and would continue to work," said Meese. Reagan and Thatcher were also of like minds on the threat posed by Communism and the Soviet Union - a critical fact since Reagan's approach differed greatly from previous presidents from both parties. "It was not possible to be successful in just living side-by-side with totalitarianism and that sooner or later freedom would have to overcome totalitarianism," said Meese, who says the two leaders were instantly like-minded on the issue when Thatcher became the first foreign leader to visit the newly-inaugurated Reagan. "They talked about the threat of Communism and what was going on around the world. He found that she had very similar ideas and as a result, they kind of joined forces both intellectually and from a practical standpoint," he said. Meese says the Reagan-Thatcher alliance was critical not only in the Cold War but in stemming the momentum for socialists around the world. He used the 1981 G-7 Summit as a prime example. "Among the seven leaders there, only Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were conservatives or right-of-center. All the rest were left-of-center, heading socialist governments around the world," said Meese. "When Ronald Reagan left office, all except for one of those countries had turned in a different direction and had right-of-center governments." Meese also extolled the personal friendship between Reagan and Thatcher, noting they both rose from very humble beginnings to become leaders of their respective countries. He contends their friendship was largely based on their ideological agreements, but Thatcher was charming and gracious even if she didn't possess the kind of wit that came so naturally to Reagan. In the final analysis, Meese says Thatcher should be remembered for her firm convictions and her commitment to improve Great Britain. "Most people will remember her stalwartness , the fact that even though she had a great deal of opposition, even though there were a lot of difficult decisions, she always stood firmly on principle. I think this is one of the things that endeared her to people. They felt that she was true to her basic values and basic principles and that she would do the right thing and that she would not act as people often think of politicians acting on what's good for them rather than what's good for the country," said Meese. "There's no question she put her country first and did a marvelous job of leading it at a time of great crisis," he said. |
| Bad Samaritans |
| Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:26:18 EST The American Civil Liberties Union launched a war on God almost a century ago and sudden advancement of secularism it spawned now threatens to stifle public expressions of faith and ultimately quash the constitutional freedoms upon which our nation was founded. That's the premise of "Bad Samaritans: The ACLU's Relentless Campaign to Erase Faith from the Public Square", the latest work from best-selling author Dr. Jerome Corsi. Corsi says the book comes at a critical time when secularism is running rampant and Americans need to decide whether we will succumb to the onslaught or fight to preserve the religious freedom that made this country great. "I think we're reaching a critical time, and certainly the Obama administration is speeding it up, of having the secularization of America. I think we're reaching critical points on the attack on God and the attack on the family," said Corsi. "Today, it's very difficult to practice Judeo-Christian beliefs in public school or the public square." "The ACLU is not only pressing same-sex marriage. They're now supporting pedophilia in the courts. In California, you've got attacks to remove the tax-exempt status of the Boy Scouts because they won't allow gay scoutmasters," said Corsi. "If the Supreme Court decides same-sex marriage cases, are churches where pastors, for biblical or scriptural reasons, want to oppose various sexual practices, are they going to be accused of hate crimes or lose their tax-exempt status? We've got a real attack going on in the United States on God and on the the family." Corsi contends secular and atheistic groups, like the ACLU, take aim at God and socially conservative policies because they see undermining the role of God in American life as an essential step in removing God-given rights from the American people and giving more and more authority to government. "Just go to the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson talking about inalienable right. Our liberties are God-given, instilled in our hearts by God. This is a Judeo-Christian concept of natural law," said Corsi. "If we abandon those ideas, then our rights are given by the state and it can be taken away by the state. You can have an arbitrary basis in terms of what rights are given or not given." This development can be seen in two current debates, according to Corsi. First, he says the Left's insistence on universal acceptance of the homosexual agenda could lead to pastors facing hate crime charges for teaching the biblical view on sexuality. He says the Catholic Church is already wrestling with government mandates on abortion services and contraception and may have to close hospitals and charities as a result. The ACLU has made a name for itself in challenging public displays or expressions of Christianity but the group rarely defends Christians who allege they were denied their right to fee religious expression. Corsi says that should come as no surprise. "The ACLU has been very hypocritical. They will also support Islam in cases where the ACLU would never support a Judeo-Christian practice," said Corsi. "Islam, as other religions, should have free expression in the United States and I would expect Islam would be a tolerant religion of other religions in the public square. My point on the ACLU is that they rather hypocritically single out Islam to support it almost as a club against Judeo-Christian beliefs. All religions ought to be treated on an equal status. That's what the First Amendment means." Corsi says this assault on traditional American values and the Christian faith are nothing new and we saw its effects in skyrocketing divorce rates, the legalization of abortion and other areas. But he says the battle can still be won. "These impacts on society will have a fundamental change over time. I'm saying in the book we need to issue the warning. We need to have arguments made for God. Certainly our Founding Fathers did not encourage us or want us to go down this path. It's been done before in human history," said Corsi. "I think before we headlong plunge into a politically correct understanding of sexual practices and family behavior that would have been understood in the pagan world, we better give it some second thoughts. And we should have some advocates for God in the courts arguing for the original understanding of the Judeo-Christian model, the religion and the meaning of the First Amendment." |
| When IRS Guys Are Smilin' |
| Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:47:06 EST The Capitol Steps offer a double feature as they dread the arrival of the federal income tax deadline and welcome Francis as the new pope. Our guest is Capitol Steps Co-Founder and star Elaina Newport. |
| Senate Immigration Rush |
| Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:48:35 EST The much-awaited Senate immigration reform bill is expected to be introduced next week and a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee says Democratic leaders are preparing to get it passed as quickly as possible. According to Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy scheduled only one hearing on the plan before Democrats on the panel presumably send the package to the Senate floor for consideration. He says the fast-track approach is eerily reminiscent of the Democratic approach to health care legislation early in the Obama administration. 1cA few years ago, there was an infamous moment when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi told congressmen with regard to the Obamacare bill, 18You 19ve got to pass this bill so you can find out what 19s in it. 19 We 19ve learned that bad things happen when we pass huge pieces of legislation, 1d said Lee. 1dThis immigration proposal, which no one has seen, has been estimated by some to be perhaps a 1,500 page bill. We haven 19t seen it and yet a hearing is being planned to occur within a week or so after it 19s introduced. I think that 19s a bit of a problem. I think we need a lot of hearings. I think we need a lot of time to review it. 1d Lee says reading and understanding a bill this long is a painstaking process and should never be rushed. 1cFifteen hundred pages of legislation is a lot. This does not read like a fast-paced novel. This does not read even like a slow-paced, long novel like 18The Grapes of Wrath 19. This has all kinds of spillover ramifications that need to be evaluated carefully, 1d he said. Reports from earlier in the week suggested that the Gang of Eight will seek to block any amendments that would fundamentally alter the main tenets of the forthcoming bill. Lee is cautiously heartened by promises that will not be the case. 1cI 19ve been told that Chairman Leahy is promising an open amendment process, at least within committee. I hope and expect and will demand that when it hits the floor there will also be an open amendment process as well, 1d said Lee. Lee didn 19t speculate as to why Senate Democrats want to move the bill so quickly and with limited scrutiny, but he does believe that a mammoth immigration reform bill is a mistake in principle. He contends individual bills addressing individual aspects of our policies would be much more effective. 1cWe 19ve got all kinds of things that need to be done with immigration reform. Those things could be done more effectively, more efficiently, more quickly and they 19d be virtually certain to pass if we did this on a step-by-step basis, 1d said Lee. 1dThere are certain things we need to do. We need to secure the border. We need to modernize and update our legal immigration system and we need a visa entry and exit system that will allow us to track those who are here on visas, when and where they enter and when and where they leave. 1cWhen those things are in place, it 19ll be a lot easier for us to figure out ways to deal with the 11 million people currently illegal in the United States. But if we try to do it all in one fell swoop and front-end load what to do with the 11 million, it 19s going to stall the process politically. It 19s also going to create huge logistical hurdles, which I think we should avoid through a step-by-step process, 1d said Lee. |
| Compromise Gun Bill Doesn't Exist |
| Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:05:15 EST The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to proceed on bipartisan legislation to expand background checks on gun purchases, but Utah Sen. Mike Lee says lawmakers basically agreed to take up a bill that hasn't been written and obviously hasn't been read. Most Democrats and 16 Republicans combined to vote 68-31 to proceed with debate on the gun bill. Sixty were needed. Senator Lee was joined by Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky in unsuccessfully pursuing a filibuster of the bill until lawmakers had a chance to read the proposed legislation and gather constituent feedback. The filibuster was seen as a long shot from the start but its fate was sealed after Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced their deal on expanding background checks to sales at gun shows and over the internet. Senate leaders are expected to use the compromise in place of the Democratic version that passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee. Lee says he has no idea what he thinks of the Toomey-Manchin bill because there's nothing to consider. "One of the frustrating things about this is that people are talking about the Toomey-Manchin bill. It doesn't exist yet. We still haven't seen language on it," said Lee. "That was part of what was so frustrating to me about this vote today is that we were voting on cloture on the motion to proceed to the legislation. We know that a critical part of that legislation, perhaps the heart of that legislation itself, will be the Toomey-Manchin language. And yet, no such language exists. We don't have it. We don't know what it says. We know a certain outline of the bill, but we don't have any details. "That's terribly frustrating. Frankly, I think it's irresponsible to vote on legislation like that when you know that that's going to be the centerpiece of it but you don't know what that language says," said Lee. Even though the filibuster attempt fell short, Lee says it was the right thing to do and still accomplished something important. "It was a good strategy. It was also something that brought us an outcome we wanted, which was to extend the debate beyond where it would otherwise have been. Had we not done that, we would have very quickly brought up legislation and perhaps passed something far too quickly before the American people had a chance adequately to review what it was they were going to be stuck with," said Lee, who says invoking the 60-vote threshold to proceed bought an additional 30 hours to review some of the gun control proposals. He says the close scrutiny will continue every step of the way. "We'll now proceed to the legislation and we'll still have a number of other votes. This is by no means over yet. I think the more time that goes by, the more the American people are realizing that the bulk of what this legislation does is to make law-abiding citizens less free while doing little or nothing to deter gun violence," he said. As mentioned, Lee cannot render an opinion on the Toomey-Manchin language since the bill hasn't been written. However, he says the background check language in the original bill was not acceptable to him. "The universal background check language introduced by Sen. (Chuck) Schumer that moved through the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which I sit, would require universal background checks. It has certain record-keeping requirements in connection with that. It also has provisions giving rule-making authority to the attorney general of the United States," said Lee. "That rule-making authority could be interpreted by an attorney general, either the current one or a future one if it were to become law, that could result in a de facto registration system. Even people who say that they're fine with the universal background check system are rarely, if ever, comfortable with the idea of a universal gun registration system - which I think this provision would lead to. "You know Americans are just not really comfortable with the federal government keeping track of, keeping a database full of records of very personal details, ranging from what they eat for breakfast, where they go to church and how often, what books they read from the library or in this case what guns they own. They're just not comfortable with that. It shouldn't be keeping track of that information," said Lee. Lee is also concerned that by agreeing to open debate on this bill, far more controversial items could get added, including limits on magazine capacity and possibly an ban on many types of firearms. Those amendments could be added by simple majority votes, but Lee says there are plenty of procedural tools at his disposal, including another 60-vote threshold to end debate. "That 60-vote threshold makes sure that we have broad bipartisan consensus and that prevents us from getting into a posture in which we have a back room-negotiated deal that's foisted upon the American people without any real debate, discussion or bipartisan consensus," said Lee. On Thursday's motion to proceed, Democrats Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska, voted in opposition. The 16 Republicans voting to move forward were Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dean Heller of Nevada, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Toomey. |
| Landrieu's Liberal Legacy |
| Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:28:25 EST Louisiana Rep Bill Cassidy is launching a 2014 campaign against Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, saying the three-term lawmaker is a reliable vote for the Obama agenda and provided critical votes that led to record deficits and Obamacare. Cassidy is a longtime physician, known for teaching medical students at LSU and establishing public-private partnerships to inoculate tens of thousands of poor children and co-founded a venture to make sure the working uninsured receive free medical an dental care. He was elected to the Louisiana State Senate in 2006 and the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008. Cassidy says he is seeking higher office next year because the Democratically-controlled Senate is thwarting progress in Washington. "Over the last four or five years, House Republicans have been able to put the brakes on some of the most harmful parts of the Obama agenda, at least after we took the majority," said Cassidy. "It is a Democratic Senate which actually continues to aid and abet the advancement of the Obama agenda, which I just think is the wrong direction for our country to go in. "Senator Landrieu supports the president 97 percent of the time. If I think it's important to fix Congress so that Congress can put a check on the president and then actually advance a positive agenda that takes us in a better direction, well then if I'm positioned to win that seat then I feel like it's my responsibility to go for it," said Cassidy. Cassidy plans to link Landrieu to Obama every chance he can. In fact, Cassidy declares in his announcement video that he is running against Landrieu and Obama. He says that connection is vital for people to understand. "That is the transparency that the voter needs to know. If folks think, 'Oh my gosh, we have a moderate Democrat who's out there fighting for us,' they may say one thing. If point the headlights, if you will, on the truth, which is that she supports the president 97 percent of the time, and that the policies that the president has pursued are not the direction that most people in Louisiana want our country to go, then it's important that that truth be brought out to the Louisiana voter," said Cassidy. Cassidy already starts at a much healthier place than most candidates taking on an incumbent. According to a recent Harper Polling survey, Landrieu leads Cassidy 46-41 percent even though 56 percent of Louisiana voters don't yet know enough about Cassidy to have an opinion of him. Landrieu's problem is that she has a 42 percent disapproval rating. Cassidy says something important can be interpreted from those numbers. "It isn't so much that Louisiana is leaving Senator Landrieu. It is that Senator Landrieu has left Louisiana in the sense that 60 percent of the people voted for Gov. Romney. She supports the president 97 percent of the time," he said. "Senator Landrieu, as she has become more liberal, has grown out of step with the average Louisiana voter. That's why we hope to bring Louisiana values back to Washington." Louisiana largely trends Republican. Republican presidential candidates have won the state comfortably in the past four cycles, Gov. Bobby Jindal has twice won convincingly and Sen. David Vitter easily won re-election in 2010. So why does Landrieu keep winning and who is voting for her but not the other statewide Democratic candidates? "There are actually Republicans that vote for Sen. Landrieu, in part because they think she's a conservative. That's been an image she's been able to project. But, again, when you look at the voting record, just to repeat once more, she supports the president's agenda 97 percent of the time. Once folks become acquainted with that, they may say we like her personally but we just think our country should go in a different direction," said Cassidy. Cassidy says his main objectives in the months to come are to make sure people know where Mary Landrieu stands on the issues and convince them that he has better ideas on the key issues. "I have 19 months to connect with the voters of Louisiana to show that our policies are a better set of policies. I think folks like that more if you do it as much as possible in smaller meetings as opposed to just TV commercials. We're working on those smaller meetings," said Cassidy. And what are the big issues for Cassidy? In his announcement video, he vowed to pursue balanced budgets, protect Second Amendment rights and champion pro-life values. He also spelled out how those positions differ greatly from Sen. Landrieu's record. But for Dr. Cassidy, dealing with Obamacare is at the very top of the agenda because it effects to many areas of life. "Right now the voter in Louisiana is concerned about the economy, as are voters across the nation. They recognize that small businesswoman may make a decision not to hire that fiftieth employee because once she does, she has to pay a penalty of $40,000 to comply with Obamacare," said Cassidy. "Or the voter may realize that because of Obamacare, they're losing their full-time job and they're being moved to a part-time job. All those are issues that are keeping folks from economic advancement, from having a better future for their family." " I am running on the positive agenda of replacing Obamacare. Unfortunately, Senator Landrieu was the deciding vote on that. So both the economy and health care, and quite frankly personal freedom are all wrapped up in that one issue. That'll be prominent," said Cassidy. |
| Breaching A Fundamental Value |
| Tue, 9 Apr 2013 16:55:55 EST There has been no acceptable explanation for not rescuing Americans under siege in Benghazi and nothing less than a special House committee investigation will satisfy the retired U.S. Army general who played a key role in organizing a letter signed by more than 700 special operations veterans in demanding the formation of the special committee. Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin served in the Army's special forces and in the Army Rangers. He is now executive vice president at the Family Research Council. He says the lack of action during the Benghazi crisis and the lack of answers since have been bothering him for months. "I've been working this since not long after the events on the eleventh of September. That said, the U.S. Congress has been sort of ignoring all of our efforts to try and get some full accounting on this thing," said Boykin. "I just simply reached out to some people that I knew had a deep passion for this, that would in fact bring a different dimension to it and that's the retired special operations guys that spent a good portion of their professional careers preparing for and executing these kinds of operations. They've risked their lives for this. They've seen people that have sacrificed their lives to save other Americans and I knew these people would come on quickly and would come on with deep passion." Boykin says he and his colleagues directed the letter towards the House of Representatives rather than the U.S. Senate because there are already 70 House co-sponsors for a resolution calling for the creation of the same select committee to probe what went wrong before, during and after the Benghazi attacks. He is very cautiously optimistic that House leaders will approve the committee but he cautions the reaction over the next day or so will be critical in determining whether this will happen. The general agrees with Special Operations Speaks Co-Founder Larry Bailey, who told us earlier in the week that to this point, House leaders have been somewhat complicit in allowing key questions on Benghazi to go unanswered. "If you look at the fact that the commander of the Africa Command, Gen. Carter Ham, has never been brought in to testify, if you look at the fact that there are at least 32 survivors of this incident and none of them have ever been brought in and questioned, if you look at the fact that one of those 32 is still in Walter Reed and a member of Congress has visited him twice but he's never been asked to come across town and appear before a committee or subcommittee, this is inexcusable and it reeks of a cover-up of some kind," said Boykin, House leaders have been reluctant to approve the special panel for a couple of reasons. First, they don't want to allocate unbudgeted funds to pay for a new committee during a time of sequestration. Second, multiple House committees are planning to release findings on Benghazi at some future date. That's not good enough for Boykin. "Everybody needs to understand thee structure of our U.S. Congress, these independent and separate committees, frequently don't play well together. Each of them has their own agenda and I'm not being critical by saying that. They have their own agenda," he said. "What we're insisting on is that there be some specific answers as to why there was no military rescue effort launched. We all came out of a community where that was one of or in some cases it was our primary mission - to go and rescue Americans or at least to recover their bodies and bring them home. The current structure will not facilitate a bipartisan commission that will ask the kind of questions that need to be asked." So what would a rejection of a special committee indicate to Boykin and his special operations brethren? "What it tells me is that, first of all, they're not showing leadership. Second, they're not taking their oaths seriously, and, thirdly, that this thing runs very, very deep and there is something there that is being hidden from the American people," he said. While Boykin and his fellow veterans are demanding answers to many questions, he believes some mysteries of Benghazi are being pieced together - like what really spawned the violence on September 11. Boykin says there is ample evidence that the late Amb. Chris Stevens had been helping supply Libyan rebels with weapons and he was now engaged in covertly shipping arms to the rebels in Syria. Boykin says regardless of his personal opposition to such an idea, shipping arms would be legal provided it was done the right way. "That's not our issue. Our issue is why was there no rescue attempt? Why was there no attempt to recover the bodies before they fell into the hands of the Libyans? We find that perplexing and inexcusable that we don't have those answers," said Boykin. Boykin personally suspects that President Obama was simply focused on other things and didn't honor his responsibilities. He also believes that ordering others to stand down may have been an attempt to keep the weapons program a secret. He also asserts that then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was woefully ill-informed about regular military procedure when he contended that no military resources would be sent in unless there was a crystal clear understanding of what was happening on the ground. For Boykin, this search for answers ends up at the same place he began - the demand to know why Americans were not rescued from harm's way. "We spent our professional careers doing this kind of thin. We find this to be the breach of a fundamental American value," said Boykin. |
| 'That's A Huge Red Flag' |
| Fri, 5 Apr 2013 16:00:56 EST The March jobs report came in well below expectations and the top House Republican responsible for poring over the numbers each month says this is all to be expected thanks to the encroachment of Obamacare and the Obama administration's relentless push for new taxes. On Friday, the Labor Department reported the overall unemployment rate dropped from 7.7 percent to 7.6 percent. However, just 88,000 jobs were added in March, well short of the 190,000 expected by economic experts. The drop in the jobless rate is a result of 663,000 people leaving the labor force last month. Most political chatter on the left suggests reductions in government spending through sequestration are to blame. Many on the right say the tax increases passed through January's fiscal cliff legislation is choking our growth, the top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee in Congress says the explanation is the same as it's been four more than four years. "I'd have to say we're in a lousy economic recovery," said Texas Rep. Kevin Brady. "You're always rooting for good jobs numbers but this was not one of them. In fact, the jobs that were created were so small it's actually dismaying. Plus, with more than a half a million people who have simply given up looking for jobs and they just don't think there's one out there, that's a huge red flag. "We're at the lowest level in 34 years. We're actually at Jimmy Carter-era workforce rates which is a bad sign for the economic recovery of the country," said Brady. Several factors are grinding job growth and the overall economy to a halt, and Brady says none of the reasons are all that new. "It's what's been holding the recovery back for three-and-a-half years. It is the talk of higher taxes. It is the president's new health care laws. You've got a lot of businesses very reluctant to add new jobs, in fact many of them are cutting hours in anticipation of it. Of course, all the new regulation coming out of Washington. That's got a real dampening effect on the economy," said Brady. " So the question is, 'Do we stay this same course and continue the worst economic recovery in modern times or do we change course and give businesses the certainty to start hiring again.' For the millions of people who have no breadwinner in their family or who have just given up looking for work, I think the answer's obvious. We need to change course." Brady elaborated on what he sees as the negative impacts of the Obama health care law and his push for additional tax increases. He says outside of repeal, a substantial delay in the implementation of Obamacare would be a good step. Brady admits that it would be tough to find the votes to do that but he says the economic impact would be significant. "It will be hard but it will be wise to do it. One, because they're not ready to put this massive new law in place. They're missing, literally, every deadline they've set for themselves. Because of that, businesses and patients are more uncertain about the future and what to do," said Brady. "For example, I toured a wood palette plant in Conroe, Texas, a month or so ago. The increased costs from the president's new law, to them, is the same as opening two new plants and hiring 100 new workers. That much extra cost is what they're going to have to incur just to keep the plants they have," said Brady, who estimates that between seven and 65 million workers will find themselves dropped from their employer-based health plans and forced to go on the exchanges. The Obama budget is yet to be completed but on Friday reports indicate that the president will call for reduced spending on Medicare and Social Security, but he wants hundreds of billions more in new taxes as well. Brady says that's not going to solve anything. "Why doesn't the president believe saving Social Security for the sake of saving social security? Isn't that enough? And why is he pursuing higher taxes, not to make Social Security better and not to make the economy better, but just to pay for added spending in other areas? It seems to me he's holding seniors hostage to be able to spend more in other places. That's the wrong approach," said Brady. So what are the Republican plans for revitalizing our economy? "We're going to push for pro-growth tax reform because we think the tax code is so complex today, it's really a drag on the economy. We believe if you show the rest of the world we're serious about getting our financial house in order, especially dealing with Social Security and Medicare that would avoid another downgrade in the credit rating. That would be hugely helpful. And finally, calling a timeout on the talk of higher taxes, on new regulations and even a significant delay in the president's health care law," said Brady. |
| Frederick Douglass Republicans |
| Fri, 5 Apr 2013 14:05:28 EST Democrats are overwhelmingly winning minority voters and a prominent black conservative says they will keep winning until conservatives learn how to win the propaganda war and champion the story of slave-turned-abolitionist Frederick Douglass as an outreach to black voters and every voter. K. Carl Smith is a rising star among black conservatives. He recently addressed the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference and is author of "Frederick Douglass Republicans: The Movement to Re-Ignite America's Passion for Liberty." He says conservatives have the right message but their approach to voters is deeply lacking. "The Republican Party has done a horrendous job of talking about a message that unites people. They don't talk about liberty enough and that's the all-encompassing message that you want to put out there and that's not happening. It's not being done in a very effective way," said Smith. "We're so badly losing the propaganda battle, so whenever we try to express our conservative values we have already been discredited so our message falls on deaf ears. I contend that the number one problem facing the GOP and the conservative movement is not the problem of messaging per se but this whole idea about winning a propaganda battle so your message will connect with people and resonate with people. So when you talk about conservatism, the don't see you as a sellout. They don't see you as a racist or that you don't care about the poor. We've got to start winning that propaganda battle first, and that's what we're not doing a very good job of," said Smith. Smith says the Democrats are very effective in the propaganda battles, largely because their message to black voters and other solidly Democratic voting blocs is built on a glaring lie. "They have massively co-opted the history of the Republican Party. If you go to the Democratic Party's website right now, go to the 'About Us'. Go to the link that says 'Our History'. On that page, the first sentence says, 'For the past 200 years, the Democrat Party's been the leader of civil rights. That's not true!," exclaimed Smith. "Two hundred years, that's what, 1813? The slave masters were Democrats. The Democrat Party started the KKK to suppress black votes. So they're co-opting the history of the Republican Party and have gotten away with it," he said. "The way we have to counter this is we have to speak the truth. We have to get in the trenches. We've got to let people know in a very non-condescending and non-confrontational manner, the true history of both parties and let them know that we need people in both political parties with a Frederick Douglass perspective," said Smith. So why does Smith hold up the brilliant 19th century orator and writer Frederick Douglass as the key to rekindling Americans' passion for liberty among all races? The best way to understand what conservatism is and how it improves your quality of life, you've got to bring Frederick Douglass into the equation," he said. "Nobody can out-victimize Frederick Douglass. You've just got to elevate his life. He was a man who was born below poverty and rose to be very prosperous. he had $300,000 in the bank, which is the equivalent of $25 million today. So when you think about it, being on the plantation as a slave and depending on the master to take care of him, Douglass was a 47-percenter. But discovering his God-given gifts and talents and becoming an entrepreneur he became a one-percenter." Smith says clothing the conservative message in the success of Frederick Douglass will take the steam our of accusations that conservatives look down on people of other races or the poor. "With Frederick Douglass, that's off the table," he said. "You can't call a Frederick Douglass Republican or a Frederick Douglass Republican a sellout. What we're saying is we believe and we are in lock-step with the values of Frederick Douglass, who respected the Constitution and respected the Founding Fathers." Smith says he grew up in a Democratic household and only later discovered that his core beliefs actually lined up with the conservative movement. He says conservatives must patiently reach out to those who have been convinced Republicans are responsible for the ills they suffer. "I could care less about a person's political affiliation. What I've learned matters most is not the party that you're in but the way in which you vote. The way in which you vote doesn't show your love and your faithfulness to the God that you say you serve. Once you make it a values thing and not a party affiliation thing and you can express that in a non-confrontational way, when people realize that they have been lied to and betrayed, that when they change how they vote," said Smith, who detailed the pain of discovering how he had been politically deceived. "When I grew up in Alabama, I thought George Wallace was a Republican. I thought Bull Connor was a Republican. I believed the people that bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, were part of the Republican Party. All that was not true. When I realized this was not true I went through a period of depression because all of the things I believed to be true I found it was a lie," said Smith. |
| Debate Triggers Border Rush |
| Thu, 4 Apr 2013 16:07:48 EST Illegal border crossings are dramatically on the rise since the latest Congressional push began towards comprehensive immigration reform. In reporting first published by Townhall.com's Katie Pavlich, border patrol agents in the Tucson/Nogales sector claim illegals are coming here in much higher numbers in just the past few months. "We've seen the number of illegal aliens double, maybe even triple since amnesty talk started happening," an unnamed border agent said to Townhall. The data from Customs and Border Protection cited in the report shows 504 illegals were detected crossing in that sector between February 5 and March 1. Only 189 were caught on camera and just 174 of the 504 were apprehended. Of those spotted on camera, 32 were carrying huge packs believed to contain drugs and several were heavily armed. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a former Texas judge. He says none of this surprises him. "This is no surprise at all. It's consistent with what we anticipated would happen and it's very consistent with the reports we've been hearing anecdotally along the border," said Gohmert. "It is a huge problem and what we keep trying to get across to the administration and Senate Democratic leaders is until you secure the border even talking about amnesty becomes a magnet." Gohmert says this is a repeat of what happened along our southern border following the amnesty granted to illegals in 1986. "That's exactly what happened in 1986. It is exactly what is happening now, just from talking about amnesty. One of the border patrolmen said that when they've apprehended some, they've said, 'Where do we go to get our amnesty?" said Gohmert. "They've heard about it. It's drawing them in here and we've even got to quit talking about it until this administration can do better than getting one-third of those who are crossing illegally. That's not a secure border." The congressman also agreed with Michigan Rep. Candice Miller, who told us earlier in the week that the Department of Homeland Security has no current method of measuring the effectiveness of border security efforts. But Gohmert says that shouldn't be that hard. "It is possible to know who's crossing. In Israel, they can detect people trying to dig under. They detect people trying to come across. This president can send drones to Yemen, for heaven's sake, to blow up American citizens. You can certainly have drones flying for next to nothing along our border and then send people to apprehend those who come across. It's not rocket science," said Gohmert. "For the cost of what they've given a couple of Solyndras we could have had the whole southern border secure and be monitoring the northern border for incursions as well. It can be done. They're just not choosing to do it," said Gohmert. Gohmert lauds Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for insisting upon regular order in the Senate, which would require open committee hearings and votes as well as a robust amendment process. He also says the greatest victims of amnesty would be legal immigrants who have been waiting up to a decade or more for a chance at citizenship. He believes the immigration legislation currently being discussed will only exacerbate the problem, but Gohmert contends that securing the border would make the rest of immigration reform very easy. "I would say that what they're talking about is not a reform. It is a magnet to more illegality unless the border is secured first. If we can just get the border secured, so of 504 people trying to get across illegally we get 502 and only allow those coming in legally, once that's done you will be amazed how quickly we get a deal done. But they're wanting to put the cart in front of the horse and that never works," Gohmert said. |
| DHS Clueless on Border Security |
| Wed, 3 Apr 2013 17:11:36 EST The push for comprehensive immigration reform is gathering steam on Capitol Hill and both parties say that ensuring secure borders is an integral part of reform. However, the Obama administration is now admitting that it has no system for measuring the effectiveness of border security. Shortly after taking office, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the old "operational control" method of evaluating border security was "archaic" and that DHS was developing a much more accurate system known as the Border Condition Index (BCI). The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security recently held hearings to learn about the BCI, but was stunned by the testimony of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Mark Borkowski. "We sort of anticipated that we would be hearing how the BCI was about to be implemented and the construct of it and the components, etc. Instead of that, we were told that they weren't going to be able to tell us much about that because they didn't think that would be very effective either so they weren't going to be able to use that. As you might imagine, both Republicans and Democrats were almost stunned by his testimony," said Michigan Rep. Candice Miller, chairwoman of the Border and Maritime Security Subcommittee, who is very troubled by the inability of the DHS to handle this critical issue. "There isn't anybody else to ask. I'm sorry it's difficult but that's their job. It's not like we can go to another agency and say, 'What do you guys think?' The Department of Homeland Security is missioned and tasked with this," she said. "We have to be able to measure, to have some degree of accountability, a measurement matrix of some type to be able to really understand the percentage of operational control at our borders, all the different components that the Department of Homeland Security uses that have a nexus with the border and whether we're having success or failure or whether we're making progress or not quite frankly," said Miller. According to Miller, the most recent estimate of operational control came in a 2010 report that suggested has operational control of 44 percent of our border with Mexico and just four percent on our northern border with Canada. She admits the border can never be totally secure but she says recent testimony from Customs and Border Protection Director Mike Fisher suggests 90 percent of operational control is achievable. "I have to say if you could get to 90 percent, I think the American people would feel a high degree of comfort and confidence that we have our borders pretty well secured," said Miller. President Obama and other supporters of comprehensive immigration reform contend that border security concerns have been addressed through more manpower, virtual and actual fencing, the use of drones and more money for security purposes. Miller says all of that is welcome and apprehension numbers are up along the border but that doesn't convince her that the problem is being solved. "There has to be some accountability for how we are doing there. Part of that strategy for all of this has to be a measurement system that makes sense and not just the ad hoc application of resources," said Miller. "Right now we're fixated on throwing more resources at the problem. I think the conversation will now rotate a bit to focusing on outcome. Really, how effective are we at keeping bad things and bad people out of the country?" In addition to not having a handle on the state of our borders, Miller says DHS dropping the ball on this issue could end up derailing immigration reform. "If they're not able to have something that is really representative of security progress along the border, they could be the big stumbling block for this comprehensive immigration reform, and that would be too bad I believe, because I do think the country is ready to engage in this debate and the Congress certainly is," said Miller. Miller says the momentum for reform may lead to passage of reform with these border security metric being addressed, but she says there are other members of Congress who are deeply troubled by this. "I do think that the scene has been laid out there that you can actually have something pass the House and the Senate and signed into law by the president this year perhaps. Sometimes in politics, something happens and the stars line up and people are ready to move on a particular issue," she said. "But in my mind, and I believe many others, there will be huge consternation for those kinds of proposals if we just have a complete void of having any type of way of measuring the security progress along the border," said Miller. "Whether they want to use the BCI or not use it or operational control or what have you, how do you measure border security?" |
| Gun Grabbers Galore |
| Tue, 2 Apr 2013 16:13:37 EST Prospects look fairly bleak for sweeping gun control legislation in Congress but action at the United Nations and in several states may end up having the same effect. On Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Supporters, including the Obama administration, contend this is designed to crack down on illicit arms trafficking, but critics say it's really an effort to stamp out gun rights in the U.S. and beyond. "It's far beyond what it's purported to do. It requires this country keep a national gun registry of gun owners. In addition, it could be used as a justification for banning semi-autos and banning handguns without any further legislation," said Mike Hammond, chief counsel at Gun Owners of America. "It could be interpreted as self-implementing and by an executive order Obama would simply ban all handguns using this treaty." Hammond says the ATT could also lead to microstamping, which would require tiny signatures to be on every cartridge fired and would be very expensive. He says the treaty will die in the U.S. Senate. Sixty-seven votes are needed to ratify any treaty and in recent weeks, 53 senators indicated their opposition to the ATT. But Hammond says that may not deter Obama. "It has no chance of being ratified, but I expect to see an effort by the Obama administration to enforce it, even without ratification," said Hammond. As the UN presses forward with a treaty that had been successfully derailed for years, more U.S. states are implementing tougher gun control laws. The latest is Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook tragedy took place in December. Lawmakers there have agreed to a broader assault weapons ban, banning of large-capacity magazine and new registries for gun owners who already own larger magazines and weapons about to be banned. Hammond says bills like this show the true agenda of gun control advocates. "Interestingly, at the federal level, we are opposing the national registry bill on the basis that it would create a national registry and all the liberals are running around saying, 'Oh, no, no. No one said anything about registry, but low and behold, every state in the country where the anti-gun forces have the capacity to establish a registry, they have," said Hammond. Hammond notes that Connecticut already had some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation at the time of the Newtown shootings. In fact, he asserts that those laws emboldened the killer and gave him a greater chance at success. "The anti-gun policy didn't work out very well for the kids at Newtown. All it did was telegraph to Adam Lanza that you can get your 15 minutes of fame, shoot up a classroom of first-graders and you don't have to worry that there's anyone there who's going to shoot back. In effect, Connecticut's laws were responsible for the massacre at Newtown," said Hammond. At the federal level, the Senate is gearing up for a likely debate on gun legislation. Hammond and Gun Owners of America are urging senators to vote against bringing the bill to the floor because of all the pressuring and favors Democrats may use to win votes on issues ranging from gun registries to a renewal of the assault weapons ban. "I am cautiously optimistic that we may be able to get as many as 44 or 45 Republicans on board in opposition to the motion to proceed. If that happens, I would guess that a half-dozen red state Democrats are going to go with them. So we are cautiously optimistic that we will be successful in keeping gun control from coming to the Senate which by far would be the best outcome," said Hammond. "Otherwise, we're just going to have a three-week Obamacare-type bribe-a-thon with Harry Reid offering amendments intended to destroy the opposition and offering amendments intended to buy off the votes he needs in order to pass the thing on final passage," he said. The House has been much quieter on the issue, but Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York is now pushing mandatory liability insurance for all gun owners. It would be a crime to sell a gun to anyone without this insurance and owning a gun without the insurance could lead to fines up to $10,000. Hammond was very blunt in his assessment of this bill as well. "It's clear what the intent is. First, the intent is to impose an insurance requirement which would take gun ownership out of the hands of the poor, out of the hands of the black," said Hammond. "Incidentally, these are the same people who are whining about the one percent and yet they're imposing an incredibly regressive requirement intended to take constitutional rights away from people who are poor, people who are black." "We react to it in this way: it is racist. It is classist. It is disgusting, and it won't pass," he said. |
| Battling Obama's Bureaucracy |
| Mon, 1 Apr 2013 16:13:18 EST President Obama is nominating more radical personnel for his second term than he did four years ago and some of the most aggressive parts of his agenda center on energy and environmental policy, according to a top Senate Republican. Louisiana Sen. David Vitter is the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He is vowing tough scrutiny of two top Obama nominees and says the Obama energy policy still suggests the president is fine with Americans paying much more for the energy we consume. Ernest Moniz is Obama's choice to lead the Energy Department, but some of his recent comments are resurrecting concerns that the Obama administration is seeking to force a transition to renewable energies by making our current energy patterns financially unsustainable. In an interview with the Switch Energy Project, Moniz says the problem is that it's cheaper to release carbon emissions than to contain them. "Ultimately, it has to be cheaper to capture and store (carbon emissions) than to release it and pay a price. If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few decades. Well, that could double. It could eventually triple," said Moniz in the interview. "Unfortunately, that's the continuation of the basic position of the Obama administration. The last energy secretary, Secretary (Steven) Chu, had a simular comment right before he was appointed. He said the big problem in this country is gasoline prices weren't as high as they are in Europe and they needed to be," said Vitter. "I don't think American consumers, particularly in this really weak economy appreciate hearing that. An all-of-the-above energy strategy should not be all-of-the-above only by putting the price of carbon-based fuels through the roof and really hurting the middle class." Vitter says a carbon tax is the "ultimate goal" of the Obama administration, but there is very little support for it in either party on Capitol Hill. Obama has largely been frustrated in his legislative efforts on energy policy, but some of his top regulatory efforts have still succeeded through new regulations through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Vitter says this effort to raise energy costs could be implemented the same way. "What they have done since the 2010 Republican takeover of the House is to shift to administrative action, go into administrative overdrive if you will, like at EPA, often going beyond their proper authority," said Vitter. Vitter says Obama has the right to choose who he wants to run the bureaucracy of the federal government, but he says lawmakers have a major responsibility to shed light on questionable policies and tactics by administration officials. That's one of the main reasons why Vitter is vigorously pressing against the nomination of EPA nominee Gina McCarthy, in particular an effort to get to the bottom of the Richard Windsor scandal. Windsor is the fictitious individual in whose dummy email account EPA officials formed critical policy positions apart from official government servers. "For me, a lot of the questions will revolve around the complete lack of openness and transparency at the EPA. You mentioned this rampant email scandal. There have also been real abuses of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request when those come from the public. I think there's been a concerted effort at EPA to frustrate the public getting valid information," said Vitter, who says public exposure of what's happening at the EPA is his number one priority as the ranking Republican on the committee. Another practice that aggravates Vitter is known as sue and settle. He says the EPA essentially works with liberal environmental groups to have the groups sue the EPA to urge more liberal policies. Rather than take the matter to court, the EPA settle with its supposed agitator and move policy to a more radical position. Nominees are also a problem. In addition to McCarthy, Vitter is staunchly opposed to the choice of Thomas Perez to lead the Department of Labor because of Vitter contends was an unequal enforcement of voting rights laws along partisan lines during the time Perez served in the Department of Justice. McCarthy and Perez are not the exception but the norm right now, according to Vitter. He says Obama has nominated much more polarizing people to key positions since winning re-election. "Overall, his new slate of nominees since his re-election are even further left, are even more radical than the first time around," said Vitter. |
| The Republican Recovery Plan |
| Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:33:05 EST Republican National Committee Co-Chair Sharon Day says many changes need to happen for Republicans to start winning more elections, including a GOP embrace of comprehensive immigration reform and putting an end to "aggressively negative" rhetoric on the issue of marriage. Earlier in March, the RNC issued a very detailed report into why the 2012 elections went poorly for the party and how efforts can be improved in future campaigns. Suggestions ranged from fewer debates in the GOP primaries and greatly beefing up hi-tech outreach to making greater inroads with various demographics, especially blacks, Hispanics and young voters. The RNC's "Growth and Opportunity Project" reports young voters saw gay marriage as a defining issue in how they cast their ballots. Day says the party stands behind it's platform position of a marriage being between a man and a woman but the tone of the conversation needs to improve. "What this report showed and what we find important is that tone does matter. Words do matter. You have to make people feel inviting. You have to make people want to feel invited to be part of the process and part of the solution," said Day. "When we talk about these issues, we don't have to talk about it in a negative aspect with individuals, which is a complete turn-off for many people, myself included." As high-profile Supreme Court arguments on same-sex marriage played out in Washington this week, Democrats were very active in urging the court to change the definition of marriage. Republicans were largely absent from the debate. Day says the GOP clearly stands behind its traditional marriage plank in the party platform. "I think we clearly define that a marriage is between a man and a woman. Our belief is from that point, but it doesn't mean there also isn't open dialogue to discuss it and to talk about it," said Day. "Again, our platform, that's the way we define a marriage is between a man and a woman, but it doesn't mean that we have to be aggressively negative about that." "Democrats are going to do what the Democrats are going to do. They're great at demagoguing. They're great at getting out there. They're great at dividing a nation rather than building unity and that's the way they do politics," she said. The other issue the RNC report specifically addresses is immigration, with the GOP leaders urging passage of comprehensive immigration reform. Day says the issue is a major reason for the plunge in Republican support among Hispanics over the last couple of election cycles and trumps the tendency of Hispanics to agree with the party on other issues. "With a lot of Hispanics and a lot of minority groups, immigration is not the key issue, but it becomes a key issue when it becomes a political football that's kicked from one side to the next without talking about it in honest terms," said Day. "There's a big mixture about what should be immigration reform and I think we've led the way. We have some of our individuals, like Ted Cruz, like Marco Rubio, that are leading the way in trying to come up with a solution. That was a very important part of George W. Bush when he was president. He couldn't get it past the Democrats in any way, shape or form," said Day. Day believes the key for Republicans is not to shift their positions on key issues but to engage with voters more effectively. "It's not changing our principles but changing the message and the way we talk to people. Half the battle sometimes is just reaching out to someone in their community, talking about the things we stand for and the convictions we stand for, the principles our party stands on," said Day. "If you're a man, a woman, you're Hispanic, you're black Republican, you're an Asian, doesn't matter. What we want is the same thing. We want a good education for our children. We want a job, to be able to put food on the table without two or three jobs. We want strong national security. Those are the things that are important to every American. We did not do a good job as the Republican National Committee or our party or our candidates in talking about the issues that resonate to all Americans. We weren't in the communities. We weren't talking about it. We didn't make them feel invited. We did not make them feel like we wanted them in our party and that's our responsibility," said Day. One major victory for the RNC over the past two years was emerging from serious debt piled up under the leadership of former Chairman Michael Steele. Day says it took a lot of work to convince donors to help the party get out of debt before it could even focus on messaging. On the technical side, the GOP freely admits it was badly beaten by the Obama campaign in using new technology to inform, motivate and turn out voters. As a result, she says the RNC is setting up an office in Silicon Valley to produce the most effective data machine possible and compete much better with Democrats in campaigns to come. The party is also looking to scale back the number of Republican primary debates. There were 21 debates among Republicans presidential candidates in 2008 and 20 in 2012. The RNC is looking to cut that in half. "It would be great to have not so many. I think I attended 19 of the 20. It was way too many. It was like watching your family fight at the dinner table. We saw that didn't work, the process of more debates being better, it just in the end did not prove to be correct," said Day, who says rule changes are in the works to limit the number of debates and could cost candidates who break the rules. "We do have some mechanisms that we can put in place that the RNC, we think, under the rules of the body, to cut down on the number of debates tied to delegates. I shouldn't even say all the rules or what they're looking at, but there are a couple of opportunities that we think that we can go," said Day. |
| Sizing Up the Supremes on Marriage |
| Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:27:27 EST The Supreme Court wrapped up two days of arguments on the definition of marriage on Wednesday, with a leading advocate of traditional marriage expecting rulings that will be narrow in scope but may well favor same-sex marriage. The justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday about the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot initiative passed by voters that enshrined traditional marriage in the state constitution. On Wednesday, the court considered the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law passed in 1996 that defines traditional marriage as the law of the land but allows states to reach their own definitions and protects states from being forced to recognize marriages legal in states that have different definitions of the institution. Mathew Staver is chairman of Liberty Counsel and has argued in defense of traditional marriage in state courts around the nation. He offered his analysis of this week's proceedings, explained why he was gravely disappointed in the performance of the attorney defending Proposition 8 and painted a picture of what America would look like with legalized gay marriage based on what we're already seeing in the states where the institution exists. Staver says trying to guess what the Supreme Court will rule based on oral arguments is a risky proposition, as evidenced by many people assuming last year's health care ruling would strike down the individual mandate and perhaps the entire Obama health only to be proven wrong in the final verdict. Nonetheless, Staver says the justices seem very reluctant to make any sort of sweeping declaration about the definition of marriage. However, he fears the shaky legal standing of those defending traditional marriage in California and at the federal level might lead to limited wins for those supporting gay marriage. In the California case, the state attorney general declined to defend the law approved by voters so private groups are filling that role instead. President Obama's Justice Department announced it was no longer fighting to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act. House Republicans picked up the slack in that case. "So the question is, 'Are these cases even supposed to be before the High Court?' That's a question the court is asking and seems to be very troubled by. They might ultimately punt on this issue and might not even reach the merits of the case," said Staver. If standing is rejected for the defense on both cases, the lower court rulings stand. Staver says the impact of that could be rather limited, with gay marriage becoming legal only in the northern district of California and the Defense of Marriage Act being struck down only in the southern district of New York. However he says the wording of the court's ruling will make a huge difference, particularly on DOMA. "If they essentially set up a sitting duck, where all you have to do it file suit in a broader area where you don't have standing and use the Supreme Court's language against it, then you could basically pick off the federal Defense of Marriage Act in a different way," said Staver, who sees Justice Anthony Kennedy lining up against DOMA. "Justice Kennedy has made a suggestion that DOMA violates states' rights. I think that's obviously wrong. It doesn't violate any state's rights at all. States don't have the right to define what kind of federal benefits its citizens are going to have. They can define what kind of state benefits they're going to have and DOMA doesn't interfere with that," said Staver. "I think DOMA's constitutional. There's legitimate reasons and rational reasons for having this definition of marriage in our federal Defense of Marriage Act." Staver says it's not out of the question for the justices to issue a broader ruling in favor of gay marriage, a move that he says would compromise the integrity of the court. "I think that if the court goes too far either in the Proposition 8 case or the DOMA case, in my view it will undermine the legitimacy of the court, making it an illegitimate arbiter of the rule of law and transforming it or morphing it into simply a political machine," said Staver, who says the Supreme Court has issued political decisions in the past on rulings such as Roe v. Wade and last year's Obamacare finding. The merits of the traditional marriage argument are strong in both cases according to Staver, but he was not at all impressed by the oral presentation in defense of Proposition 8 by attorney Charles Cooper. "Cooper did a terrible job, both in terms of his oratory delivery and was horrible on the substance," said Staver. "He was asked a question, 'What is the reason why marriage is different or unique? Why would states want to protect marriage?' He didn't come up with an answer. (Justice Antonin) Scalia then threw out the answer about how children do better when they're raised with a mom and a dad," said Staver. "They didn't know why that has not been presented in the brief. (Justice Elena) Kagan and Scalia had mentioned that to Cooper and Cooper had a home run that he could have knocked out of the park." Staver says Cooper failed to make a stronger argument because of an attempt to argue the case on limited grounds. "Unfortunately, they have positioned this case from the very beginning, which is the reason Liberty Counsel wanted to intervene in this case, as a very marriage-lite kind of situation. They haven't really wanted to address the issue of homosexuality and they haven't really wanted to address the difference that children have when they're raised in a home with a mom and a dad as opposed to two men or two women. That's a significant difference and it's a significant reason, not just for procreation which obviously is essential, but also for creating the best environment for the well-being of children," said Staver. While the discussions of this week's cases center on the legal arguments and possible rulings, Staver says there are very real, very negative consequences to gay marriage being legalized in these decisions or at any time in the future. He says evidence from the states where gay marriage is legal paints a sobering picture for anyone who doesn't agree with the gay agenda. "If the Supreme Court went the wrong way it would be catastrophic because it would literally reshape America. It would undermine marriage and the institution of marriage. We've seen that in the Netherlands that adopted a same-sex civil union type of arrangement in 2000. We've seen information that's coming out of Norway, Denmark and Sweden where marriages are simply falling apart. Children are being born out of wedlock. Males are not committed to the marriage relationship. When you have children being born out of wedlock at a greater rate, what you ultimately have is a dumbing down of the economy, a weakening of the economy. You have a damaging of the children and the family structure. What you have is a significant breakdown of the very core of society," said Staver. "Moreover, it would put this homosexual agenda on a direct collision course with the exercise of religion. We saw what happened in Massachusetts, and it's just one of many, many examples of where same-sex marriage and same-sex unions come into play. Catholic charities have had to get out of the adoption ministry because they're not going to violate their religious beliefs and place children in homes with same-sex couples. You see that with people who run bed and breakfasts, wedding photographers, cake decorators and it goes on and on and on, where you're going to have to choose between your profession or same-sex agendas," he said. "Then you look at the public schools. Parental rights will be undermined. Children as young as kindergarten will be forced to have information fed to them about, not just tolerance and alternative families which is bad enough with regards to re-definition of the family, but that same-sex, aberrant sexual behavior is normative, good and healthy. That's the kind of thing that you're going to see in the public schools and we're seeing it already in some of these states like Massachusetts that have adopted same-sex marriage," said Staver. "This would be on a nationwide basis. It would be catastrophic. I think it would ultimately be the beginning of the end of the United States of America as we know it," he said. |
| South Carolina Showdown |
| Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:13:46 EST Spending restraint and trust in leadership are the hallmarks of the Curtis Bostic's campaign to defeat former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and win a seat in the House of Representatives. Sanford is the former two-term governor of South Carolina, whose bright political career seemed to derail when he vanished from the state for several days and then returned and admitted to being in Argentina with his mistress. However, Sanford re-entered the political fray after a chain reaction of political events. Sen. Jim DeMint resigned his U.S. Senate seat at the start of 2013 and South Gov. Nikki Haley appointed Rep. Tim Scott to fill the remainder of DeMint's term. That leaves a vacancy in South Carolina's First Congressional District. A 16-candidate Republican field was whittled down to Sanford and Bostic. Sanford easily won the most votes but failed to win a majority, so he and Bostic will face a run-off April 2. Bostic served eight years on the Charleston City Council and considers himself the grassroots candidate in this race against a man he considers to be a career politician. He says getting the nation's fiscal house back in order would be his number one priority in Washington. "We believe that this financial calamity that's going on in our nation has to be addressed head-on. We do not believe it to be a revenue problem. We think it's a spending problem and conservative, common sense Americans have got to take again the reins of this great nation of ours and stop this flood of cash that is coming out of Washington," said Bostic. A retired U.S. Marine, Bostic has started small businesses and charities, including orphanages in Burma. He says that real world experience separates him from Sanford, who is also running a campaign vowing fiscal responsibility. "I'm the grassroots guy. I'm the guy that you run into at Costco, the guy that stands and pumps my gas next to you here in the First District. That gives us a different vantage on spending, I believe, than someone who is a career politician," said Bostic. "I also think it is of note that while Gov. Sanford did a great job in some of his spending decisions, I don't see a lot of folks coalescing around ideas during his time. I believe that I stand a better chance of being able to unite people." As for how he would approach current fiscal debates in Washington, Bostic says he has mixed feelings about the House GOP budget blueprint that was approved last week. "Frankly, I probably like the Rand (Paul) plan a little bit better and that has now failed in the Senate. Good elements in it reduced the deficit much sooner. I candidly favored it, but if the Ryan plan were the best we could get, I would applaud it and stand with it," said Bostic, who says Ryan's approach to Medicare reform is especially appealing to him. Several news reports and some blogs sympathetic to Bostic refer to him as the Tea Party candidate in the race. He doesn't personally describe himself that way, but is happy to have support from those activists. "I think that there are those in the Tea Party that like elements of our campaign. I think there are those in lots of conservative groups that would buy into portions of our candidacy. I welcome Americans of all stripes who share the idea that we need to return to conservative government," said Bostic. As for the impact of the Sanford scandal on the race, Bostic doesn't mention it much, but his advertising does prominently feature his wife of 25 years, Jenny, and their five children. Bostic says that story matters more to some voters than others but he's focused on fiscal issues because people already know what they think of Sanford's behavior. "I don't know that for me personally, at this juncture, that it's a critical issue. I have my own personal ideas as to what I want to expect from leaders, but what I think we are united around is the idea that we've got to send someone who is fiscally responsible and who we can trust to Washington," said Bostic. "I think we're also united around the idea the old ways of doing things just don't seem to be working well for the Republican Party. We could use some new faces and fresh blood." Bostic says he is also a strong supporter of our military and a strong national security policy. He also describes himself as "staunchly" conservative on social issues. He believes some in the GOP are making a big mistake by marginalizing social conservatives. "What I don't want to see us do as a party is abandon some of the social conservatives that have helped unite this party. We need to be a party of inclusion," he said. Sanford piled up 37 percent of the vote in the 16-candidate primary, compared to 13 percent for Bostic. A new PPP poll shows Sanford ahead in the runoff 53-40 percent. Still, Bostic hopes to pick up support from the losing candidates and warn Republicans that the seat may be won by a Democrat if Sanford is the nominee. The same PPP poll shows Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert Busch leading Sanford 47-45 percent. Bostic and Busch are tied 43-43. "I think the crux of this campaign are going to be those people that were with other candidates finding a place where they're happy. Are they going to align with Gov. Sanford or are they going to go with someone who is new and fresh that can certainly beat Colbert Busch and come to our camp?" he said. |
| It's All About Spending |
| Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:33:06 EST Georgia Rep. Paul Broun says getting America's reckless spending under control is the dominant theme of his campaign and he believes that goal and his record in Congress will help him win the nomination and the general election despite very little enthusiasm for his bid in the national party. Broun announced his candidacy just weeks after two-term GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced he would not seek a third term. Broun says one issue is driving his pursuit of a seat in the U.S. Senate. 1cGrassroots activists all over Georgia want a leader who'll go to the Senate to work to stop this out-of-control spending that both parties have been doing and that's what my campaign is going to be all about, 1d said Broun. 1cThat's what I've been doing in Congress, trying to push the government back to constitutionally limited government as our Founding Fathers meant it. That's what I am all about. 1d Broun's approach to federal spending has been known to give heartburn to his own party's leadership. Just last week he was one of a handful of House Republicans to oppose the budget blueprint spearheaded House Budget Committee Chairman and 2012 Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan because it wasn't aggressive enough in reining in spending. 1cI voted against it because it doesn't even cut spending. It just slows the growth from a five percent growth to a 3.4 percent growth. This is just intolerable as far as I'm concerned, so what I'll be doing is proposing specific cuts, 1d said Broun. First up on Broun's chopping block would be to completely shut down the U.S. Department of Education, a move that would save taxpayers an estimated $70 billion per year. He says that money should go back to the states to help boost teacher pay and remove the 1cshackles 1d of No Child Left Behind. He is also quick to point out that he has proposed more cuts than any other member of the Georgia congressional delegation, a comment that should come as no surprise since the national GOP is hoping at least one of the other Georgia House members enters the race 13 namely Rep. Tom Price, Rep. Phil Gingrey or Rep. Jack Kingston. All three have indicated they are studying the race but have yet to make any formal announcements. 1cThe people of Georgia want a leader in the Senate that has the record and the will to say no to this out-of-control, irresponsible irrational spending that both parties have been doing and that's exactly who I am and what I'm all about, 1d said Broun. 1cThere's nobody who can get in this race that has the record or will to say no. In fact, they've all been part of the problem, so that's the reason I'm going to win this race. In the 2012 cycle, controversial comments on social issues 13 namely abortion 13 caused major headaches for two Republican Senate nominees. For Broun, the issue likely to come up is not abortion but evolution. At a speech in September 2012, he labeled concepts like evolution and the Big Bang Theory as 1clies straight from the pit of Hell...lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. 1d He also subscribes to a 1cyoung earth 1d philosophy, contending the earth is roughly 9,000 years old. When asked how he would counter the inevitable scrutiny over those comments, Broun made it clear he intends to stay on message. 1cI am a Bible-believing Christian. I also realize that people have other beliefs than I do and that's fine. In fact, I respect their beliefs, but the thing we all can believe in is that we've just got to stop all of this out-of-control spending. No matter what your religious beliefs are, we've got to deal with this tremendous debt that's unsustainable, 1d said Broun. Broun would head to the Senate with own goals and priorities, but he says he's excited about the possibility of serving alongside the likes of Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and other young members Broun sees as vigorously defending the original intent of the Constitution. 1cI'm greatly anticipating my joining those folks in the Senate. The more of us that get there the greater effect we'll have on stopping out-of-control spending and getting this country headed in the right direction, 1d said Broun. |
| One Visit, Two Agendas |
| Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:56:44 EST President Obama went to great lengths to convince Americans and Israelis that we stand should-to-shoulder with Israel but the private talks were just another round of demands for Israeli concessions, according to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. "This is a trip that's very rare in the sense that the public opportunities that the president has are about as divorced from the real substance of the private conversations as you can imagine, 1d said Bolton. 1cPublicly, there's no doubt that the president wanted the photo opportunities and the appearance of smoothing over the difficulties that he's had in his personal relationship with Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu and also trying to smooth over some of the difficulties in the bilateral relationship between the two countries. Given the mainstream media's approach to the trip and the photo ops that he's had, I think he's done what he wanted to do in the short term from the optical or political point of view. 1cBut the substantive messages delivered privately are still very, very tough to Israel 13 don't consider using force against Iran's nuclear weapons program, be prepared to make more concessions to the Palestinians. For all of the ooing and aahing over what the president said publicly, he broke no new substantive ground publicly. So the gaps in the relationships and the problems with dealing with Iran and with the Palestinians remain, essentially, as I think they were before, 1d said Bolton. According to Bolton, that means the president still favors returning to pre-1967 borders and agreeing with the Palestinians that settlement construction in the disputed territories must stop before any peace talks are renewed. He also says the fact Obama never publicly called for a new round of peace talks shows how futile that is in the current climate. 1cI think where Obama is really tilting is toward both reality and his own reputation. You don't want to call for a new round of peace talks that are destined to run into to the ground. But it was very interesting, I thought, that the president said at one stop that Secretary of State John Kerry would be investing a lot of his time in the effort. So I think Obama's made it clear he's not going to put political capital into peace processing, as they like to call it, unless he sees some greater prospect of progress. But he's perfectly prepared to have his secretary of state waste his time on it and see what happens, 1d said Bolton. Another telling development from the trip is Obama's repeated assessment that Iran is at least a year away from a nuclear bomb. Bolton says the message behind that estimate is crystal clear. 1cDon't take any military action because it would be precipitous and don't look for us to be helping you out with it, 1d said Bolton in parsing the Obama administration position. The former ambassador says Prime Minister Netanyahu estimates Iran to have a nuclear weapon by summer or even later this spring. He says it's clear the Obama administration is trying to undermine the case for military action by dragging out the estimated timetable. 1cThe administration testified through its director of national intelligence just two weeks ago that they still think Iran hasn't even made a decision to build nuclear weapons. Since nobody builds a nuclear weapon by accident, that year period is actually much longer. It doesn't begin until there's a clear decision actually to build the weapon, 1d said Bolton. 1cPersonally, I think that's a complete misreading of what's going on in Iran. I think they made a decision 20 years ago that they wanted nuclear weapons and that they're actually a lot closer than a year, but they're not in a rush. They're not in a hurry to build that first nuclear weapon because they're not intimidated by the United States. Iran is building a very broad and deep nuclear weapons program that, as time goes on, will put them in a position to build many, many nuclear weapons 13 dozens and dozens in a relatively brief period of time. That's capacity they want to have, not one or two nuclear weapons but a whole arsenal of them. 1d Bolton also commented on reports from earlier in the week about the Syrian army using chemical weapons against the rebels. He says the facts as we know them raise doubts about whether the weapons were actually used. 1cThe reports, even if you take them at face value, were one isolated incident. One would think that if the regime, or the opposition for that matter, were going to cross that line of using chemical weapons, they would have had more than just one use, 1d said Bolton. 1cThey're terrible weapons but if you're going to use them and pay the political price for using them, you might as well have some impact on your opponent and I don't see that yet. 1d The reports of chemical weapons being used have some American lawmakers urging military intervention in Syria. Bolton says we do have national security interests in this conflict but not the ones most people think we should have. 1cI think the US interest here is very clear. We do not want those weapons exiting Syria, falling into the hand of terrorists like Al Qaeda that could use them against us and our friends and allies worldwide. That is the most important thing. I'm terribly sorry about the tragedy that Syria is undergoing, 70,000-plus civilians killed in the past two years, but the American national interest is in protecting against those chemical weapons being used against us or our friends by terrorist groups, 1d said Bolton. |
| Somebody to Blame |
| Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:16:53 EST It's been three weeks since the sequestration cuts went into effect, and both parties continue to blame each other for not coming up with alternative plans and for imposing draconian program cuts. In response, the Capitol Steps bring three key lawmakers together to find out what's really happening. |
| Saddam's WMD on Display in Syria? |
| Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:37:41 EST Retired U.S. Army Maj. General Paul Vallely says he has confirmation that Syrian forces have used chemical weapons against rebel forces and civilians and those weapons are likely stockpiles received from Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion ten years ago. Vallely has met twice in the region with military commanders for the Free Syrian Army, which he describes as the largest and much more moderate faction among the rebels, which also include elements of Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. He also gets regular reports from a Canadian medical team. Vallely says that team is certain that a chlorine gas weapon was used in recent strikes. 1cFrom what I received from the Canadian medical team who works out of Aleppo, is that is was chlorine and that what you saw were the reactions on those videos that were put out within the last week, 1d said Vallely. 1cThe chlorine, the choking, the skin, depending on the density of the chlorine will cause skin irritation. If it's mixed with other types of gases too then it could have an even more enhanced effect on the human body, not only breathing but on the skin. 1d Vallely believes the chemical weapons are clearly the work of the Assad regime but that the regime will try to pin the blame on the rebels. He says this is not the first time that the beleaguered government has turned WMD on its own people and that he has evidence of a similar attack last summer. 1cWe had photos and pictures of that which I provided the Defense Department as well as other people in our intelligence organizations, 1d said Vallely. But Gen. Vallely's more stunning revelation is that he is virtually certain that Syria is in possession of Saddam Hussein's old arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some of those may be on display in this civil war. 1cIf you go back to January through March of 2003, we had intelligence in the Defense Department that the Russians helped move, by convoy, a lot of the chemical and biological weapons into two locations in Syria and one in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, 1d said Vallely. 1cWe think Russia and Iran have enhanced their inventory. The vast majority of those chemical and biological weapons were from Iraq. 1d The general says he is 95 percent sure Iraq's stockpiles are in Syria and there is additional evidence of that which never came to light in the previous administration. 1cAfter the takedown of Saddam in 2003, there was a big survey done by U.S. Forces all throughout Iraq. Basically, as far as I know, all of the bio and chemical weapons had been moved. They found semblance of a growing nuclear development program but it was not an aggressive program by any means, 1d said Vallely. 1cSo the fact is that he had them, used them on his own people. He knew he had to get them out of there and there was a big cover-up and deception in how he moved them over there. We did know about them but the Bush administration never came forth and explained to the American people that situation. 1d Vallely says the arsenal now in Syria's possession most likely includes Serrin and VX nerve gas in addition to chlorine and the likely shelf life of the weapons means they would still be usable. He says the range of a chlorine gas strike depends largely upon how the weapon is delivered. 1cIt depends on the warhead or whether it's dispersed in cannisters and sprayed on the ground, much like they do tear gas. So, it can range all the way from a tank hanging off an aircraft, which would be a fairly big load that could cover several miles. By artillery, you're probably talking about the same thing (as) with rockets and missiles. The close-in stuff, you're talking 100-200 yards, 1d said Vallely. There are also reports of secret arms shipments flowing into the region to help topple the Assad regime. During the investigation of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul questioned then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about weapons from the Ghaddafi regime in Libya being smuggled to the Syrian rebels through Turkey. Vallely was less certain about reports of weapons being moved in to help the rebels. 1cWe have a high degree of confidence that there was gun systems, particularly shoulder-fired missiles. Ghaddafi had a tremendous inventory of weapons 13 machine guns, rifles, pistols, ammunition, 1d said Vallely. 1cI believe, from I have received so far, that there was something there going on and supplying those weapons up to Syria. Where they ended up I don't know. 1d Despite the use of chemical weapons, Vallely still believes Bashar Assad will fall within months, based on continued defections from the Syrian Army and the dwindling amount of territory still in government control. |
| 'It's Up to the American People' |
| Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:52:31 EST In the wake of President Obama's re-election and other Democratic successes in 2012, more and more Republicans in elected office and party leadership are concluding that embracing comprehensive immigration reform is vital to winning elections and attracting a higher percentage of the nation's fastest-growing demographic. Conservative senators Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake joined the so-called Gang of Eight pushing the latest Senate version of reform. Rising GOP star Sen. Rand Paul has embraced ways to make illegal residents legal, while stopping short of endorsing a pathway to citizenship. Just days ago, an official Republican National Committee report on the party's 2012 failures specifically urged support for comprehensive reform. So with support from Democrats, the media and a growing number of Republicans, is it inevitable that this legislation will pass in the near term? 1cNo it's not, because they left out one major group of people that has to part of the equation. It's called the American people, 1d said California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. 1cThe American people fully understand when you're talking about comprehensive immigration reform, all you're really talking about is legalizing the status of probably 15-20 million illegals that are in this country. 1d Rohrabacher is one of the leading opponents of placing illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship or any legal status because he says it will only encourage more illegal behavior. 1cThe American people know that will do nothing but bring in millions more and all the problems of crime, of consuming very scarce education and health care dollars, etc. that this will be a disaster for them. So although there are a few Republican 13 quote 13 leaders who are giving into this onslaught of propaganda trying to convince them that this is going to help the Republican Party, the average people out there are against it. Republicans will understand that when it starts coming to a vote because the people will rise up against it, 1d said Rohrabacher. Many Republicans who have changed their positions on this issue have spent more time trumpeting the pathway to citizenship more than a commitment to border security. Senators like Rubio and Paul have stressed security first, but Rohrabacher says even that position is worthless if it's accompanied by support of legalizing those who came here illegally. 1cFirst of all, there is no securing the border if you legalize the status, if you give amnesty. You can't secure the border once you have given people a huge incentive to cross the border and come here illegally, 1d said Rohrabacher. 1cYou just can't build a fence tall enough and a ditch deep enough to keep people out if you're going to say, 'You and your family are going to receive a treasure house of benefits, jobs and things like that if you just get across the border. 1d 1cEven Rubio's position is wrong. There is no securing the border if you legalize the status. It doesn't make any difference when you try to say once you strengthen the border then you can do your legalizing of the status. That doesn't go, because as soon as they legalize the status there's more pressure on the border, 1d said Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher acknowledges that defeating this latest push for what he calls amnesty will be very difficult., and he says victory will depend upon just how passionately the public rises up to stop it. 1cIt's up to the American people. It really is. They will activate and they will speak loudly and aggressively on this issue to their elected official. If every time there's a town hall meeting that people are screaming and yelling, being courteous and not cutting somebody off, but raising their voice and saying how important it is then we can turn the tide. But if the American people continue to shrug their shoulders or go along with stupid arguments like, 'Well, first we're going to control the border, then we're going to give the amnesty to these people,' that won't work, 1d he said. Rohrabacher stressed that politicians, especially Republicans, need to be told loudly and clearly how important this issue is to America and how important it could be to their political future. 1cWe have got to make sure that we don't just talk softly and express our opinions with due courtesy and respect. People need to act with outrage. They certainly need to be courteous to people, but they certainly don't need to keep their voices low. The elected officials, especially in the Republican Party, need to hear from their constituents that if they're doing something this detrimental to the American family...unless people scream out at their elected official, the elected official may not get the word. So that's what we all have to do, 1d said Rohrabacher. Ultimately, Rohrabacher says it's that American family that must decide what it wants America to be. 1cIt's up to us. Are the patriots of every race, religion and ethnic group in this country going to step and say that we're part of the same family, we're going to fight for this family or are they going to go along with this effort to bring in a bunch of foreigners to take the jobs and the benefits that belong to Americans? 1d said Rohrabacher |
| 'It's A Trap' |
| Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:25:30 EST Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would not include an assault weapons ban in the gun legislation he plans to introduce on the Senate floor, but gun rights advocates say this is not a surrender but rather Reid's way of making a ban easier to pass. "It's a trap. It's a non-event. What's going to happen is they're going to take another bill, and that could be the veterans' gun ban and then bring that to the floor, 1d said Mike Hammond, chief counsel at Gun Owners of America, a pro-Second Amendment group. Hammond says bringing a less controversial bill to the floor will make it easier to find the 60 votes needed to open debate. 1cDiane Feinstein's amendment will be offered as an amendment to that. Furthermore, they'll probably break off a magazine ban and offer that as an amendment to that. Furthermore, they'll probably take a universal gun registry and offer that as an amendment to that, 1d said Hammond. 1cWhen Harry Reid says he's dropping Feinstein from the bill, what he means is it's not going to be in the bill which is reported to the Senate but it will be offered on the Senate floor. So the question we're asking is, 'Why in heaven's name should anyone vote for this underlying vehicle when we're being told in advance it's going to be nothing but a vehicle for a gun control buffet. 1d Hammond says Reid has two options in bringing his legislation forward. He can require 60 votes to begin debate and control the amendment process or require 50 but be forced to allow Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell the first amendment to the bill. 1cThe exercise is to trick us to voting for that motion to proceed by starting out with what he views as a noncontroversial bill, 1d said Hammond, who says he is urging all members to resist the strategy to push forward a 1cgun control-o-rama 1d of amendments. 1cOur message is to vote against the motion to proceed. We don't want any gun control to come up at all, 1d said Hammond. Amendments to the bill would require a simple majority, although closing the debate would also require 60 votes. Hammond is encouraged by that hurdle, because he thinks the Feinstein assault weapons ban has fewer than 40 supporters, but that's not the end of the story. He says the political bargaining that piled up 60 votes for Obamacare will be on full display again. 1cDo you remember Obamacare, in which Harry Reid just pushed and pushed and pushed and said who do I have to buy off with this bribe or that bribe? That's what they envision for the floor consideration of this bill. And they will try to tweak and bribe and buy off as much gun control as they can manage, 1d said Hammond. |
| Obama Meets the Republicans |
| Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:22:27 EST President Obama met with House and Senate Republicans this week to discuss the economy and other priorities, but the cordial meetings revealed the two sides don't even agree on the definition of reform much less how to achieve it. Illinois Rep. Peter Roskam is the chief deputy whip for the House GOP. He says Republicans and President Obama have very different ideas of what tax reform should look like and even why it should be done. "The president has chosen to redefine tax reform. Traditionally, the common understanding of tax reform is that you close loopholes in an effort to drive rates down. By closing loopholes, you use that to pay for lower rates and a simpler tax code for everybody else," said Roskam. "The president has chosen to define it as closing loopholes and using that as a vehicle to pay for more spending. And in light of that, the definitions of these things become very, very, very important." Roskam says the president was well-received but House Republicans made it crystal clear to Obama that "revenues" were not on the table since he got major tax hikes through the new health care laws and through the deal on New Year's Day that addressed the so-called fiscal cliff. For his part, Obama reiterated his demand for a "balanced approach" consisting of tax increases and spending reductions. Obama has mentioned at times that he would like to lower the corporate tax rate. Roskam says that would be fine but it needs to be part of reform across the board. "It's one thing to talk about reforming the corporate tax code and it's another thing to make sure that we do it in totality with the individual tax rate," said Roskam. "What you don't want to do is move forward into an environment where the small businesses in and around the country that are paying at the individual tax rate are left holding the bag for a larger tax reform deal." Both the House Republicans and Senate Democrats released budget blueprints for Fiscal 2014. The GOP plan balances the budget by slowing the rate of spending growth, reforming entitlements and assuming comprehensive tax reform and the repeal of Obamacare. On entitlements, Roskam says the Paul Ryan budget still keeps the system the same for Americans 55 years and older but will allow other options for health coverage starting in 2024. He also says the GOP favors means testing on both Medicare and Social Security, with poorer people getting more federal aid and wealthier seniors getting less. Roskam admits the Obamacare repeal may be politically difficult but that doesn't change the point of the budget blueprint. "Remember that budgets are aspirational documents. They describe a vision and the vision for House Republicans says that because of the cost of Obamacare, we propose to repeal it," he said. Roskam expressed disappointment with Obama's contention this week that there is no immediate debt crisis. "He seems very cavalier about this debt question and the Senate Democrats sort of fulfill that in saying that they want to vote and have an additional trillion dollars in new taxes that would be foisted upon the U.S. economy," said Roskam. Given the very different budget priorities, finding much common ground to improve our economy and lower deficit spending seems like a tall order. Roskam his advice on where the two parties can come together. "The common ground will be around areas that have to do with an export agenda, trying to remove trade barriers so that we can sell more exports abroad. But what it all comes down to it, we need the spending fever in Washington to break and we've got to break this fever so that the country can get some relief. If the only relief for the Democratic Party is to go back to the taxpayers about every eight weeks, then heaven help us," said Roskam. |
| 'A Solution in Search of A Problem' |
| Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:05:27 EST President Obama says the long hours that some voters spent waiting to cast ballots in November require changes in the system, but a former Justice Department elections expert says the facts show there really isn't a problem. J. Christian Adams worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division and has been a vocal critic of what he sees as imbalanced enforcement of voting rights laws by the Obama administration. Adams is now an editor at Pajamas Media and author of "Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama White House". Adams says the horror stories mentioned by Obama were rare and misleading. "M.I.T. did a study and found that the average wait for Americans was 13 minutes on Election Day.So the stories that you're hearing about - six, seven, eight-hour waits - are usually coming from places where people actually decided to vote early," said Adams. "Early voting is a worse experience than voting on Election Day because there's fewer places to vote. The lady that the president talked about, Desiline Victor, went to early voting on the very first day of early voting, which is the absolute worst choice that you could ever make. That's exactly why she had a long line, including the fact that they had a bunch of ballot questions in Miami-Dade County (Florida). So the president chose a real outlier example when he did the State of the Union." Adams says there are ways to tweak the system for the better, including encouraging people to vote on Election Day, limiting the number of ballot initiatives to help speed up the lines and moving to a digital check-in process that would also shorten the wait. "There's ways to do this without the federal government getting involved. There's local solutions to what is a local problem," said Adams. "The federal government, we all know, never has the solution to most problems, so this isn't any different." According to Adams, the push for national reforms is wrongheaded in a number of ways. In addition to his belief that major reforms aren't necessary, he says changes should not be coming from Washington. "This is, in fact, a solution in search of a problem because the federal government just doesn't have an answer. They are not in the position to fix it like local officials who are closer to the voters who know the problems," said Adams. "For example, Atlanta was a mess. Places around Baltimore were a mess. These are local solutions. Sadly, in many cases in Democrat areas. It's kind of ironic to hear the president complain about it when the people who are causing the problem by and large were Democrats." Another factor that may be at work in the Obama agenda, however, may be efforts to help boost Democratic turnout. Adams says there's a long history of policy changes designed to get certain demographics to the ballot box. "This administration knows that the process rules of elections have partisan outcomes. If you can tinker with the rules of the game, you can help your side. This president recognizes that to his credit. He knows that once he gets involved in election reforms, you can bet that those reforms are probably going to help Democrats. It comes with the territory," said Adams, who outlined several ways Democrats have boosted their numbers in the past. "You have Section 7 of 'Motor Voter', welfare agency voter registration in 1993, where people in heroin treatment facilities and food stamp offices are required to be offered the opportunity to register to vote. If you look at the list in the law, it skews overwhelmingly Democrat," said Adams. In the end, Adams is not overly worried about this effort to change the voting process and says it will probably never make it to the implementation stage. "I think it's probably going to get stalled along the side of the road. Frankly, the agenda of the commission is primarily to make a best practices recommendation, so let's hope they stick to that agenda and don't meddle in a state and local affair," said Adams. |
| 'They're Just Going to Walk' |
| Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:22:55 EST The House Republican budget plan assumes the repeal of Obamacare, and while the political votes may be hard to find, a leading health care scholar says the flaws of the system could lead to its implosion in the near term. Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute and one of the leading policy-based critics of the Obama health law. She says House Republicans are right to keep pushing for the repeal of Obamacare because of the myriad ways it afflicts our nation's fiscal health. "When you look at the overall impact of this law on the economy, we know that it's hugely important in depressing job creation. It's forcing companies to put people on part-time when they need full-time workers. The incredible number of new taxes, a trillion dollars in new taxes in this law just in its own right," said Turner. "It is one of the major factors that is depressing economic growth. When you have economic growth depressed, you don't have the tax revenue that you need." Turner applauds House Republicans for pushing the case for repeal and Senate Republicans for trying to defund Obamacare in the upcoming continuing resolution even though the effort fell short. Any repeal effort that survived Congress would face a sure veto from President Obama, but Turner says the American people are determined to defeat Obamacare, including a decent percentage of voters who backed President Obama for other reasons. "Somehow or another this is going to shake out. All of the predictable routes to getting rid of Obamacare seem to have been closed, except the American people don't like this law. Some of them hate it. They're going to figure out a way to not lose our freedom, to have it not ruin our economy," said Turner. Turner is still optimistic that state rejection of Obamacare will help bring about it's demise. She says only 17 states have agreed to the exchanges and some state legislatures may overrule their own governors on expansion of Medicaid. Turner also notes that even liberal states like California and Connecticut are pleading with the federal government to stop the stream of new regulations that may well prevent exchanges from opening on time in those states. The bureaucracy is not only impacting state governments but individuals as well. Americans used to a couple of pages worth of paperwork to enroll in a health plan are now forced to fill out dozens of pages to comply with the government requirements to join the exchanges. Turner says the amount of federal prying could turn off many people from this program. "The law is very specific about what information the government has to have to find out whether or not you're eligible for the subsidies in these exchanges. They have to know your income, your family size, where you work, the tax identification number of your employer, the technical name of the plan that your employer offers that would qualify as a qualifying Obamacare health plan. People need help with this. California alone believes it needs 20,000 people just to help people fill out the form. The one I've seen is 21 pages. It looks like a tax form," said Turner. "I think that's one of the reasons that people say, 'I'm not doing this. They have to sell me insurance if I get sick at the same price as if I'd been having health insurance all along. I'm just going to pay the fine too.' We're seeing employers saying, 'We're going to pay the fine, not comply,'" said Turner. "I think the next wave is individuals doing the same thing, both because they see the high cost of the coverage in these exchanges, which is going to be much more expensive than the coverage that they've had. Young people are going to be hit the hardest because they're forced to pay more so that older people can pay less. They're not going to comply with all this paperwork. They're just going to walk and that means that these exchanges are just not going to work," she said. |
| GOP's Balanced Budget Path |
| Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:35:34 EST House Republicans unveiled their budget plan Tuesday, calling for a balanced budget within ten years and relying on major tax reform and a full repeal of the Obama health laws to do it. "The economy is going to grow faster than federal spending and it will get us to a balanced budget," said South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice, a member of the House Budget Committee and chairman of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access. The first key to the House GOP plan making ends meet in a decade is for Congress to approve sweeping tax reform. "Our budget assumes that there will be tax reform," said Rice. "We sit here and handicap our companies with the highest corporate tax rate in the world and with among the highest regulatory burdens in the world." Rice points out that the House Ways & Means Committee is in charge of tax policy and not the members of the budget panel, but he says the budget numbers were based on a few assumptions about what reform would include. "We're all looking for a flatter tax system with lower rates and less exclusions. And that would be on the individual and the corporate tax side," said Rice. Clarity in the code is another priority. Rice says more than 75 percent of businesses do not pay the corporate tax rate because they are not corporations and pay at the individual rate, which has jumped from 35 percent to as high as 44 percent for some business owners since the fiscal cliff deal at the start of the year. The congressman also says this process shouldn't be about either cutting taxes or raising taxes, the latter of which Senate Democrats are reportedly proposing. "We're not proposing cutting taxes overall or raising taxes, what we're talking about is changing the rate. So what we have to look at is what exemptions we're going to remove and see how much rate lowering that will buy us," said Rice. The House Republican budget also assumes a full repeal of the Obama health laws, a move that seems all but impossible to achieve legislatively over the next four years. Rice admits it will be tough and that the budget won't be balanced in a decade without eliminating the costs associated with Obamacare. "If we don't get them, obviously the budget won't balance in 10 years. What I would say to the Senate Democrats, and the president particularly, is if you don't like the proposal we've made let's see your proposal. I think everybody wants to see the country on a sound financial path," said Rice. "We've put forward our proposal. We don't think we can afford Obamacare. Even if we didn't repeal it at this point, we think it's going to implode on itself." Senate Democrats are putting together a budget proposal that is not yet complete. Leaked bits of the plan suggest it will call for a trillion dollars in new taxes and will not balance down the line. Nonetheless, Rice is optimistic the two sides can get something done, noting that President Obama and congressional Republicans see tax reform as an urgent, major priority. "If we can focus on the areas we agree and work on those and then try to find some kind of common ground on the areas where we don't, let's make some progress," said Rice. "I've had countless people tell me, 'Gosh, you're going to Washington at a tough time.' Shoot, I think this is the best time. Washington has kicked the can down the road so many times I think pretty much everybody realizes it can't be kicked a whole lot more. So I'm very, very optimistic that we will have some positive reform coming out of Washington this year." The House GOP budget slows the rate of spending increases over the next decade from five percent to 3.4 percent. Even if the tax reform and Obamacare repeal were to happen, economic growth needs to be robust to balance the books by 2023. Rice says a lack of certainty is the biggest hurdle to that growth taking off. "They want a clear path first and foremost. They want to know what the rules are. We keep kicking the can down the road. We keep doing all these temporary measures. Nobody can rely on what the rules are going to be to make investment decisions. That's from big company to small, and I promise you that hurts hiring and that hurts job growth. So we need to come up with a long-term plan and stop these short-term band-aids," said Rice, who also blasted the regulatory red tape facing business owners. "Seems to me we're doing everything we can to hold up progress, where it takes five to ten years to get a permit to build a road or it takes ten years to get approval to build a power plant. We're our own worst enemy. We hold up progress here while other countries are passing us by," said Rice. |
| Ney Aims at Boehner, DC Culture |
| Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:32:02 EST Former Ohio Rep. Bob Ney admits he broke the law and deserved to be sent to prison, but he says the corrupt political system he succumbed to desperately needs changing and House Speaker John Boehner is part of the problem. Ney resigned from Congress in 2006 and pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in connection to the scandal surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He subsequently spent 30 months behind bars and is now the author of "Sideswiped: Lessons Learned Courtesy of the Hit Men on Capitol Hill." He says the thirst for political donations began almost instantly after Republicans won the House in 1994. "It was very clear we had to keep this revolution going in 1996, this Republican Revolution. We needed money to do it. We had to raise money. You had to get on the telephones, etc., etc., etc.," said Ney, who said that focus included government trips, countless receptions and fundraisers, donors getting access to lawmakers and more. "From day one, the way Washington works was the way it worked. Crossing the line, eventually on my part, came a little bit later," said Ney. Crossing the line in the Abramoff scandal evolved organically, as Ney says he drifted from playing the Washington game to committing crimes to help Abramoff accomplish his clients' goals. "People were eating and drinking for free on both sides of the aisle. There were times I would have to try to shove Bush White House staffers away from Jack Abramoff's bar to try to get a drink. That's a fact," said Ney. "That morphed into a trip to Scotland. That morphed into doing things, signing things, SunCruz (Florida casino boat scandal). I mean a guy got shot in a phone booth down there during that SunCruz fiasco. Jack Abramoff lied on his forms. I was part of pressuring (SunCruz founder) Gus Boulis, who was eventually murdered by somebody down there. I was part of pressuring that guy to get out of the boat business, and that's what Jack Abramoff has wanted," said Ney. "I didn't realize the full repercussions, but I should have said, 'Why am I writing this? No, I'm not going to write it. Why are we being offered all the free food we want and my staff's being offered. No, not going to do it.' So I crossed that line, knowingly and stupidly." Ney's disdain for Boehner is both personal and professional. In his book, Ney contends that when then-House Majority Leader Boehner asked him to drop his 2006 re-election bid while he was under tight federal scrutiny in exchange for assistance in getting Ney's legal bills paid and helping him find new employment at similar compensation. Ney writes that Boehner reneged on those promises, but he says Boehner was far from impressive beyond that personal slight. "I've known John Boehner for over two-and-a-half decades. I don't hate John Boehner. Was I angry at John Boehner in 2006? You better believe it. I make no bones about that. But John Boehner has always been, and this is my opinion but I think the opinion of many, on the lazy side in the sense that he's a get-along guy. He doesn't like a lot of controversy. He's always enjoyed the golfing. I would have to term it an addiction for John Boehner, said Ney. "I'm not calling anyone an alcoholic, being a recovering alcoholic, but I've got to tell you John Boehner is a constant drinker of wine. He's been seen with lobbyists for decades on a nightly basis and drinking. I'm not judging him but I think it's part of the story. "I didn't just pick on John Boehner in this book. He was part of the whole Abramoff scenario and it's kind of a complicated scenario within the book," said Ney, who also hit Boehner over his handling of recent fiscal debates in Congress. "I think part of this whole sequestration and the fiscal cliff is just John Boehner's general attitude, and he has been in the throes of lobbyists and money and giving checks out on the floor of the House as many people on both sides of the aisle have. He has a chance as the Speaker of the House to clean this whole mess up because I had an addiction to a substance they are still addicted to today on both sides of the aisle - to campaign contributions," said Ney. Once a vigorous opponent of publicly financed elections, Ney is now an ardent supporter of the idea. He has no use for the McCain-Feingold approach, which Ney says only made the problem worse because of it's loopholes. He says the new laws would need to respect constitutional speech freedoms, but he insists the status quo is unacceptable. "I would again say the perfect solution is public financing, if they can find a way to do it and to fir through the Constitution. There are other ways. I even had it in writing. They charge you, both parties. You want to be chairman of a committee? You want to be chairman of appropriations? Half a million dollars. You want to be chairman of House Admnistration, which I chaired, it was $150,000. The leaders can take endless amounts of money. That all needs to be taken away it needs to be curtailed on the leaders in both parties who can pressure people for votes when whatever group comes in to spend a fortune," said Ney. The ex-congressman also wants to see restrictions on lawmakers becoming lobbyists after they retire from politics. "The other thing that can be done is stop the absolutely stop the complete revolving door. You want to be a member of Congress? You want to be a staffer? You're not going to be a lobbyist. I'm not against lobbyists and advocacy groups. They educate, but this whole access deal has got to be curtailed," said Ney. During the interview, Ney also said his time in prison helped him break free from his alcohol addiction and he plans to advocate for prison reforms. |
| Rebutting Rand Paul |
| Fri, 8 Mar 2013 16:15:53 EST Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul made headlines this week, as his nearly 13-hour filibuster shed light on the question of whether a president can target An American on American soil with a drone strike if they don't pose an imminent security risk. The filibuster triggered a response from Attorney General Eric Holder, who stated the government does not have that power under the Constitution, but an accomplished prosecutor of terrorists disagrees. Andrew C. McCarthy led the government's prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and other conspirators behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He says while Sen. Paul is well-intentioned, the Constitution is not on his side. "The Constitution does not bar attacks on American citizens on American soil. I think it's safe to say that in this conflict, we shouldn't be having attacks on Americans on American soil because 12 years after 9-11, we know what the enemy's capabilities are. We know how the enemy operates," said McCarthy. "There would be no problem amending the authorization for the use of military force to ban attacks on Americans on American soil and leave the Constitution to the side." McCarthy says those looking for the courts to rule the Constitution upholds Sen. Paul's position in this debate could well be in for a shock. "The constitutional cases that we've had over the years have held that American citizens who join with the enemy can be detained without trial, subjected to military commissions, executed after military commissions, interrogated without counsel, the whole nine yards," he said. "It doesn't make any rational sense to say that you can treat an American citizen who joins with the enemy exactly as you treat the enemy in every single particular except death." "The Constitution is there to give broad latitude to the government in the event that whatever power is needed to be marshaled to quell not just the threat that's posed by the conflict we're in now, but any conceivable threat. I can easily imagine several scenarios where we would have enemies invading the United States, attacking the United States, who are joined by people who happen to be American citizens in the United States, where we might have a conflict where it's very conceivable that you would be attacking American citizens," said McCarthy. "Once you say the Constitution forbids American citizens from being attacked on American soil, the next thing is what about American citizens on foreign soil and then what about foreign citizens on American soil? If it's the Constitution that's the basis of all this, rather than sensible legislation with respect to the authorization for military force, you're basically rolling out a gold mine for our enemies - a gold mine of constitutional protections." But doesn't being an American citizen carry greater constitutional protections than for a non-citizen? Not as much as you might think according to McCarthy. "I think it's a useful populist tool for Sen. Paul and it will be of legal insignificance to the court," said McCarthy, who says that court's won't likely approve protecting citizens and not protecting non-citizens. |
| Perverse Terrorist Incentives |
| Fri, 8 Mar 2013 15:14:06 EST On Friday, Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and former spokesman plead not guilty in federal court Friday to charges that he conspired to kill Americans. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was arraigned with little prior public notice after being apprehended days ago in Jordan. However, the leader of the U.S.prosecution team against the 1993 World Trade Center bombers says the Obama administration wasted a golden opportunity to glean critical intelligence and damaged the credibility of U.S. military commissions. Andrew C. McCarthy says Congress established that military commissions would be the destination for captured enemy combatants after setting up the system in the wake of 9/11, but the Obama administration found a loophole. "Public funds were not supposed to be used to bring enemy combatant terrorists into the United States for civilian trial, but the statute we're talking about applied to the people who were in custody in Gitmo," said McCarthy. "When it fell into the Obama administration's lap that there was someone who fit the definition of an enemy combatant but yet was not at Gitmo that was a golden opportunity for the administration to end-around the congressional ban and usher an enemy combatant terrorist into the United States to give him a civilian trial." McCarthy admits that he and fellow prosecutors have amassed a strong conviction record against terrorist suspects, but possible exoneration is not his biggest concern. He says trials in civilian court always trigger intelligence flows that make our nation more vulnerable. "You have to turn over discovery, meaning all of our intelligence files under the due process rules. You're also, in effect, rewarding the worst actors. Basically, we're taking the insane position that if you're a foreign or even an American enemy combatant, and we happen to catch you in Yemen, we can take you out with a drone strike with no due process, no anything, even if you haven't actually carried out a terrorist attack yet. But if you hit the jihadist jackpot and manage to get to the United States and kill 3,000 Americans, we'll bring you into Manhattan and give you the bells and whistles civilian trial. That's a pretty perverse set of incentives to give our enemy," said McCarthy. The case of the first World Trade Center bombings proved to McCarthy that terrorists who have full legal protections in U.S. courts have no incentive to reveal vital information. He says the military commissions system is very different. "One of the best benefits of the law of war paradigm that we switched to after the 9-11 attacks is that if you treat people like enemy combatants, you can detain them and interrogate them counsel," said McCarthy, noting that this concept has nothing to do with enhanced interrogation techniques. "I'm talking simply, over a long period of time, to try to question people and glean information. When you're in a terrorist war, as the war that we're in right now is, intelligence is really your number one asset," he said. According to McCarthy, Obama is squandering chance after chance of picking up valuable intelligence. "You can't really foresee a traditional end to this war. The only thing you can do is get whatever intelligenceis available to you to try to identify the cells and stop the plot. That's how we protect the country," said McCarthy. "Unfortunately, the Obama administration has really adopted a posture where when they can kill or capture, they generally kill. When they capture or when someone falls into their lap as happened this week, they bring the person right into the civilian justice system, which means you don't get to interrogate them." |
| Obama's 'Make America Hurt' Plan |
| Thu, 7 Mar 2013 13:48:26 EST President Obama vowed that allowing sequestration cuts to proceed would be painful, but decisions like cancelling White House tours and a revealing email are coming across as cynically political moves rather than painful but regrettable decisions. The Obama administration indefinitely cancelled public White House tours earlier this week. The Secret Service estimates that such cuts would save about $74,000 per week. School groups are disappointed to hear their Spring Break trips to the White House have been scrapped. In another move that raised eyebrows, an Agriculture Department official was told by email not to find ways to lessen the impact of sequestration. He was told "you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be". Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says this clearly reveals the Obama sequestration strategy. "It is just incredible that anybody would think like that. 'Gee, we're being cut so let's make America hurt, make them suffer so they'll give us more of our money.' In the last four years, the executive branch budget has gone up over 20 percent, and they can't stand to have that increase lowered to 18 percent increase? It is outrageous," said Gohmert. Gohmert says the House of Representatives is a perfect example of a government entity that has significantly reduced operations expenses without reducing essential services. "We have cut our own budgets by about 11.5 percent and then another eight-plus percent over next year. We will have cut our own budgets 20 percent. We haven't cut constituent services. We're still doing tours for constituents through the Capitol that is several times larger than the White House. They could do this. This is just a decision to punish people," said Gohmert. "Basically, somebody's having a temper tantrum over there and they want the American public to suffer until they get their full amount of their 20 percent increase in the size of their staffs," he said. Gohmert noted that Obama's recent golfing trip to Florida ran a cost equal to 341 furloughed federal jobs. In response, he proposed an amendment to the continuing resolution to fund the government that no money be spent on transporting Obama to a golf course until White House tours resume. Some observers suggest the Obama administration is giving the impression that the sequestration cuts are severe in order to improve its leverage for bigger fights over funding the government and the debt ceiling in the coming weeks. Gohmert believes the Obama approach is much simpler than that. "It seems to be exactly in line with the treatment the White House has given people with whom they disagree. If they don't get their way, then they want to make the American people hurt so they'll demand Congress give them what they want," said Gohmert. At the same time, Gohmert is hopeful that the Obama administration's tactics on a relatively tiny amount of spending cuts will embolden Republicans for the bigger battles to come. "We're in a fight to save this country. We're in a fight to do the moral thing and not spend money that future generations will have to pay back for us, cussing our name instead of blessing our name," said Gohmert. So where would Gohmert start cutting? He would scrap $250 million in foreign and military aid to the Muslim Brotherhood-run government in Egypt. He would also slash foreign aid to Turkey over it's increased hostility toward Israel and stop allowing union leaders to use taxpayer dollars to pay union workers for doing union work. Another cost-saving measure would be Gohmert's annual push for his UN Voting Accountability Act, which would cut off all funds for any nation that votes against U.S. interests more than half the time. "You don't have to pay people to hate you. They will do it for free," said Gohmert. On Wednesday, the Republican-led House approved a continuing resolution to fund the government through September. The plan calls for keeping existing spending levels minus cuts mandated through sequestration. Many conservatives argue that the bill should have cut spending more aggressively, including a focus on de-funding critical aspects of the Obama health laws. Others on the right see the GOP effort as one that would be hard for Obama to reject in the court of public opinion. "I think you'll see more people take that strong stand because we have got to stop the insanity. There are some things within Obamacare like funding IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board) that we should have cut and we could cut. We can't de-fund the whole thing at once, but there are outrageous amounts of money being spent for things that Americans don't want it to be spent for and we could work on cutting those out of Obamacare. I'm hoping you'll see more and more people taking that stand," said Gohmert. |
| Obamacare vs. Conscience |
| Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:06:14 EST More than a year after the Obama administration announced a contraception mandate was part of the new health laws, the effort to restore conscience rights for employers and medical professionals is moving forward in the House of Representatives. The biggest concern for some employers in the new mandate is that they are compelled to cover all approved contraception efforts, including the use of abortifacient drugs that terminate a pregnancy after conception. Health care professionals are also being pressured to prescribe treatments they find morally objectionable. Louisiana Rep. John Fleming is one of three House Republicans pushing new legislation to protect what he calls an eroding right of conscience. Along with Tennessee Rep. Diane Black and Nebraska Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, Fleming is sponsoring the Health Care Conscience Rights Act. He says it protects rights that have been cherished since the American founding. "It applies a longstanding policy of conscience rights to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. It provides doctors, nurses and other health care providers with protection from discrimination for choosing not to participate in an abortion, codifying the Hyde-Weldon Amendment," said Fleming. "Third, it enables victims of the HHS mandate and discriminatory health practices to have their case heard in court." Fleming, who is a longtime physician, says the federal government has no business interfering with this basic right. "The government should not have the right to force you to participate in some type of behavior that is going to conflict with your conscience rights, and if it does or potentially does, you should have the ability to have access to courts and currently that's not necessarily the case, Under Obamacare, you have reach out to the secretary of HHS. That is Secretary (Kathleen) Sebelius, who is very, very pro-abortion. So what's the chance that she's going to cede to you or in some way protect you when she's part of this whole development when those rights are taken away from health care providers." The legislation was largely inspired by the contraception coverage mandate, but Fleming points out the protections in the legislation are much broader. "It's not just birth control pills. It's not just the morning after pill. It's not just abortions themselves. There are many other things that could be included in this, depending on one's religious beliefs," he said. Fleming is also critical of the limited scope of the Obamacare exemptions given to faith-based organizations. "The Obama administration would say that if you are a Catholic institution, you can only limit your conscience waivers or exclusions to people of the Catholic Church. That would mean that Catholic institutions couldn't treat people of other religions and that makes no sense. That's part of their mission," said Fleming. "This makes no sense not to have the kind of constitutional protections that are so necessary and provided by our Founding Fathers," he said. Fleming also addressed reports that he is mulling a U.S. Senate bid in 2014 against three-term Democrat Mary Landrieu. "I have been urged to run and I am looking at it. We're going through the metrics, the evaluation," said Fleming, who is now in his third House term and says he is happy serving where he is. "One way or another, I want to be a positive force for the people of Louisiana and the United States of America in whatever way I can serve," said Fleming. |
| U.S. Sabotaging Netanyahu |
| Mon, 4 Mar 2013 16:45:00 EST Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just two weeks left to forge a new coalition government, but the Obama administration is working feverishly to prevent him from succeeding and force him from office, according to Middle East expert Dr. Michael Evans. Evans is the author of numerous books about the various crises in the Middle East, including "Atomic Iran: Countdown to Armageddon". He says it's very clear why Netanyahu hasn't put a new government together. "The biggest stumbling block is the Big O, Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama's got his team over there. They've been over there a couple weeks and they're meeting with the opposition leaders," said Evans. "This is fairly existential. Obama doesn't dislike Netanyahu. He hates him. He hates him. Netanyahu has been able to succeed against Obama. How did he do it? He went directly to the House of Representatives and got 18 standing ovations. He went to the U.S. media. But now he's come to power weakened. Obama's come into power strengthened." Evans says the argument made by Obama emissaries to Israeli lawmakers is that Netanyahu won't last much longer in power so Israelis would be smart to go with a new leader now so as to forge a better working relationship with the U.S. Evans says that's just a smokescreen. "Obama's people don't want Netanyahu back in office. Obama's people want a divided Jerusalem. They want a Palestinian state. They want Judea and Samaria settlements to stop, etc. etc.," he said. "Anything they can do to weaken Netanyahu they're doing and they're succeeding at it." While Obama's efforts are working for the moment, Evans believes Netanyahu will cobble together a government in the coming days, but as strong of one as he would like. "I think ultimately Bibi's going to put his cabinet together. It won't be strong. He wants it to have a broad coalition of maybe 75-80 out of 120 (seats in the Israeli Knesset). I don't think he's going to get that. I think he's probably going to get something in the high fifties or, maximum, in the low sixties," said Evans. "It's possible that within a year or two, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will run again and try to defeat him." If Netanyahu cannot build a coalition government within the next two weeks, Israeli President Shimon Peres will invite second-place finisher Yair Lapid to forge a group that would make him the new prime minister. If he also fails, new elections would be called. "I think it's very likely that Netanyahu will be able to put a coalition together, but here's the problem: Right now, to put a coalition together, he's going to have to compromise on his core values. What he compromises to gain he will ultimately lose," said Evans, noting that Netanyahu will feel pressured by the U.S. to make concessions toward Palestinian statehood and those concessions will mean the crumbling of the coalition. But Netanyahu will also feel pressure to accommodate Obama on statehood because of the specter of diminished U.S. foreign aid to Israel. Evans says Obama will use the current sequestration fight and other looming fiscal debates to force Netanyahu's hand by threatening air defense assistance and other vital programs. "It's an existential dilemma for the prime minister. Any direction he goes, he falls on his own sword," said Evans. According to Evans, Obama has already made it clear that he views Israel as the problem when it comes to the Mideast crisis. "Obama gave his addiction speech in his first term, declaring that the greatest instability in the Middle East was Al Qaeda. The second greatest was Israel," said Evans. When pressed to clarify when and how Obama made that contention, Evans pointed to the president's highly touted speech in the region early in his presidency. "It was the speech he gave in Cairo at the university in his first term that he talked about instability in the Middle East. He talked about the Palestinian crisis as the second most significant cause of instability and Israel gets blamed," said Evans. "There isn't any Arab regime, no thugocracy wants to solve the Palestinian crisis because to have an army you need an enemy, and Israel is perfect for the family-owned corporations called countries to blame for all their problems as opposed to blaming themselves. So Israel's got to be the tar baby." As for the Israeli public, Evans says most people are willing to take steps to resolve the Palestinian crisis, but there's a limit to what they'll approve to make nice with the Obama administration. "They can't support a Palestinian state that has an army, that has airspace and has treaties. An army, airspace and treaties with a Palestinian state would be an existential threat against the state of Israel and would be its downfall, because that Palestinian state could bring in Iran and other nations that hate Israel," said Evans. "This is a very serious crisis for the Jewish people," he said. |
| A Page Out of Castro's Playbook |
| Fri, 1 Mar 2013 15:26:14 EST The Obama White House firmly denies any involvement in the release of hundreds of detained illegal immigrants, but Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar says that's preposterous and that the move was done to inflict punishment for Obama not getting his way on sequestration. According to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, the decision to release several hundred allegedly low-risk illegals was made entirely by officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and was done because of looming budget cuts related to the sequestration spending cuts. Does Rep. Gosar believe that? "Absolutely not. This just shows the pattern of do-and-deny that this administration does over and over again. We saw it in Fast and Furious. We also saw it in the horrific acts of Benghazi. So here's number three. Three's a charm. We need to wake up and understand how this administration rolls," said Gosar. The congressman then elaborated on why he believes the administration would consciously release criminals as the first response to a budget tightening. "This was to create hysteria in which to get the public behind their mantra of increasing taxes and doing it the president's way in sequester. This shows the lack of leadership by this president and this administration for accountability and responsibility," said Gosar. "When you look at our core functions as a federal government is security and protection. Boy, I certainly hope that none of these people that are released create a crime that cost a citizen both injury to themselves, their life or their property. "This is absolutely horrific. It's like taking page out of Fidel Castro's playbook, dumping people out on the streets egregiously," said Gosar. The congressman believes another factor is at work in this decision as well. Like Gov. Jan Brewer, Gosar believes the president is still bitter at Arizona officials over the immigration fight between the state and the Obama administration. "I find it kind of interesting and very offensive that once again this administration targets Arizona again as one of its foremost states to pick on," said Gosar. "We have additional responses by this administration by rules and regulations and administrative rulings that (designate) Arizona as their evil stepchild." The Obama administration insists the released illegals do not pose a criminal risk, are still being monitored and are still on schedule to be deported. Gosar isn't convinced. "First of all they didn't know and now they do know? Give me a break. The bureaucracy of DHS is just horrifically riddled with oversight balloons and potholes," said Gosar. Gosar is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and promises the panel will investigate this thoroughly, although he's not holding out much hope for cooperation from the Obama administration. "Absolutely. This is part of our job, part of our detail. And I'm sure that the administration, like they did in Fast and Furious, in Benghazi as well as other things like Solyndra. They'll show us contempt by not giving us the proper details and information that we should have access and proper access to," said Gosar. According to Gosar, the decision to release illegals shed some light onto how President Obama really views the looming immigration reform debate. "The president probably doesn't want to have an immigration policy and get this broken policy fixed because he keeps intruding and stirring the pot so that we don't come to a creative solution that defines a good, secure immigration policy," said Gosar. |
| 'An Assault on the Military' |
| Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:50:51 EST President Obama and most Democrats want to replace looming sequestration cuts with a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts, while most Republicans don't like the parameters of the cuts but think they should proceed anyway. South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson is a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees and doesn't like either approach. He says the cuts set to take effect on Friday will be too damaging to national security and need to be assigned elsewhere. "This is really an assault on the military and so I believe the cuts for the military should not go into effect because we're in a time of war," said Wilson. "This will have a big impact because 50 percent of the cuts, which is around $60 billion, is being applied to defense, which is only 15.1 percent of the federal budget." Wilson says officials from each service branch told the House Armed Services that the cuts could have an impact on personnel and may even lead to service members being involuntarily removed from the military. "It was (former Defense) Secretary Leon Panetta who said that sequestration could hollow out the military. It would take away people who are very skilled and experienced fighting the asymmetric, illegal enemy combatants that we're fighting and place these people out of military service who have skills that we need," said Wilson. The congressman says one sequestration-related decision by President Obama, as reported by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, already demonstrates how the cuts damage our readiness. "(Woodward) indicated thatthe president's decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf in the name of fiscal responsibility is really putting our allies, but particularly putting our troops who are overseas, at risk. We need the air cover," said Wilson. "It's really startling what's being done, but it's not in the interest of America's national security. It's also putting our allies, particularly such as Israel, at risk." With just hours to go before the sequestration kicks in, Wilson holds out hope that cuts to the military can be spared. "I truly hope that responsible action can be taken. There are ways to address the reduction in spending by doing away with government waste. Reduce the duplication. We've got circumstances where we should be requiring food stamp eligibility instead of the lax requirements that we have today," said Wilson. One example Wilson cited to illustrate what he considers misplaced priorities is the "free" cell phone program. He says the effort actually costs $2.2 billion and believes the money would be much better spent paying down the deficit or funding our troops. He also scolded the Obama administration for potentially endangering U.S. citizens by releasing hundreds of detained illegal immigrants as part of an alleged cost-cutting plan. Wilson also spoke out on the political drama surrounding the nomination of former Sen. Hagel to be the next defense secretary. Hagel was confirmed this week after Senate Republicans briefly filibustered his nomination in order to demand more disclosure on his income and speeches and to insist on more administration transparency about what happened during the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. Wilson applauded GOP senators for their persistent demands on Benghazi. He was far less complimentary in his appraisal of Hagel as the new boss at the Pentagon. "I'm very concerned. I'm very concerned about his resolve in truly promoting peace through strength," said Wilson. "I do not see that the defense secretary has exhibited his resolve, truly supporting, by way of providing the equipment, the training, the attention to our military, military families and veterans," said Wilson. |
| Marriage, the GOP & the Court |
| Wed, 27 Feb 2013 15:58:23 EST Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on two cases related to the definition of marriage, as the justices consider California's state constitutional amendment that upholds traditional marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act. In preparation for oral arguments, a letter signed by some 80 famous-to-obscure Republican figures is urging the court to embrace same-sex marriage in both cases. Recent reports also suggest the Obama administration will throw its legal weight in the same direction. Mathew Staver is founder and chairman at Liberty Counsel and has argued in favor of traditional marriage in state courts around the nation. He is appalled by both developments but is especially disappointed in the actions of GOP establishment figures. "The problem with the Republican Party you see happening right now with these people pontificating is all of a sudden their value system has changed and they want to sanction same-sex marriage. That particular value system changing, waffling in the wind without a clear, clarion call that resonates with the American people is the reason we lose elections as Republicans," said Staver. "The people want someone who will stand for values, not because they simply are changing their opinion whenever the wind blows in a different way. That's what I think we have happening with some people in the Republican Party," he said. "We need people in office, Republicans, Democrats, Independents alike, whatever party, that are solid in their views that are solid in their views, that are consistent with the Constitution, whose morals and compass doesn't change simply by a show of hands." At this point, the list of Republicans endorsing same-sex marriage is largely comprised of the more moderate and liberal factions of the party. Names among the 80 on the brief being sent to the Supreme Court include former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman, former Massachusetts Governors William Weld and Jane Swift. Current Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Richard Hanna of New York signed the letter, as did former Bush National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and former Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Most leading figures in the party are not publicly on board with same-sex marriage but those who have claim momentum is on their side. Staver says the GOP faces extinction if it ever embraces this movement. "If more Republicans go that route, the Republican Party will ultimately self-implode. I can tell you many people would have nothing to with it. A Republican Party or any party that doesn't understand the very basic issues of life or marriage isn't a party worth joining," said Staver. Staver is digusted by the likely Obama administration input in this case on multiple fronts. First, he says the job of the executive branch is to defend existing law and Obama is doing exactly the opposite. "The administration is charged with enforcing the laws, not being the king. This is a system in which the administration is supposed to be defending the laws. Now, if it doesn't agree with the law, it doesn't have to weigh in on it. They should let the court system deal with this. Putting the executive weight behind this, which is what President Obama is doing, saying marriage as understood as the union of one man and one woman is unconstitutional and is somehow discriminatory and that the Constitution doesn't allow that kind of understanding is absolutely ludicrous," said Staver. "Rather than destabilizing family and marriage and trying to redefine it to something that it simply cannot be, the Obama administration should have all policy designed to strengthen the family. But this administration is the most anti-marriage, anti-moral, anti-life administration in American history," Staver said. He's also outraged that the Obama administration would actively advocate a policy that he says would be extremely destructive to families and children. "I think it is an insult to the American people and it's outrageous that the Obama administration would seek to undermine the natural understanding and definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman that will ultimately destroy the institution of marriage. I think it'll hurt children. It'll be bad for society," said Staver. "It'll hurt children because, from a policy perspective, same-sex marriage says that moms and dads are irrelevant to the well-being of children. It says that boys don't need fathers. It says that girls don't need moms or dads. We know from the fatherless syndrome that is well documented ,and also common sense, that children do best when raised in a home with a mom and a dad. Boys certainly do best when they're raised with their father. The absence of a father does make a difference in the well-being of that young boy as he moves through his young life, through adolescence and into manhood," he said. Staver says he's unsure of how the court will rule on the two cases, but he's not encouraged by what he sees as a number of justices who rule based on ideology rather than the Constitution. "This particular court is not filled a majority or a super-majority that believe in the Constitution. They're ideologues that will ultimately reach a decision on some of these moral issues. In some cases, where it really doesn't make any difference, they'll follow the statute. In other cases, where it's involving abortion or homosexuality or same-sex marriage or some kind of ideological issue, they're ideologues. They are not necessarily going to confine themselves to the text and history of the statute. When you have people like that and all you need is five people to reach a majority, obviously I would be concerned over a composition of a court like that," said Staver. "We've got justices up there right now that don't really care for our Constitution. They look at constitutions of other foreign countries. They recommend to new fledgling governments, not our Constitution but constitutions from another foreign country. We have people on the bench who just simply don't respect our constitutional heritage and history," he said. |
| Responsibility, Not Restrictions |
| Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:52:10 EST Gun control advocates are pushing new legislation to limit the types of weapons that can be purchased and the amount of rounds in a magazine, but a top gun safety instructor says he can easily envision why someone would need those laws to remain as they are. Rob Pincus is the owner of the I.C.E Training Company, where has trained countless people in the responsible use of firearms and even creates videos that explain how best to respond to crises like a school shooting. Pincus also has strong opinions on issues like concealed carry and women carrying weapons, but he clearly disagrees with the repeated contentions of Vice President Joe Biden that no one needs semi-automatic weapons or large-capacity ammunition magazines. "I can certainly imagine scenarios where I would need to have a lot of rounds. I can certainly imagine scenarios where I would need to have the capability of controlling those rounds through a semi-automatic rifle where I can fire those rounds quickly and accurately. Multiple person home invasions would be an easy example that could obviously happen to any home in any part of the country," said Pincus. "Those things are very rare and that's what those on the anti-gun side play on is the idea that those scenarios are very, very rare and most would would love to think that it could never happen to them. But because those situations are possible, the good news is that in America we have the right and the option to have those higher capacity magazines and to have the semi-automatic military-style rifles in our homes." So how does Pincus react to Biden's suggestion that a couple of warning blasts from a shotgun are an equally effective deterrent? "Not only is teaching someone to shoot a shotgun into the air a reckless act in and of itself, it's also dependent upon the person psychologically being stopped and not actually being able to follow through based on just their will to fight," said Pincus. "Well, if every bad guy we were going to try to defend ourselves from was a coward, that works great. If we have one of these spree killers. If some have someone who is intent through a home invasion to hurt someone, they're not likely to simply be scared away by the sound of a shotgun." The renewed political debate over guns is triggering another spike in the interest of Americans in owning a gun. Pincus says if this was a result of existing gun owners adding to their numbers then his business wouldn't be any busier, but he says the bulk of the new interest is from first-time buyers. "The reason we're busier is because people who are new to firearms or people who are just now thinking about the fact that the firearm could be their best defensive option in the home or outside of the home are out looking for training. They're looking for an education and that's why they come to I.C.E. training company," said Pincus. "And it's not just the last few months. It's really been over the last several years that we've seen more and more new firearms owners, people in their twenties, thirties and forties who didn't grow up with guns who are looking for valid information geared towards defensive shooting." Pincus is closely following the gun debate in Washington and in states across the country. He was especially incensed by the contention of Democratic Colorado State Rep. Joe Salazar that women shouldn't carry gun on campus because they might end up shooting someone who wasn't actually a threat. "The idea that a woman is going to carry a firearm and accidentally shoot someone because she perceives being threatened when she's really not, honestly, I find that to be a very typically condescending argument. Unfortunately, it comes from the political side that has fought for women's rights," said Pincus. "To be demeaning towards a woman, as if the fact she's now trained and responsibly carrying a firearm is going to make her judgment fail or is going to put her in a position where she is going to panic, honestly I find quite the opposite to be true. The women who are realizing they have a right and responsibility for personal protection and are getting the training and who are more aware of their surroundings are much less likely to panic and make the proper decision." Pincus strongly endorses concealed carry laws and says there is no doubt criminals are less likely to approach someone if there's a chance their intended victim is armed. During the interview, he also outlined the type of training he provides and what steps people can take in mass shooting situations to minimize the killings. He also offered some parting advice to lawmakers in Washington and at other levels of government as the gun debate proceeds. "Being a responsible firearms owner means that you're going to make sure that the firearms don't get into the wrong hands. You're going to secure your firearms. We're going to go through the background checks. We're going to make sure that wrong people don't have easy access to firearms," said Pincus. "We're going to make sure that the right people, the people who want to be responsibly armed and who want to get the training and who want to be capable of protecting themselves, their family, their home, their community, under the Constitution maybe protecting our country with the training and the tools that they've gotten." "The best thing we can do is preach responsibility and not restrictions," said Pincus. |
| Beating Obamacare |
| Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:16:17 EST The new health care laws are already causing problems for millions of Americans but there are steps you can take to protect your health care quality from getting even worse, according to prominent Obamacare critic Betsy McCaughey. She also scolded several Republican governors for agreeing to expand Medicaid in exchange for promises that the federal government will pick up the entire cost of expansion at first and 90 percent of it in perpetuity. McCaughey served as lieutenant governor in New York during Gov. George Pataki's first term in the mid-1990s and is author of "Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for Surviving the New Health Care Law." In addition to the overall costs already far exceeding original projections, McCaughey says millions are or are about to feel the problems on a very personal level. "Americans are already getting clobbered by some of the unexpected consequences of this law. For example, most people get their coverage on a job, theirs or their spouse's, and many of them are already being told that their employer is dropping coverage next January," said McCaughey. "Next year, about eight million people could lose their coverage, but, in fact, others like McKinsey & Company management consultants have estimated that as many as a third of employees could be dropped by their employers." For those who lose their employer-based coverage, McCaughey says the remaining insurance options are not very appealing. "Either they go on Medicaid, or, if they earn too much for that, they'll be shopping the exchange," said McCaughey, who says the exchanges are billed as offering all kinds of choice but the plans are all the same and they all carry a big price tag. "The only thing the exchanges are going to be selling is the government-mandates essential benefits package. So no matter what brand name it has, Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, it's going to be the same one-size-fits-all health plan," said McCaughey. "It will be very expensive. According to the IRS, the cheapeast 'bronze' plan for a family of three kids will cost $20,000. That's $20,000 for the premium, but you'll still have about 40 percent of your health bills to pay out-of-pocket. "And don't be bamboozled when you hear these words bronze, silver, gold or platinum. Despite those fancy sounding names, those plans will all be the essential benefits package. Only the co-pays and deductibles will be different. If you pay up for platinum, you'll have a smaller co-pay when you go to the doctor," she said. The Obama administration contends that new laws have resulted in smaller annual increases in premiums, a claim McCaughey finds "preposterous". "Health care spending was rising very slowly when the Obama health law was passed," said McCaughey, noting that the 3.9 to four percent increases pre-Obamacare were the slowest in more than 50 years. "Now you will see premiums rising very, very quickly and it's a simple reason. There is no tooth fairy. When the law requires insurers to cover much more," she said, pointing to mandates on allowing young adults to stay on their parents' policies until age 26, a new list of mandatory covered screenings and comprehensive contraception coverage. "Once insurance companies have to cover all of that in a policy, what they're really doing is forcing the public to pay for all of that in a policy. In other words, pay a lot more for your insurance," said McCaughey. The Obama administration claim McCaughey says there are concrete steps you can take now both to guarantee access to quality doctors when you get older and to protect your personal information from the eyes of Uncle Sam. "If you're accustomed to telling your doctor things you wouldn't tell anyone else, now is the time to really talk to your doctor about keeping two sets of books. Once the doctor is compelled under the law to enter your treatments in an electronic, interoperative database, you can bet that thousands of people will be seeing your information," said McCaughey, who adds that federal authorities would likely review those records as part of a federal firearms background check if the president gets that part of his gun agenda approved. She also urged Americans approaching the age of Medicare eligibility to find really good doctors now. "If you're a baby boomer, line up your doctors now, your internist, your cardiologist. If you wait until you're 65 and go on Medicare, you will not be able to find a doctor willing to take you on as a patient," said McCaughey. Even if seniors can find good doctors willing to see them, there are financial factors that McCaughey says could severely limit the quality of care. "There are some provisions of this law that are really quite frightening. For example, Section 3000 A, which awards bonus points to hospitals that spend the least per senior," she said. "Imagine that. I wouldn't take my dog to the vet that spent the least per animal. Why would I take my mother to the hospital that spends the least per senior?" McCaughey is also shaking her head at the recent parade of Republican governors in swing states who are agreeing to the expansion of Medicaid in exchange for assurances that the federal government will pick all of the bill through 2016 and the vast majority of the additional costs after that. "They're doing it because for most politicians Medicaid is a verb. It means spend, spend, spend and then hope that the federal government will pick up the tab. They have bought into the idea that the federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs of expansion for the first three years and then 90 percent afterwards," said McCaughey. "They are lining their states up to be bankrupt in the future because the federal government usually breaks promises. Once the federal government bamboozles these states into expanding their enrollment and also loosening their eligibility standards and really enriching the benefits, then the federal government can break the promise of paying for it and the states will literally be facing bankruptcy. They won't have enough money to fund their schools, their highways, their law enforcement because so much money will be going to expand Medicaid." |
| 'A Match Made in Hell' |
| Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:13:58 EST Earlier this month, North Korea conducted what appears to be its largest and most sophisticated nuclear test to date, but what may also be emerging from the story is the extent that Iran and North Korea are colluding in their efforts to grow their nuclear programs. One of the most telling indicators of this collaboration may be the reported presence of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi at the North Korean test. Mahabadi is the chief Iranian nuclear scientist and rarely travels outside of Iran. That prospect is very troubling to foreign policy expert and accomplished fiction and non-fiction author Joel C. Rosenberg. He is the author of "The Twelfth Imam" trilogy. The final installment of the trilogy, "Damascus Countdown", debut March 5. "That is further, I would say confirmation, but certainly raises further concern that North Korea is actually doing the testing for Iran. In other words, Iran would essentially be paying for North Korea to be its research and development system, both for ballistic missiles but also for warheads," said Rosenberg. "So Iran might be assembling a bomb right now. We don't know that for sure. North Korea might be providing the data for how to test it and make sure that it works. This convergence, this collaboration, between Iran and North Korea is exceedingly dangerous for the United States but also clearly for Israel and for the rest of the Middle East." Rosenberg says his analysis is far from speculation. He says the cozy nuclear relationship between Iran and North Korea is well-documented. "North Korea and Iran are working very, very closely. They have been for years. In fact, they even signed an agreement, a treaty back in 2011 to work on nuclear issues between North Korea and Iran," said Rosenberg. Outside of their shared desire to acquire nuclear weapons and a mutual loathing of the United States, there wouldn't seem to be much in common between an atheistic Communist state and the theocratic Muslim regime in Iran. Rosenberg says their alliance helps both sides address glaring problems. "It seems odd but here's the bottom line. Like anything in Washington, follow the money," said Rosenberg. "North Korea is starving for cash but it has nuclear technology and has already tested nuclear weapons several times," he said. "Iran has plenty of cash, not the people but the government. It's starving for hard data of what a nuclear test looks like without inviting an American or Israeli airstrike before Iran can get its weapons built and ready to launch. This is a match made in hell." The U.S. and other nations have attempted to convince and entice North Korea to abandon its nuclear program over the past two decades with little success to show for it. Rosenberg says efforts to talk Iran out of developing its nukes is an even more fruitless endeavor. "These aren't just radical Shia Muslims. They have an eschatology, an end times theology they've spoken openly about that the end of the world is almost here. The so-called Islamic messiah, known as the twelfth imam, is going to come and reveal himself on earth at any moment," said Rosenberg. "The way to hasten or accelerate this appearance of this twelfth imam is to annihilate two countries - Israel, which they call the Little Satan, and the United States, which they call the Great Satan. "From the perspective of the leaders in Tehran believe they are being driven by an end times theology and there's no way that they're going to back off from that. They want to bring about their so-called messiah and a global Islamic kingdom or caliphate that they've been talking about for centuries," said Rosenberg. He says this mindset is not shared by most of the people in Iran or even most of the people in government. As a result, he says a few options exist to diminish the Iranian nuclear threat since sanctions seem to give the Iranians even more resolve. "The only way to dissuade them is to eliminate those leaders with a revolution or an assassination or a series of them or neutralize the Iranian program," said Rosenberg, who believes Obama's upcoming trip to Israel and other nations in the region is specifically designed to find a strategy to neutralize the Iranian threat. |
| 'Grease' on Greece |
| Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:55:36 EST As the politicians in Washington dread the onset of sequestration and blame each other for the spending cuts soon to take effect, the ones accepting of the cuts point out that we don't want to become like Greece. So how did Greece become the poster child for reckless spending and hopeless debt? The Capitol Steps explain it all through the music of 'Grease'. Our guest is Steps Co-Founder Elaina Newport. |
| Obama 'Lost Contact with Reality' |
| Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:01:47 EST Republicans should let the sequester proceed if President Obama won't let the defense cuts be eased and Obama is simply out of touch with reality on fiscal matters, according to former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. DeMint resigned his seat in January as he prepares to become the new president of the Heritage Foundation. In a wide-ranging interview, DeMint addressed looming debates on guns and immigration but he's also passionate about how the current sequestration fight plays out. DeMint says House GOP members have responsibly approved changes in sequestration so the cuts won't land so hard on national security spending and the ball is now in President's Obama's court. "If we can't get the president to come off the military cuts, we need to leave these cuts in place," said DeMint. "In most cases, it's not really cuts. It's just a slowing of the growth of spending which has been out of control for years. I would encourage Republicans, if the president's not going to be reasonable about restoring military funding and allowing these other programs to actually be reduced, then they're just going to have to swallow it. It's a small percent of our total budget and, frankly, we're going to have to do a lot more of these cuts if we're going to balance the budget within ten years." Obama has repeatedly demanded a "balanced" approach that consists of spending cuts and higher taxes for the wealthy. The president also says that he and Congress have already made painful cuts of $2.5 trillion. DeMint says the president is simply not living in the real world. "The president has a difficult time with the truth. We have not cut any spending in Washington. We've doubled spending in the last 10 years. He keeps talking about 'revenues', which is their new code word for more tax increases," said DeMint, citing the fiscal cliff deal and the Obama health laws as major tax increases that have already been implemented. "We don't have a revenue problem. If we would cut spending, you would see the private sector grow and even more revenues to the federal government. The president talks about a fir and balanced approach. American businesses and individuals now have some of the highest rates in the world. It's hard to compete internationally. He's still talking about more tax increases. The president is really going to hurt our country in a long-term way if we don't push back on this," he said. The mounting debt makes fiscal responsibility essential, and DeMint says we don't have much time to change course. "If we're going to save our country and keep us from looking like Greece in a few years, we're going to have to find things we can cut," said DeMint, noting that duplicative programs and services that should be done by the states are a good place to start. "I think the president has lost contact with reality. he doesn't see the spending and the debt as a problem. We are approaching a real meltdown if we don' get control of it," said DeMint. The ex-senator also made news this week for his public defense of freshman Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Democrats and some media outlets slammed Cruz for his pointed criticism of Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel and demanding that Hagel reveal which groups hired him to speak and how much he was paid for those appearances. Demint says the partisan double-standard should be condemned and Cruz should be commended for doing his job. "What Ted Cruz is doing makes me so proud I could pop, because the pressure against doing what he's doing is really great," said Demint, who notes that liberals and the media demanded tax records from Mitt Romney going back a decade. "The questions that Ted Cruz asked were very reasonable and very thorough. He's tried cases before the Supreme Court. He knows how to get answers out of people. I think he was doing just the right thing," he said. While DeMint has left the Senate, he says he will remain active in recruiting solid conservative candidates to Senate races, a move he says will bring heartburn to the establishment for both parties. DeMint rejects the assertion from Karl Rove and others that the GOP has suffered from unelectable conservatives winning primaries in winnable states. "We haven't been too conservative. Certainly, we have to have our candidates better prepared for the shark pool that they're going to get into because the media's always trying to ask questions that we don't need to be answering because they are not federal issues," said DeMint, who says making a campaign issue out of federalism and moving more and more responsibilities out of Washington and back to the state level. "We need to prove to these Washington establishment folks that the best way to win races is to get a good conservative candidate. We saw it in (Marco) Rubio, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Jeff Flake. They're out there. They can win and we just need to identify them and support them," said DeMint. Other pending debates also have DeMint's attention. On guns, he says exhaustive Heritage Foundation studies show that gun control measures do not work. He says this is another issue best handled at the local level. "We can't eliminate evil in this world but the schools are going to have to do things at the local and at the state level to protect themselves and have the ability within to stop something like this once it happens," said DeMint. "Gun control laws don't help. If they did, Chicago wouldn't be the murder capital of the world. We need to look at real solutions and not just this political talk that makes people feel better but doesn't make our children safer." Finally, on immigration, DeMint says this is another issue where the Obama rhetoric sounds appealing to many but the real motivation for the current push is far less noble. "It's very apparent to me what's going on here. The president and the Democrats want two things. They want voters. They want union members. So everything they talk about is about citizenship," said DeMint, who says we have an illegal immigration problem and not a citizenship problem. |
| 'This is A Gut Check' |
| Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:44:55 EST President Obama and Congressional Republicans are blaming one another for the $85 billion in sequester-mandated spending cuts set to take effect March 1, but South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney says the cuts should take effect and the huge fight over them will tell us whether lawmakers and the president are serious about real deficit reduction. This countdown to cuts in defense and domestic programs are the result of the super committee failing in the wake of the 2011 Budget Control Act that was passed to avert a debt ceiling crisis. The sequester idea came from the Obama administration and was approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Neither side is eager to embrace it now, but Mulvaney says the sequester needs to go forward. "That is the promise that we made to folks back in August (of 2011). If we raise the debt ceiling a dollar, we'll cut spending a dollar and if we can't figure out how to do it, then the sequester will force us to do it," said Mulvaney, who voted against the Budget Control Act. "I happen to think that agreement is worth keeping. We have to have, at least, some consistency. I didn't agree with the bill at the time for various different reasons, but we have to stick with the principles and I don't understand why the president now wants to break the agreement. It's imperative that we prove to people that we can reduce spending. Right now, the only way to do that is through the sequester." Mulvaney also urges Americans to get past the political hand wringing and observe that the sequester will make "hardly any" dent in the annual budget deficit. "The debt this year will be $1300 billion and this would cut it by $85, so you're cutting $85 out of $1300. Think about that for a second," said Mulvaney. "That's why I think a lot of this doom and gloom and 'sky is falling' hyperbole we're hearing from the Democrats is just designed to make people afraid. I think this is a good time to ride it out and show folks that the world doesn't end when you cut two percent from certain items in the federal government. "I don't want to minimize the impact on defense . That's 11 percent, which is different, but the sun is going to rise on March 1st. The federal government will still be there and we'll save $85 billion. All things being considered, it's something we need to do," said Mulvaney. As Mulvaney indicated, he is uneasy about the size of spending cuts impacting national defense. He says a "hollowing out" of the military could result from the much greater cuts that are about to impact national security. "As interested as I have been in looking critically at the Defense Department for savings, an 11 percent across-the-board cut is not the right way to manage the Defense Department. I am concerned about it. I'm concerned about our ability to pursue our interests overseas, especially militarily, and that is a real concern," said Mulvaney. "That being said, the House has already offered its alternative to prevent that and the Senate has refused to take it up. The president has refused to engage on the topic. I don't know what else we can do in the House. We can't govern by ourselves. So it is a difficulty and we need to face it, but getting rid of the sequester is not the answer." The U.S. is currently facing annual deficits of more than a trillion dollars and a national debt racing toward $17 trillion. Mulvaney says this debate over a relatively tiny amount of spending will demonstrate whether the nation is ready for a larger debate to tackle the big drivers of our debt. "This is a gut check. This is a test as to whether or not not we can make even small steps toward balancing the budget," said Mulvaney. "I have members of my own party that are concerned about job losses and impacts and so forth. I understand where they're coming from, but this is a two percent reduction in some circumstances. If we cannot do that, do we really have a chance ever to balance the budget? That's exactly what this comes down to. This is a test case. If we do not have the political will to do this, then we might as well give up and go home because I would think that's it's unlikely that we'll ever get real reductions in our spending. President Obama took to the airwaves on Tuesday to place blame for the sequester at the feet of Republicans. Mulvaney says the sequester was absolutely Obama's idea, and while the congressman may not have liked the debt ceiling deal from two years ago, he's proud of how the GOP members have handled this fight. "I don't care whose idea it was. I care who's giving us good ideas on how to fix it. Right now, the House has done that. The Republicans have done that. They have given an alternative," said Mulvaney. "The Senate Democrats have thrown a couple ideas out there but don't have the nerve to take a vote. The president hasn't even thrown any specific ideas out there. He's still talking about a fair and balanced approach and making rich people pay more. That's not a plan. That's a platform. It's a plank in a campaign effort. So the Republicans in the effort have a PR effort. Do we have a solid message? Yes, we're being adults. We are serious about the spending problem. We are going to keep the promises made during the debt ceiling discussion," he said. "I'm proud that the House Republicans have done this time around. At the end of the day, you have to believe that good policy makes good politics, and right now we're on the right side of this policy." The intense fiscal debates will not ease anytime soon. Mulvaney notes that the next debt ceiling deadline is May 19 and fights over the House Republican budget and a possible government shutdown will arise before then. |
| The Last Line of Defense |
| Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:17:57 EST Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli led the fight against the Obama health laws in federal court and he says he is bringing the same fidelity to the Constitution in his bid to become the next governor of the commonwealth. Cuccinelli is also author of the new book "The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty. He says a presidential administration striving for more power is typical in both parties, but he believes the Obama team has a special thirst for control. "What makes this unique, frankly, is the brazenness and frequency of this administration's willingness to break the law and to trample the Constitution," said Cuccinelli. "Just last month they lost the constitutional case that came straight from the president about his supposed recess appointments. He claimed the right to essentially declare when the Senate was in recess, which is an egregious violation of the separation of powers, and the court found so unanimously and they threw out his appointment." Cuccinelli says his own state is also the victim of federal overreach, a claim he says was also validated in a recent federal court ruling involving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "We beat the EPA in Virginia, which I refer to as the Employment Prevention Agency because they're so good at that, with Fairfax County as our co-plaintiff," said Cuiccinelli. "It is a very partisan, Democrat board of supervisors and yet they joined me as the co-plaintiff in that suit because they knew that the federal government had broken the law in how it was attempting to regulate water just like it would regulate a pollutant. It sounds crazy and it is, which is probably part of why we won so convincingly. That was worth over $300 million to the people of Virginia." The Virginia Department of Transportation was the lead plaintiff in the successful lawsuit against the EPA, but Cuccinelli says that would not have been possible without Gov. Bob McDonnell giving his approval for the challenge. Cuccinelli says that is a prime example of why a staunch defender of the Constitution needs to be elected governor in Virginia this year. "The governor is very important to carrying on this balancing act and it's worth people remembering the Founding Fathers intended those of us in the states to push back on the federal government when it became a threat to liberty," said Cuccinelli. Opponents of the Obama health laws won on three of four constitutional arguments before the Supreme Court but the law stood once Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's four liberal justices kept the individual mandate alive as a tax. Despite a verdict on the mandate with which he strongly disagrees, Cuccinelli says another part of the court's ruling is a big win for states. "Because we got the first-ever limits on the spending power of the federal government, that allowed us to even have the debate we're now having over whether or not to do the Medicaid expansion. That is the biggest, most out of control part of our state budget," said Cuccinelli. "It really wasn't a realistic option about whether or not we expanded Medicaid before we won on the spending argument because they'd take all our money away." "Now we get to decide it, and it's going to be a centerpiece of the arguments of this race. My opponent (former Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe) is for the Medicaid expansion. I am against it. Even with all the federal bribery involved and how much of it they say they're willing to pay, we still are going to have to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in the out years and there's no turning back. Once you're in, they have to give you permission to get out. That's an example of how one of these cases has actually opened up alternatives for us. We couldn't have even had a serious debate over this in the absence of making some headway in the health care case against the federal health care law," said Cuccinelli. McDonnell, Cuccinelli and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling were all resoundingly swept into office in 2009, but those results were sandwiched by Obama victories in 2008 and 2012. Cuccinelli says different people show up for different elections and he vows to continue explaining to Virginia voters why they should choose candidates who will protect their freedoms. There's been a great deal of soul-searching within the GOP and plenty of Republicans have suggested a shift to the political center is the best path to political success. Cuccinelli is having none of that. "I have heard that mantra for each of my four elections," said Cuccinelli. "I was elected in Fairfax County to the state senate three times without changing what I believe or my principles. Then I was elected statewide in the same way with all the same mantra going on. People were saying the same thing in 2009 about me and I got more votes for attorney general than anyone in the history of the commonwealth of Virginia." "The key for someone like me is to offer a constructive vision for how to move Virginia forward, consistent with the principles I believe in and to explain to people why that's going to make Virginia the best place it can be to live and grow up and run a business in and why we're going to be more competitive that way and we're going to have more freedom here than they will in other states," he said. |
| The Depth of our Debt |
| Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:11:21 EST The official national debt is currently racing toward $17 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office is projecting another $10 trillion over the next decade, but monetary and currency expert Andrew Gause says the real amount of red ink will probably be much worse. Gause is the author of "The Secret World of Money" and "Uncle Sam Cooks the Books". He says the Congressional Budget Office is often conservative in its debt projections and that could a whole lot more than $10 trillion over the next decade. "They've been way low and, unfortunately, it's the CBO that tell us that by 2023 the national debt will be around $26 trillion," said Gause. "If that is one of their historically conservative projections, that number can be off by as much as 50 percent.We could really be up in the mid-thirties to $40 trillion in debt by 2023." In addition to the mounting debt, Gause is very worried about the impact of inflation caused by the Federal Reserve's frequent injection of new money into our economy. He says there are three factors that trigger high inflation and we're seeing all of them in effect right now. First is an increase in the money supply and Gause notes that the Federal Reserve has quadruped the money supply over the past four years. He says there also has to be an uptick in demand, with factories getting back to full capacity and employment picking up again. The final factor is what he calls "monetary velocity", when people start spending money again. "Those three (factors) could combine to provide the biggest bout of inflation we've ever seen in this nation, let alone comparing it to that last run from '77-'80," said Gause. Gause says finds himself "somewhere in between" liberals who insist they've cut spending as much as possible and deficit hawks who say our debt plus unfunded liabilities has us so far in debt that any recovery is hopeless. He says two budgeting tactics give him the most heartburn. "The only bills that they have to reveal to us are those that are due in the next couple years. Anything that's due in outlying years doesn't exist, according to the government's budget," said Gause, who also finds it appalling that revenues received from Social Security taxes are thrown into the general budget and spent on anything and everything. So what is his solution? Gause believes a lot of progress could be made simply by following through on Ron Paul's persistent goal of auditing the Federal Reserve, if the data revealed in conjunction with the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP) is any guide. "The data dump that the Fed revealed as a condition of this bailout revealed quite a bit in terms of insider dealing. The loans to the Bank of Libya. We were told they were a state enemy. We were not supposed to be trading with them but yet we have our Federal Reserve Bank making them loans," said Gause. "Then the insider loans to the members and their wives, the owners of the banks and their wives. All of this was revealed in that data dump that the Fed made in response to the TARP bailout law. I think an audit of the Fed would reveal the inconsistencies and the self-dealing that goes on, and the bankers are making billions of dollars in profits from their ownership of the Federal Reserve system." |
| Mom's Abortion Death Reignites Debate |
| Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:10:07 EST Pro-life activists are pointing to the death of Jennifer Morbelli as a clear example of how abortions can harm mothers as well as kill unborn children. They also accuse the mainstream media of burying the story because it doesn't fit into their pro-choice worldviews. Morbelli was a 29-year-old New York woman expecting her first child. After learning her unborn daughter would suffer from seizures based on a test conducted when she was 31 weeks pregnant, Morbelli sought a late-term abortion from Dr. Leroy Carhart, one of the most well-known practitioners of the procedure. Nearly two weeks ago, Carhart terminated the pregnancy but the procedure also killed Morbelli. Jill Stanek is a longtime nurse, who gained prominence for her work in defending babies who survived attempted abortions. She is now a prominent pro-life blogger. Stanek describes how the abortion was conducted. "Sunday, February 3rd, is when this process began and it's not quick. It' a two-to-three-to-four-day process. Sunday afternoon is when Carhart usually kills the babies," said Stanek. "He injects the baby's heart with a medication that causes immediate cardiac arrest. He visualizes the baby's heart through ultrasound and injects a needle into the mom's abdomen and kills the baby. "Typically, on Monday morning he begins the labor induction process. It would be called an induced-labor abortion. They insert medication that would dilate the cervix to open, which is the opening at the bottom of the uterus. It's supposed to stay closed until a mom goes into natural labor. This medication, or seaweed sticks called Laminaria," she said. "Over the course of the next two days, they would expand the cervix far enough so that the baby could be delivered. So she went back on Monday, she went back on Tuesday and she went back on Wednesday and stayed for nine hours and that would have been when she delivered her little girl. "Sidewalk counselors at the clinic, who maintain a constant vigil during office hours noted in real time that they thought that she was growing more and more pale," said Stanek. "Every night she would stay at a local hospital with her family. So Wednesday night she spent the night (in the hospital) and apparently tried to call Carhart, or her family did during the night several times, and couldn't reach him. So at 5 a.m. on Thursday, February 7, they presented at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Maryland, which is nine miles from Carhart's abortion clinic. By 9:00, she began coding, meaning her heart stopped. She coded six times over the course of the next hour and about 10:00 they just called the code. They quit trying to resuscitate her and pronounced her," said Stanek. To date, the story has received very little attention outside the conservative and pro-life blogosphere. Stanek says she's not surprised that the mainstream media is staying away from it. "I think there may be a hesitancy, because this is abortion, to name the victim and say she had an abortion. If this was any other high-profile doctor who killed a patient, the patient's name would be out there," said Stanek. "I think there's been a reticence on the part of the media because it is that topic and also because the media is bent in favor of abortion and so they would not want to push a story that would bode poorly for abortion. I think that's also coming into play." Morbelli was intending to have her baby, whom she already named Madison Leigh, until she received the results of the test that showed the baby having abnormalities. Stanek says women get a lot of pressure to seek abortions in those situations. "I know there is a lot of pressure these days, when moms such as Jennifer, who are carrying wanted babies, are given a diagnosis like that, from the medical industry to abort. Social workers are by-and-large pro-abortion. Insurance companies, I think, are skewed in favor of abortion with an adverse diagnosis because it's cheaper for them in the long run than providing long-term care for a baby," said Stanek, who says late-term diagnoses also put a time pressure on distraught mothers. Stanek says her experience with moms who have made both decisions proves that keeping the child is the right choice. "If you've been given the diagnosis that your baby will not live you should consider consider your baby in hospice. Your baby inside of you is warm and comfortable and as well as that baby's ever going to feel. You are providing comfort for that baby. When you deliver the baby you treat the baby like you would any other hospice patient. Have family there to meet the baby and take pictures with the baby," said Stanek. "I've never heard or met a mom who went this course who regretted it," she said. "It's the right thing to do." But she says the same principle applies to children who will survive their first hours but face very difficult challenges. "If you've been diagnosed with a baby who's going to have Down's Syndrome or spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, there's a lot of pressure, again, for you to abort," said Stanek. "I would still maintain that no matter what is wrongwith any child in the world's eyes, that doesn't make the child any less worth living. You just have to view it as if you'd be killing your handicapped baby. What does that say about you and what does that say about society? "I've never met a mom who regretted doing the right thing and delivering her baby to term, even if she could only hold her baby for a minute or two until that baby died," said Stanek. "I have met plenty of moms who regretted going the abortion course. Their baby is now dead and that's something they're going to have to live with for the rest of their lives. They often don't do very well in the aftermath." |
| 'Guns Make Women Safer' |
| Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:37:31 EST President Obama made another impassioned plea this week for more restrictive gun laws to get a vote on Capitol Hill, but the woman who stood out at a recent Senate hearing in opposition to the legislation says it's still the wrong way to go. Gayle Trotter is a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum. She received a great deal of media buzz for her confrontation with Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and has plenty more to say as the debate continues to play out in Washington and beyond. In his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, President Obama made an emotional appeal for a vote on all of his gun control provisions by saying lawmakers owe it to shooting victims from former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to the slain children of Sandy Hook Elementary School to vote on all provisions of the legislation. "His rhetoric was very moving to the people in the audience, but if you listen carefully to the words he was saying, he was saying all these people of gun violence deserve a vote," said Trotter. "My response to him would be, 'No, all the people of gun violence deserve the laws that are already on the books to be sensibly enforced and to make sure we have strong and consistent penalties for violent felonies involving firearms. So, yes, you can take all the votes you want to have, but if you're not enforcing the laws that are already on the books, it's not going to make anyone safer." Trotter is encouraged by reports from Washington suggesting that an assault weapons ban is likely doomed. She says limits on magazine capacity and universal background checks need to be kicked to the curb as well. "I'm hopeful that they won't pass any of that, that they'll look at how they can tighten the existing gun laws and give more support to the states in enforcing these things," said Trotter, who says more people would oppose the background checks as well if they understand them better. "When you think about the federal bureaucracy that will be increased by doing that, the amount of money that will be spent, the fact that criminals will not subject themselves to federal background checks," she said. "Most importantly, the background check system we have now is not effective because the information is not getting from the states to the background checkers. If Americans understood that, they would not be supporting universal background checks." Trotter attracted media buzz in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee for referring to the case of Sarah McKinley, an Oklahoma woman who shot an intruder to protect herself and her young child. Sen. Whitehouse countered by saying McKinley's gun would not be banned in the Democratic legislation so he contended that case actually proves self-defense does not require so-called assault weapons to be legal. "How can you say that?" responded Trotter. "You are a large man, a tall man. You are not a young mother who has a young child with her. And I am passionate about this position, because you cannot understand. You are not a woman stuck in her house having to defend her children, not able to leave her child, not able to go seek safety, one the phone with 9-1-1, and she cannot get the police there fast enough to protect her child and she's not used to a firefight." Several days after that testimony, Trotter says she was trying to convey the simple message that guns are not something women fear. "Guns make women safer. The idea is out there that guns are dangerous and that women fear guns. The reality is that 90 percent of violent crimes occur without a gun," said Trotter. "So when women have guns, they're able to reverse the balance of power in these violent confrontations." Trotter is still chafing at Whitehouse's assertion that since a shotgun successfully stopped an intruder in the McKinley case, it should be sufficient in any self-defense crisis. "How can you say it's not appropriate for her to choose another weapon that's in common usage. These AR-15s, there are millions of them around the country. So why are we focusing on what is adequate for a woman to defend herself instead of focusing on getting all guns and all bullets out of the hands of evildoers," said Trotter. The Senate hearings gave Trotter an unexpected celebrity turn, as gun control advocates slammed her and opponents of gun control hailed her testimony. She says the reaction is largely breaking along party lines but she says that should not be the case. "This is not a partisan issue. It's very interesting because it kind of cuts both ways. I was contacted by a lot of liberal Democrats who commended me for my courage to go up there and speak on behalf of women and their fundamental constitutional right to choose to defend themselves," said Trotter. "I got a lot of criticism, but some things are worth getting criticism for because they're so fundamental that we have to be brave and put our neck up there and speak about them." |
| 'Abracadabra Budgeting' |
| Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:48:52 EST President Obama claimed significant progress in deficit reduction, called for additional tax hikes and pushed dozens of new programs that he says won't add a dime to the debt. However, Club for Growth founder and Wall Street Journal economist Stephen Moore says the facts show Obama is not at all serious about reducing our deficits and is engaging in budgetary sleight of hand when it comes to his agenda. In his speech, Obama said he and members of Congress have already agreed to $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction and are on the way to fiscal stability. Moore says technically those cuts are scheduled to take effect in the next few years but he's skeptical that they'll actually happen. "The question I would ask is, 'Mr. President, you're not willing to accept cuts that are supposed to happen now. Who would believe that you're going to accept cuts that are going to happen in 2014, '15, '16, '17 and '18?'" said Moore. "No, there are no cuts. In fact, the president created this monster of Obamacare which is going to blow another hole in the budget. We're nowhere near stabilizing our finances. The $2.5 trillion of cuts is science fiction and I think the real discouraging note of that talk is that he's not serious about getting serious about cutting those spending programs." Moore notes despite the president's description of our fiscal health, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. "That is the road to ruin. It's not a road to recovery," he said. Obama also addressed the looming sequestration that is set to take effect March 1. The president called the cuts to defense and other programs harsh and arbitrary, but Moore says that approach strikes him as ironic because the sequester was Obama's idea. "President Obama came up with this idea because he didn't think that Republicans wouldn't go along with the defense cuts and would therefore agree to a tax increase. What happened was when Republicans said (they) can live with these cuts. Then President Obama changed his stance and now he wants to veto the very cuts that he himself created," said Moore. "Just last year he said he would veto any attempt to get rid of the sequester." Obama rejected Republican efforts to shift the defense spending cuts to other areas and said only a "balanced approach" would suffice to avert the sequester. He failed to specify which spending cuts would be part of that balance but he did say ending tax loopholes on wealthy individuals and some industries would provide additional revenue. Moore says he and many other economists and business owners are strong proponents of tax reform, but their vision and the Obama vision are very different. "The idea of tax reform is to close those loopholes and to lower tax rates to make the system more understandable, more efficient and more pro-jobs. That's not what the president is talking about. He's talking about closing loopholes and using that money for more spending programs," said Moore. "That is a perversion of the whole idea of a bipartisan approach to tax reform. He's had three or four commissions in his first term that he appointed the people to, who all said we need to get those corporate and business tax rates down. He has no interest in that." Moore says this is a critical moment for Republicans and believes giving into Obama on taxes now could even be fatal to the GOP. "The Republicans will be extinct. They will be an endangered species if they continue to raise taxes. They agreed to the increase on January 1 because they didn't have many other options, but I think if they were to cave in on higher taxes there would be a third party created in this country that really believes in growth and the Reagan idea of low taxes and getting government spending under control," said Moore. In his address, Obama also outlined dozens of new initiatives that he promises would not add "one dime" to the deficit. Moore says the president's vow does not match reality. "I think that sounds like abracadabra budgeting to me," said Moore. "He proposed tens of billions of dollars of new spending programs and Lord knows where he's going to get the money to pay for it. Does he really think he can get all that money out of the top one percent. We just had the biggest tax increase in 50 years starting on January 1st with the increase in the capital gains tax, the dividend tax, the estate tax, the business tax. All those went up. We can't keep raising taxes to pay for all these play things in the budget that President Obama wants to create. "There's no offsets to this. It will increase the deficit. It'll make our government more inefficient, and debt, which is already $16 trillion, will grow even higher," he said. |
| Automatic Voter Registration? |
| Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:19:44 EST Several Democratic lawmakers in Washington are pushing legislation that would automatically register people to vote once they reach the age of 18, a move that critics say greatly heightens the risk of fraud and gives the government the power to make a decision that should be left up to each citizen. According to the bill backed by the likes of Georgia Rep. John Lewis, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, all citizens would automatically be registered to vote based on motor vehicle records, public assistance information and other sources unless a person specifically refuses to be registered. The legislation would also likely include a federal mandate to allow same-day voter registration and extend the franchise to convicted felons. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp is one of the leading voices opposed to the legislation. He says the goal of every state should be to conduct fair elections open to all eligible voters. He contends the changes being proposed by Lewis would inhibit that effort. "One of the things we're charged with is running safe, accessible, fair elections, but a big part of that is making sure your voter rolls are secure and you only have folks that are eligible to be on the rolls actually be on the rolls. This is what my concern is with universal registration," said Kemp. "We have processes that we make people go through here in Georgia to make sure they are eligible and that they meet all the requirements before we ever put them on the roll. I just don't know that those safeguards would be in place with federal intervention." Kemp says it is standard policy in Georgia to "trust but verify" anyone registering to vote or seeking other permission from the state. "If they say they're a citizen then we're going to verify that and we do that with everyone before they go on the voter rolls. We do the same thing in Georgia before you get a driver's license," said Kemp. "I think it's just the smart thing to do. We've got a million different ways for people to register to vote." Kemp says in his state many public agencies are required to have voter registration forms, as well as schools, libraries and even his own website. Kemp says the issue at hand is about much more than just voting. "This is America. This is a country where we pride ourselves on people being able to make individual choices and having individual rights," said Kemp. "Some people don't want to be registered to vote. That's their right. If they don't want to take advantage of all we have to offer to be registered to vote then they don't have to. But if they're going to, we want to make sure they meet all the requirements, where they're not taking away someone else's vote because they're on the rolls illegally." Same-day registration is also a bad idea, according to Kemp. He says even with a registration deadline one month before the elections, one Georgia county still didn't have its rolls up to date. He believes allowing voters to register right before they vote is a prescription for chaos. "They were entering people into the system the day before the election and it was just a disaster. Their supplemental lists were not correct. (Voters) weren't showing up on these lists and they were turned away," said Kemp. "I am certainly not a fan of same-day registration. I think it's hard for election officials to do the proper checks on individuals on the day we're holding an election. I think that just opens a can of worms for fraud in a big way." While the merits of the bill can be debated, Kemp is also frustrated that this push is coming from Washington. He believes this should not play out at the federal level. "It should be up to the states to decide whether they want to do that or not. In Georgia, if we want to have photo ID, and we do, then we ought to be able to do that," he said. "If other states don't want photo ID and they want to do same-day registration, then they should be able to do that. I don't think there should be a one-size fits all in elections. It really needs to reside with the states because we know best how to run them in a secure manner fort what's best for our state." |
| The Budget Amendment Returns |
| Fri, 8 Feb 2013 14:33:27 EST Utah Sen. Mike Lee is leading the charge for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, saying the move is necessary because Washington politicians refuse to embrace fiscal discipline. "There are some who say we don't need for Congress to propose an amendment to the Constitution. We just need Congress to do its job and balance its budget. I understand that argument. It has a certain appeal to it, and yet experience has taught us that Congress doesn't consider that part of its job," said Lee. "Congress will avoid balancing it's own budget again and again just as it has over the years. That's why we're now $16.5 trillion in debt, and that's exactly why we need this amendment." Lee says his amendment is pretty straightforward. Congress would be required to limit spending to match the amount of revenues and any additional spending would require an overwhelming consensus. "What this amendment says is that if the federal government wants to spend more money than it has, it has to approve that spending by a super majority instead of by a mere simple majority, which is what happens now," said Lee. "It would make it possible but rare and relatively difficult for Congress to continue spending beyond its means." Specifically, the proposed amendment would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate to approve deficit spending, higher taxes or an increase in the debt ceiling. It would also limit federal spending to 18 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The proposal also includes a mechanism to ensure congressional compliance. Any member of Congress would have the power to seek judicial enforcement of the amendment provided they have the written permission from just one-third of either chamber of Congress. Before a super majority is required on deficit spending, a super majority would be required to approve the amendment in both the House and Senate. In the wake of the 2011 Budget Control Act, the GOP version of a Balanced Budget Amendment attracted just 47 of the 67 votes needed. While he admits passage is an uphill climb, Lee believes approval is possible. "In the last Congress, we had a total of 67 votes in the Senate for a balanced budget amendment. It's just that they weren't all on the same amendment proposal," said Lee, who notes polling suggests 75 percent of Americans support a balanced budget amendment. "We had all 47 Republicans in the Senate at the time behind the Republican proposal and we had 20 behind a Democratic proposal. You add those together and you have 67. So there are enough votes to get a balanced budget amendment passed, but we just don't have 67 all behind the same proposal." Republicans are generally more supportive of the idea than Democrats, but some in the GOP are leery of the timing of Lee's effort. They contend the amendment has no chance of passing but will give Democrats from Republican-leaning states the chance to cast a vote that gives voters the impression they embrace fiscal discipline. "I understand the argument. I just disagree with it," said Lee. "At the end of the day, if we don't try every time we think something's a stretch or every time we think a particular legislative initiative is going to meet with some resistance, if we don't try then we'll never get anything done. We'll never succeed. I refuse to capitulate based on the fact that it's not yet apparent how we're going to get the votes we need in order for this to pass." If the proposed amendment were to find approval by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, it would then be considered by the states. Ratification by 38 states would required to enshrine the amendment in the Constitution. It has been amended 27 times, most recently in 1990. In the meantime, major Congressional debates will unfold over extending the debt ceiling and how to avoid massive defense cuts through sequestration. Lee says Republicans have very clear priorities when it comes to addressing the nation's mounting debt. "Republicans want reform. We know that we can't balance the budget overnight but we also know that we have to have a budget in order to have a balanced budget," said Lee. "We're pushing for both houses to pass a budget. We're going to continue to insist for spending reforms moving forward as a condition for any further debt limit extensions or suspensions. "What I've long insisted we need is some kind of permanent, structural spending reform, one that can stand the test of time and that won't be easy for Congress to back out of. A balanced budget amendment certainly fits that description. There are other ways we're always looking for that we can bring about permanent spending reform." As for the looming showdown over sequestration, Lee is frustrated that the government is even in this position, but he is adamantly opposed to President Obama's push to raise more revenues by taking away tax breaks for wealthier Americans. "I've never been a fan of the sequestration provisions of the Budget Control Act. It's one of the reasons I voted against the Budget Control Act," said Lee. "I think it's very unfortunate that our defense system should have to pay such a disproportionately large share of the cuts that need to be made. "The fact that the president is now saying these either happen or we're going to raise taxes again I think is unacceptable. I don't think raising taxes is the answer and I'm certainly going to resist any efforts there." Lee says there is a sensible solution in the short term on sequestration, one the House of Representatives has already pursued. "Last year, the House of Representatives passed a series of offsets, targeted spending cuts that brought about the same level of spending reform, but did so without disproportionately cutting into defense spending. I think that's what we need and I'd like to see the House pass that again this year and I'd like to see the president sign it after the Senate passes it." |
| Nugent Comes to WND |
| Thu, 7 Feb 2013 16:25:10 EST On Thursday, the weekly column "The Ted Offensive" by rock music legend Ted Nugent debuted on WND.com. In connection with the launch, Nugent explained what readers can expect in his column and the events in his life that formed his political philosophy. Politically speaking, Nugent is best known for his ardent defense of the Second Amendment, but he says the column will venture into many different areas. "It's a target-rich environment for people who still have an alarm clock and get up early and put their heart and soul into being the best that they can be," said Nugent. "You've got a president that is buying votes. You've got a president that is bringing to fruition the danger signs and the warnings of people in our history that warned us when the population discovers they can vote for scammers who will take from the productive and give to those who refuse to be productive. That's what we're living today. "So there's no shortage of issues. Everything the president stands for is wrong. The majority of power abuse and corruption and fraud and deceit and refusal to be accountable in this government right now needs to be spotlighted," he said. "I'd like to think the Ted Nugent column, 'The Ted Offensive', in WND.com every week will talk about how we the people, who are driven to be the best that we can be, are fed up and offended and angry by those who think that they won't only ask themselves to do anything but they're going to demand that their country does everything for them. We're offended by that and we're going to fight it." That outlook on life and politics was instilled in Nugent at a very young age. His father, Warren, served as a drill instructor during World War II and came back determined to make sure his children made the most out of what America had to offer. "He wanted to raise his three sons and his daughter to be the best that we could be because we were fortunate to be born in America," said Nugent. "To witness the militant disciplinary household at the Nugent Detroit house was absolutely funnier than anything John Belushi could have done with a samurai sword, but in a positive way. Because if you met my brother Jeff, my brother John and my sister Kathy, they're a lot like me. They're ruggedly individual, they're militantly independent. They are the most giving, generous, productive Americans you will ever find." "We were forced to be the best that we can be or you would have been punished," Nugent added. "How beautiful is that?" Nugent's already conservative outlook became further emboldened when the media began criticizing his lifestyle as a young rock star. "I knew that hunting with the bow and arrow was perfect. I knew that it was the highest level of awareness of resource stewardship and renewable resource respect and respect and conservation. And then I ran into the hippie rock-and-roll media that condemned me and hates me because I eat what they call Bambi," said Nugent. "So when I saw the drooling, puking, stumbling, obnoxious, stinky, doped-up hippies attacking my perfect lifestyle as a conservationist and as an aim-small, miss-small marksman being disciplined to handle all tools, especially firearms, conscientiously and safely and lawfully and I saw the condemnation by the left and the commies and the hippies and the lefties, the doped-up buffoons in the world of the media, I was shocked at first. Then I realized if you smoked that much dope, one and one could equal three on occasion. So I fought back with logic and goodwill and humor and kind of an uppity spiritedness like you saw me do with Piers Morgan the other night. "I started crushing the lie of the anti-gunners, the vicious lie of the anti-hunters, the vicious lie of the smoke dope and drop out and intentionally be a liability to your family and a liability to your neighbors and a liability to your fellow man and a liability to the United States of America and a liability to the environment. I stood my ground and I realized that there was a culture war going on by 1965," he said. Nugent's conservative world view did complicate his career but he has absolutely no regrets for speaking up and defending what he believes. "I decided early on that I would not play their games and I would not smoke their dope and I would not snort their coke. And yes, a lot of radio people refused to play my music because of that. A lot of promoters refused to book us because I wouldn't play their hippie games. A lot of record stores wouldn't even put my records on their shelves. When I started writing my New York Times bestsellers in the 1990s, there were some bookstores that wouldn't even display my book. They hated me so much because I ate venison and believed in self-defense," said Nugent. "Let's examine that. Somebody hates me because I eat venison and believe in self-defense. Can you get crazier than that? How much dope does one have to smoke, Bill Maher? How much mind-altering chemical warfare must one rain down on his own being, Bill Maher, to come to those insane conclusions?" Nugent is proud of his fight against the cultural winds early in his career and he says that spirit is badly needed in America today. "I didn't invent the middle finger. I just perfected it," said Nugent. "Defiance is the heart and soul of the American experiment in self-government. We had to defy the king. We had to defy the emperor. We had to defy the tyrants and sometimes we had to meet them at Concord Bridge and blow their brains out. "I like defiance. I like defying this lie of political correctness. I enjoy dancing on the skulls of people like Piers Morgan and the leftists. It's too easy but it's also recreational. It builds confidence, as if I need more confidence," he said. |
| Nugent Fires Back |
| Thu, 7 Feb 2013 14:52:50 EST Rock music legend Ted Nugent is one of the strongest voices in defense of the Second Amendment and as the latest debate over proposed gun control legislation plays out, Nugent is making his voice heard loud and clear. Earlier in the week, Nugent engaged in a feisty debate with CNN host and gun control advocate Piers Morgan. Despite the push for more restrictions on gun rights in Washington and in states around the country, Nugent fired back with a vigorous defense of what he says is the overwhelming majority of gun owners. "99.99 percent of the gun owners of America are wonderful people that you are hanging around with here today, perfectly safe, perfectly harmless, wonderful, loving, giving, generous caring people. Would you leave us the hell alone?" demanded Nugent. "Go after the nutjobs. Go after the murderers, because I don't know any." Nugent, who is also a National Rifle Association board member and now a WND.com columnist, was typically straight-talking with us as he assessed his confrontation with Morgan. "I am convinced that Piers Morgan was sent by God to represent everything that doesn't agree with Ted Nugent, because you've got to be the devil's advocate or the devil to argue with me," said Nugent. "I'm a simple man. I'm 64 years clean and sober. I never went to college because I was too busy learning stuff. The stuff I learned, I had to bend Piers over the other night and deposit it posthaste. "In fact, I'm saving money on dog food this week because I'm just letting my three Labradors lick the shrapnel from Piers's skull out of my boot cleats," he said. Nugent then explained why he believes history and practice prove that taking away guns never mean greater safety for the people. "If you try to argue that the Chicago, Mexico, Washington, D.C., Rwanda gun-free zone is somehow desirable, then you are either as equally evil as the murderers that slaughter innocent people in those gun-free zones or you are opening the door and rolling out the red carpet, that is red because it's saturated with the blood of innocent victims that are piled higher in gun-free zones than anywhere in the world," said Nugent. "Anybody that dares debate me about what the Second Amendment means and whether free Americans have the right to keep and bear arms as a gift from God, a right from God as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, I will do to you what I did to Piers. I will embarrass you and I will make you look like some subservient sheep from England," said Nugent. The very first thing Nugent does in his new column is attack the premise that some firearms can be restricted because no one supposedly needs them. "Common sense people know it's not the Bill of Needs. Common sense people know you don't need two homes and you don't need more than one TV. Common sense people know that quality of life and freedom has absolutely nothing to do with needs," said Nugent. "Then when you scrutinize the self-evident truth of God-given individual rights, the Founding Fathers wrote it down, not because they got together and had a good idea. They knew that the king denied these self-evident truths and these God-given individual rights. So we wrote down the self-evident, truth-based God-given rights that we the people in this new land, free of kings, free of emperors, free of tyrants, free of slave drivers, that we will exercise our God-given, instinctual, self-evident, truth-based right to self-defense from any evil force that threatens our gift of life from God and especially power-abusing monsters in government." Nugent says he also doesn't buy President Obama's claim that he's proposing "common sense" gun restrictions or Obama's claim that he is a great respecter of the Second Amendment. "I say sure you are, Mr. President and I'm a gay pirate," mused Nugent. "One just has to study Barack Obama's voting record. The Commander-in-Chief will go to the Vietnam Memorial Wall and will put on his community organizer, ACORN, Van Jones, gangland, Chicago, gangster-politic scam best and pretend to show respect for 58,000 heroic American military warriors who gave the ultimate sacrifice fighting Communism. And then President Obama will go back and appoint members of the Communist Party as his czars. "He will continue to associate communists, publicly admitted communists after visiting the Vietnam Memorial Wall. It doesn't get any more arrogant. It doesn't get any more dishonest, and it doesn't get any more anti-American than this president," he said. Nugent says he welcomes the large debate on gun rights because he believes logic, history and "a tsunami of facts" are on his side of the debate. But given the recent election returns and current polling on these gun issues, is he confident that will be enough to win the debate? "That's the scary issue right now. It really is a nation divided and it's never been more divided. The racism that President Obama and Eric 'Gun-Running' Holder promote is just heartbreaking and it's tragic. Those of us that know better have got to constantly expose their ruse and their scam," said Nugent. Describing himself as an eternal optimist, Nugent says he believes his side will win what he sees as a fight to preserve our freedoms. "If it weren't for my knees and the government my life would be perfect, so I'm going to replace both," said Nugent. "I use my bully pulpit and every resource that this 'We the People' guy has. "I see a positive reaction. I see people waking up out of the embarrassing doldrums of apathy and I see people re-emerging and participating in this sacred experiment in self-government and becoming engaged. I think that increased engagement is going to cleanse our soul. It's going to upgrade the quality of life in America," said Nugent, who wants to see more political leaders like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. "I see great, great leadership out there but we've got to make sure they make policy and not acquiesce to the gangsters in the White House," he said. |
| The Long Road to Less Government |
| Wed, 6 Feb 2013 16:11:24 EST President Obama's policy of targeting enemies, including Americans, for death through drone strikes is the latest and most alarming example of the endless expansion of government power, according to Judge Andrew Napolitano. Napolitano is the senior judicial analyst for the Fox News Channel and is the author most recently of "Theodore and Woodrow" and "The Freedom Answer Book". He says the growth in government power is nothing new and the erosion of individual freedoms is always pitched in pleasant ways. "Monster government almost always comes with a smiling face. After it's here, the face loses its smile and it saps our liberties and our prosperity," said Napolitano. Napolitano says there is no implosion of rights as troubling as what we're seeing this week as the Obama administration defends the targeting and killing of enemies, including American citizens without giving them the right to due process. "I've often commented that my job here at Fox is to monitor the government as it steals your liberty and steals your property, but I never thought I'd be monitoring the government stealing your life. Essentially, that's what this is," said Napolitano. The administration's legal justification for the drone program was laid out in a Department of Justice "white paper" that made its way to NBC News on Sunday night. The paper, which is a the distillation of countless other reports, clearly lays out what the Obama administration considers justification for the program of targeted kills. "It basically says that the President of the United States can authorize an 'informed, high-level official of the U.S. government' to strip the constitutional protections of an American in a foreign country if the informed official is satisfied that the American is an imminent danger to American national security and his capture or arrest would be impractical," said Napolitano. "That is basically the power claimed by kings and tyrants. I can suspend the law to get you if you are a danger." There are defenders of the Obama drone policy on both sides of the aisle, but Napolitano says their arguments fly in the face of the principles on which America was founded. "Would we live in a safer society if the government could cut down every law and abrogate every freedom and break down every door and arrest everybody it wanted?," asked Napolitano. "We'd be safe from the bad guys but we wouldn't be safe from the government. Who would want to live in such a society?" The judge says it's very easy to read the administration's legal defense for the drone program and see how it could be used to target any American. "The language in this 16-page document could easily apply to Americans in America," said Napolitano. "So the president could decide that Bill O'Reilly or Glen Beck or Judge Napolitano are just too troublesome, too meddlesome, too much of an obstacle to the accomplishment of his purposes and it's time to take them out. "The core of the argument is 'trust us.' That's an argument that the Supreme Court rejected because it doesn't trust a single individual to kill," he said, noting the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war and a 12-person jury the power to sentence someone to death. As outlined in "Theodore and Woodrow," Napolitano says presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson are largely responsible for changing America from a nation championing limited government to one saddled with a government growing beyond anyone's ability to control it. "(They) shared the same view and that was this: the Constitution is not the supreme law of the land. It does not limit the government to the powers that have been delegated to it. Rather it unleashes the government to do whatever it wants except that which is expressly prohibited in the document," said Napolitano. "Now that is not just an academic argument because that is turning the concept of limited government on its head. "Every president from George Washington to William McKinley, Roosevelt's predecessor, with the exception of Lincoln during the Civil War, accepted the idea that the federal government is one of limited powers and it can only do what the Constitution authorizes it to do," he said. "When Roosevelt and Wilson switched to that (and) turned it on its head, they changed radically the size and scope of the federal government and the relationship of the federal government to individual Americans." So what did this big government push look like a century ago? "In about a five-year period we suddenly got an income tax which they promised would never be more than three percent. Of course it went up to 90 percent in World War II," said Napolitano. "We got the Federal Reserve which allows them to print worthless cash and put that into the economy. We got one of the most useless wars in American history which is World War I, basically an argument among the old, dying European monarchies about boundary lines." The judge says both Roosevelt and Wilson cracked down on free speech they found unhelpful to their cause and both were outspoken racists who worked to segregate the military after it had been integrated during Reconstruction. Now that America has a full century of big government policies coming out of Washington, can this trend be reversed and how could that happen. Napolitano says it won't happen anytime soon but will eventually happen but in a most unpleasant way. "I've argued on Fox and elsewhere that we don;t have two political parties anymore. We have one political party, the big government party. It has a Republican wing that likes war and deficits and corporate welfare. It has a Democratic wing that likes war and taxes and individual welfare. Both wings have a single goal and that is staying in power. "Honestly, it would take half the Congress and the White House with a small government, maximum individual liberty, Ron Paul-like mentality for these changes to come about," he said. "If they don't come about peacefully, they'll probably come about by other means. Sooner or later the federal government is going to run out of money, and so many people will be dependent upon the federal cash which will stop coming that they will all kinds of horrific things in order to eat and to live," said Napolitano. " At this point there probably will be a revolution which will end up in a small government or many small governments or a totalitarian and then the totalitarian will probably be overthrown. "I'm not suggesting this is going to happen tomorrow. I'm not saying I want it to happen. I'm just a student and teacher of history suggesting that is the natural result of government overextending itself. It's how Rome died. It's how the European socialist states are dying, and we're not far behind," said Napolitano. |
| Keeping the Fed Focused |
| Tue, 5 Feb 2013 16:11:33 EST The Federal Reserve should be focused on maintaining sound monetary policy and not get distracted by trying to bring down stubbornly high unemployment rates, according to Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman. Stutzman is a member of the House Budget Committee and is sponsor of the FFOCUS (Focusing the Fed on the Currency of the United States) Act. Achieving and continuing strong monetary policy has been the task of the Federal Reserve from its inception, but in the late 1970s President Carter and Congress expanded that role to include the pursuit of policies that will lead to full employment in the U.S. Stutzman says that dual mandate is a problem because what's best for spurring job creation is not always best for our monetary policy. "When you start taking into account the unemployment rate, you start trying to manipulate the monetary policies and the monetary system to try to drive unemployment rates down," said Stutzman. "I believe they need to take that out of their responsibilities, cut it out of their formula and focus just on the economy's need for strong, sound fiscal policy rather than trying to also appease the other side." "The bill that we're filing will just simply say that the Federal Reserve Bank does not need to take into accounts unemployment rates anymore when they are setting monetary policy but focusing strictly on what the economy needs," he said. Stutzman says a classic example of the Fed pursuing policies that put their stated missions at odds are record-low interest rates. He says those can be seen as a good thing in the short term but are a bad thing in the long term as long as we fail to see much economic growth. He says there be far less "quantitative easing" under his legislation as well. "Their position is that if we can inject more cash into the system then people will have the capital that they need to expand businesses, to start businesses and we'll see economic growth," said Stutzman. "But on the flip side, we have the Dodd-Frank legislation which is really holding and forcing banks and financial institutions to make decisions that they normally wouldn't make." He says the easing policies are actually placing our fiscal standing on shakier ground. "There may be a symptom here that they're trying to fix, but I think in the long run it's not dealing with real underlying problems and that is national debt . My fear is inflation because of more dollars into the system that aren't really being supported by economic growth behind it," said Stutzman. The congressman is also a strong supporter of House legislation calling for a full audit of the Federal Reserve. "With the Fed being a quasi-government agency but managing tax dollars, it's important for every taxpayer, for members of Congress, for the president to know exactly what our money's being used for, where it's being invested and why," said Stutzman. |
| Legitimizing Iranian Nukes |
| Tue, 5 Feb 2013 15:07:33 EST The Obama administration says it is prepared to engage in direct talks with the Iranian government over nuclear weapons but former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says the move is naive and will only give credibility and legitimacy to the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. "I'm very worried with the new Secretary of State John Kerry, with a potential new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel that these new kids on the block are going to say, 'We can do better than everybody's done before. We know how to deal with the Iranian leadership and we're going to negotiate something on the nuclear weapons program,'" said Bolton. "You can always reach agreement with an adversary by giving away your position. I'm just worried that in their desire to be able to say, 'See, we had a success. We cut a deal,' that in effect we'll legitimize the Iranian nuclear weapons program and give them the capability to proceed unimpeded toward their long-sought objective of deliverable nuclear weapons," said Bolton, who says an active nuclear program in Iran would be a direct threat to Israel, the region and the entire world if the nukes get in the hands of terrorist groups. The concerns about Hagel's views on Iran have been well-documented, but Bolton also dreads the type of approach Sec. Kerry will take on this as well. "He has a record of naivete and faith in negotiations that's almost theological, and unfortunately, not assertive and protective of American interests," said Bolton. "I'm very worried that as bad as the first term was, the second term may be even worse." Bolton dealt with the Iranian nuclear ambitions during his time at the United Nations and has direct knowledge of how the regime would approach direct talks with the U.S. "They're very patient. They have a long-term view. They've clearly got some things they'd like to have. They'ed like to see some of the economic sanctions eased. They'd like assurances that their nuclear program is not going to be attacked, and they want to buy time so they can continue to work on that program," said Bolton, who notes that the Iranians have "taken us to the cleaners" in all previous negotiations. Bolton is also dubious of the official Obama policy against containment and dedicated only to preventing a nuclear weapons program in Iran. He has a hard time believing Obama will stick to this policy when it matters most. "Everybody always says all options are on the table, meaning the possibility of military force by the United States but I don't think anybody seriously believes that will happen, certainly they don't in Israel and I fear, even more importantly, they don't worry about it in Tehran," said Bolton. The crisis in Egypt also has Bolton's attention, as massive protests continue over the constitutional power grab from President Mohammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood allies. The protests have been met with brutal responses from authorities and those crackdowns have prompted even more demonstrations. In addition, the Egyptian economy remains stagnant, due in part to rapidly dwindling tourism revenues. Bolton believes this gives Morsi a very weak grip on power. "A variety of factors have contributed to chaos in the streets and it's not at all clear how this is going to sort out or whether the military will have to step in. In all events we can see that Morsi has not abandoned his ideology. Even as we speak, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting Cairo," said Bolton, adding that Ahmadinejad is the first Iranian leader to visit Cairo since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Bolton also provided additional insight into last week's reported Israeli airstrikes against a Syrian convoy headed to the Lebanese border. "The best information we have at this point is that it was an attack on a convoy taking advanced air defense systems into Lebanon," said Bolton. "I think the reason those systems were moving to Lebanon really has more to do with Iran than it does to do with Syria. "I think they were intended to go to areas controlled by the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon because I think at some point we're going to see another confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel as we did in the 2006 war," said Bolton. He believes moving weaponry into Lebanon could be designed to launch a quick counter-strike if Israel attacks the Iranian nuclear program or engage Israel so as to prevent it from attacking Iran. |
| States Strike Back on Guns |
| Fri, 1 Feb 2013 16:37:07 EST While President Obama and some of his allies on Capitol Hill prepare for a major push on gun control legislation, state lawmakers are preparing to resist new federal restrictions. Texas officials and sheriffs around the nation have announced they don't intend to enforce any new gun laws and now there is a push in Wyoming specifically designed to protect gun owners in that state against any crackdowns on semi-automatic firearms or efforts to limit magazine capacity. Wyoming State Rep. Kendell Kroeker is leading this charge. He says there is already a law on the books in his state that protects any firearm manufactured and possessed in the state from being subject to federal gun laws. His changes to that law offer residents even more protections. "We extended that bill this year by adding a clause that said any future ban by the federal government that would put bans on semi-automatic rifles or magazine size would not be allowed to be enforced in Wyoming. We would have misdemeanor penalties for anyone who tried to enforce it, and we expanded it to apply to any gun that is owned in Wyoming and remains exclusively in the state of Wyoming," said Kroeker, noting his proposal would remove the requirement that the guns be manufactured in the state. Kroeker says he's not sure how courts would rule if the Wyoming law were to conflict with a new gun control law from Washington, but he's very confident which side the founding fathers would choose. "People say that but the Constitution says that the Constitution itself is the supreme law of the land and the federal government can only pass laws that are in pursuance with the Constitution," said Kroeker. "Because this is an intrastate matter and not interstate commerce we believe that there's no authority for the federal government to impose their restrictions on us." Kroeker's bill has passed the Wyoming House of Representatives but he says he's not sure how an unpredictable state senate will vote on it. Kroeker says the public feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with 700 emails backing his changes to the law and just 13 opposing it. Kroeker is very concerned about the way the gun debate is unfolding in Washington. "We're very concerned. I truly believe that Obama and Feinstein would go as far as they feel they could get away with as far as taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens," said Kroeker. The GOP lawmaker also urged Congress to resist the urge to impose a one-size-fits-all approach to guns. He says the issue should be left up to the 50 states to decide what's best to the people of that state. |
| Out of Excuses on Keystone |
| Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:15:29 EST Environmental concerns about the Keystone XL pipeline have been addressed and supporters say President Obama is officially out of excuses for delaying a project that would create tens of thousands of jobs. Keystone would connect the Canadian oil sands to the U.S. gulf coast and purportedly spark job creation in every state along the way. In the minds of Keystone supporters, the last hurdle was cleared when Nebraska Gov. David Heineman approved a new route for the pipeline through his state that protects ecologically sensitive areas. "That was one of the main reasons that the president rejected this back in January of 2012 was that there were environmental concerns about the route that it was going to take," said Mississippi Rep. Gregg Harper, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and one of the strongest voices for the pipeline in Congress. "There's really nothing now that I can see that would be holding the president back from going ahead and making this decision and approving this, particularly in light of where we are in the economy and the wide bipartisan supportfor approving this to bring in the oil from the oil sands in Canada. It makes perfect sense." The pipeline would snake through several states before reaching the Gulf of Mexico along the Texas coast. Those states would enjoy an economic boost from the construction and maintenance of the pipeline. However, Mississippi is not one of those states. So why is Harper such a passionate supporter? "None of this pipeline would go through my state, but if we're going to become energy independent in North America, this is a key component of that," said Harper. "Having available, cheap energy in this country is a necessity in this country and so much of what we do depends on that for our business needs." "When Libya had a crisis, they only produced two percent of the world's oil but it caused a 10 percent spike in oil prices. If we look at that. If we look at our balance of trade deficit as it relates to oil and how much we use per day in this country, this makes great sense," said Harper. "I hope it would be one of the components as we try to strive for that energy independence." In addition to the environmental clash in this debate, one the points of greatest debate is whether this oil will actually be consumed in the United States. Supporters say yes, while critics say the U.S. is just a staging ground for shipping that energy overseas, particularly to China. "There's a false premise in that argument we get from the left, because by doing nothing, where is it going?" asked Harper. "It's going to go to China and China has an insatiable appetite for oil right now. We're going to be competing with them on the global market for much of this supply, so whether some of it goes for use here in the states or some of it is exported from the Texas gulf coast, either way it's going to be good for our country." Harper says the job creation potential from the pipeline is also a major argument in favor of the project. Most estimates show approximately 20,000 jobs could be created in the construction and maintenance of the pipeline. He says the latest economic news should give Keystone an additional shot in the arm. "As we look at what's happened with the drop in the GDP, the negative growth, that typically is followed months later by by a spike or an increase in the unemployment rate," said Harper. "So why not get ahead of that curve a little bit and let's have something that will be a real boost. This is ready to go and we shouldn't delay it any further." Harper holds out some hope that Obama will approve the pipeline now that Nebraska has approved the alternate route. The pipeline has bipartisan support, especially in the Senate and several labor unions are strong supporters of the project as well. Harper says we should know by late spring if Obama intends to relent and allow Keystone to be built. |
| 'He Doesn't Know Our History' |
| Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:19:40 EST President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators are pushing comprehensive immigration reform based on more secure borders and a pathway to citizenship for illegals, but Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says history clearly reveals which part would happen and which part would not. "The trouble is the president thinks that perhaps since he doesn't remember history or whoever puts his words in his teleprompter doesn't recall even recent history," said Gohmert, a former Texas judge and current member of the House Judiciary Committee. "In 1986, the Democrats promised, 'Look, if you'll just agree to give amnesty to everybody here, then we'll some along and secure the borders,'" he said. "It's like like saying if you'll just agree to increase taxes, eventually we'll slow down our spending and the second part never comes. Some of us have learned from past mistakes of others." President Obama says the issue has already been debated for years, so lawmakers just need to get busy and pass comprehensive reform. Gohmert says a bill could be passed very quickly if Obama would simply demonstrate he is serious about border security. "He could get it next week if this week he would actually use our resources to secure the border so that we know people coming in are legal," said Gohmert. "If this president can hunt down an American citizen in Yemen and blow him up with a drone, surely he could use drones along our border. Not to blow anybody up but to make sure those coming in legally and not coming in to destroy our country and not coming in from Al Qaeda camps that have set up or the drug cartels that are set up across the border. "Once the president commits to that, today, tomorrow or the next day, once he gets that done, we could have an immigration reform package done within a week," said Gohmert. The congressman says tangible commitment to border security would also be necessary before entertaining the Senate bill. President Obama listed continued upgrades in border security as his number one priority in immigration reform, but Gohmert isn't buying that rhetoric. "It's a little better than it was but I take issue with the president saying we've got to stay focused," said Gohmert. "He has so badly lost his focus that he would have his own Justice Department complicit in getting guns sold to criminals and used in Mexico to kill Mexican people and even used in this county to kill. "To stay focused you have to get focused in the first place," said Gohmert, who added that Obama approved Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano's decision to scrap a virtual fence on the border and offered nothing as an alternative. But that doesn't mean Gohmert is opposed to any immigration reforms. "We desperately do need an immigration reform bill. We need to reform immigration. We got one of the worst immigration processes and agencies in the world. It takes too long to get immigration papers done and we're not carefully going through them well enough," said Gohmert. In his Tuesday speech, Obama also warned against letting the immigration debate become one of us vs. them, noting that virtually all of us came to the United States at one time or another. Gohmert says Obama's claim to know our history is once again proven false. "So he doesn't know our history although I have to admit I haven't been to all 57 states like he said he has," said Gohmert, referring to a an Obama comment during the 2008 campaign. Gohmert also ripped an Obama comment saying he has more personnel on the border than at any time in U.S. history. Gohmert says that's patently false given the crackdown imposed by President Woodrow Wilson following the Pancho Villa raids of nearly a century ago. "If he wants to follow in Woodrow Wilson's footsteps and become the president that actually does as well as Woodrow Wilson did, then he needs to do that and quit making up history as he goes along that never occurred," said Gohmert. |
| Gender-Norming the Military |
| Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:56:17 EST Supporters of women serving on the front lines of combat are cheering the Obama administration's policy change on the subject, but critics say the move hurts readiness in multiple ways and is simply a nod to the progressive cultural agenda. Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis says he's not at all surprised by the decision. He says it was obvious this move was coming after a decision from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in 2012 that opened up 14,000 additional military positions to women and front line duty was heavily considered then. "They see this as a part of their movement and part of their agenda. For a lot of reasons, I think it's wrongheaded," said Maginnis. Maginnis says his concerns center on two key areas, the simple differences in strength between the genders and the issues he fear will arise when men and women serve together in long stretches in close quarters. When it comes to the physical differences, Maginnis says there are real, inescapable differences between the genders in strength. "Front line combat, if you're hauling a 60-80 pack in the mountains of Afghanistan, in severe cold or severe heat is incredibly grueling. It's the most physically demanding job known to man," said Maginnis. "Our own tests in the military have evidenced that that women have only half of the upper body strength of men, which explains why they can't carry heavy burdens all that well. They also have a quarter less stamina or endurance. "Women typically aren't as fast, so that's why we don;t see women running in marathons against men. That doesn't mean women can't run or they aren't reasonably fast but they aren't at the capability as the average man. We're dealing with hundreds of thousands of people, trying to get the best physically and mentally qualified. Women, in many cases, are very physically capable within their own category but they can't do these tough jobs." said Maginnis. Defenders of the new policy say such concerns are unwarranted because female soldiers will have to meet demanding standards before being deployed on the front lines. However, comments from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey suggest those standards could get watered down. "If we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn't make it, the burden is then on the service to come and explain to the secretary, 'Why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high?'" said Dempsey. Maginnis is not surprised that the military is already lowering standards to accommodate what he considers a policy dictated by cultural politics rather than what's best for U.S. national security, noting that sliding standards have already been imposed at service academies, on submarines and in special forces. "All these jobs have been gender-normed and when you gender-norm something so that you can satisfy the weakest of the two, you end up with a weaker military," said Maginnis. "We should not be trifling with national security. This is not about jobs. This is about a political agenda pushed by feminists so they can break the glass ceiling. They think the military is the last bastion in which that exists. "But we all depend upon our armed forces and the moms and dads of America need to understand the consequence of this is that their 18-year-old daughter will be registering for the draft just like their 18-year-old sons in the future," said Maginnis, noting the only thing stopping that is the policy the Obama administration now wants to scrap. He further states that America's financial crunch will soon mean that military personnel can't be paid as much and that will mean the return of the draft. "Moms and dads of America, yes, your daughters will go and that's something our political leaders of today have made a decision on." said Maginnis. A more delicate issue is what mixing genders will do for morale or readiness in front line units. Maginnis says it will hurt cohesion and lead to many moral dilemmas. "As we've evidenced over the last decade-plus in Afghanistan and Iraq. There's a lot of sex in the ranks, and even the Pentagon's own reports say, 'We can't explain why there's been a radical increase in sexual assaults,'" said Maginnis. "What does this do to units? It really polarizes, tears them apart, creates mistrust and of course it hurts military families. These are issues that are not easily overcome even in local high schools or in our communities. "We don't expect that we're going to put men and women in close proximity, intimate situations, for long periods of time. Moms and dads of America understand this but apparently the progressives don't," said Maginnis. When Gen. Dempsey was tapped to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2011, Maginnis lauded Dempsey as a great choice. After this decision, policies on gays in the military, failing to change rules of engagement and dismissing a professor on Islamic extremism after protests from Muslims, Maginnis says Dempsey has been a major disappointment. "I've known Marty Dempsey for 40 years. Unfortunately, general officers tend to change and he's changed in a way that is unfavorable in my viewpoint," said Maginnis. "The issues are distressing, wrongheaded, not in the best interest of the military much less the country." But he says this shouldn't come as a complete shock. Maginnis says President Obama never would have nominated Dempsey if he wasn't confident Dempsey would carry out his agenda. "I would say this is the compromise of principles, if in fact Marty did hold those principles years ago," said Maginnis. |
| Marching for Life |
| Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:51:12 EST Tuesday marked 40 years since the Supreme Court legalized abortion through the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions. On Friday, hundreds of thousands of pro-life activists descended upon Washington to announce they are still working to overturn the decisions and spread the message that all human life is to be cherished and defended. Fr. Frank Pavone is president at Priests for Life and an active leader in the pro-life movement and at the March for Life. He says the massive crowd on a snowy, blustery day sends a clear message. "Just to give some perspective, the rally ended just after 1:00 and the march began and we still see no end to the crowd," said Pavone, nearly three hours after the march began. Once the march reached the Supreme Court, some 70 women who had abortions began sharing their testimonies of regret for having terminated their pregnancies. As for the pro-life agenda in the coming year, Pavone says one major goal is to explain to Americans what Roe v. Wade is and what it isn't. "A lot of people think they support Roe v. Wade because they think it only allows abortions in the first trimesterof pregnancy or only in certain extreme circumstances," said Pavone. "But once we let them know two things, then things begin to change. Number one, that Roe v. Wade allows abortions under any and all circumstances throughout all nine months of pregnancy. And number two, that what an abortion actually is. The medical textbooks call it decapitation and dismemberment, very disturbing words that don't come from pro-life people but come from the actual practitioners of abortion." Pavone admits passing pro-life legislation in Washington will be next to impossible as long as President Obama is in the White House and Democrats control the U.S. Senate. He says pro-life Americans should continue encouraging House Republicans to stand strong against efforts to advance further pro-choice laws. On the other hand, Pavone says pro-life governors and state legislatures are in place in at least half of U.S. states and real progress could be seen at that level. "We've got 33 pro-life governors across America and we've got half of the states have legislatures that are completely pro-life, which means that the leeway the courts have given to the states in passing reasonable measures like parental involvement, more informed consent clinic regulations," said Pavone. "In some states, now, abortion is banned after 20 weeks on the state level because of the fact that children in the womb can feel pain. These kinds of measures, even in the current climate, have a lot of hope of passing in this particular year." The 2012 campaign focused more than usual on abortion, as the Obama campaign made it a centerpiece of their efforts to attract women, along with the federal mandate that employers cover all costs for contraception. Opponents of that agenda were accused to waging a war on women. Pavone says it's exactly the opposite. "The war on women, first of all, is when you tear them apart in the womb. Secondly, those who are standing here next to me are women who bought this product of abortion thinking it would be helpful to them and they experienced exactly the opposite," said Pavone. "That's the sad thing about the ideology we hear coming from the Democratic Party. They don't listen to the women who have had abortions. They certainly don't want to describe what an abortion is. "So the war on women is a war that is making them believe the lie that abortion is something good. There's no disease abortion cures. There's no medical benefit to the procedure, but when women believe that there is, they end up standing here, as so many are right now, saying, 'I regret my abortion.'" Pavone says other reasons for pro-life optimism include the movement getting younger and younger, and he says he's confident that 40 years from now, the unborn will once again be fully protected by law. |
| Ebony and Ovaries |
| Fri, 25 Jan 2013 15:20:47 EST Hillary Clinton will soon step down as Secretary of State. But as she contemplates a 2016 campaign or just retirement, the Capitol Steps reflect on President Obama's decision to nominate Clinton to his cabinet after a bitter 2008 campaign. Our guest is Steps co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| Time to REIN in Government Regulations? |
| Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:54:02 EST Congress would have to approve the implementation of any major new regulations coming from the executive branch, according to new legislation introduced by Indiana Rep. Todd Young. A 1cmajor regulation 1d is one that is expected to impose an economic cost on the economy of $100 million or more. Young says it 19s time for the legislative branch, the one tasked with control of the federal purse strings, to have greater oversight of major moves by the executive branch. And that what the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act is designed to do. 1cWhat the REINS Act is designed to do is give Congress ultimate authority, the ultimate say-so as to whether these regulations become the law of the land after the administrative agencies have worked their will, 1d stated Young, who says crippling regulations have already been implemented and many more are about to be imposed now that the elections are over. 1cThese regulations will rise to our attention from time to time, from boiler regulations on industrial boilers to regulations dealing with cement mixtures and its contents, 1d said Young, who asserts that major regulations have greatly hampered the manufacturing, financial services and coal industries in his region. So the REINS Act would give Congress the ability to approve or reject any regulation meeting that $100 million threshold. 1cFirst and foremost, it would prevent Congress from passing really vague laws, punting on the hard issues and then leaving those hard issues up to regulatory agencies, 1d said Young. The congressman says another problem is Congress passing vaguely written legislation that leaves countless regulatory decisions to executive branch officials. He says the Obama health care law is a prime example. 1cIt 19s a massive, broad piece of legislation that will be reforming in so many ways one-fifth of our economy, but so many of the hard questions are left up to Health and Human Services and other regulatory agencies, 1d said Young. 1dSo it 19s not entirely clear, even though we 19ve been talking at great length about the legislation, what exactly is in it, exactly what 19s going to be in it until we see all the regulations. 1d Young says Congress does have some ability to place checks on the executive branch regulations, but the process is much more cumbersome than it would be if his bill became law. 1cWe have the power of the purse, so on a case by case, regulation by regulation basis we have done our work and tried to address these things, 1d he said. 1dThere are just far too many regulations out there, ten regulations a day in recent years . In order for us to keep our eye on the ball and have an opportunity to vote down those regulations that really ought not to become law in the first place. I think we need a systemic reform rather than a case by case reform. 1d The REINS Act was introduced on Wednesday and already has 121 co-sponsors. Young says there will be some Democratic support for the bill but Republicans will have to do the heavy lifting. |
| Setting the Debt Ceiling Stage |
| Wed, 23 Jan 2013 12:59:59 EST On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a clean, short-term extension of the debt ceiling, a move designed to force responsible action by Democrats and set the table for real spending cuts and reforms in a few months. Some conservative critics aren't so sure, suggesting this tactic gives President Obama what he wants for three months but doesn't give the GOP any additional leverage when the debate resumes. Iowa Rep. Steve King has been frustrated by the last-minute debt deals over the past couple of years and says he understands why some are skeptical over the latest strategy by Republican leaders. King says he has a major reservation over the legislation but his hesitation has nothing to do with the short-term extension of the debt ceiling. He says that approach makes a lot of sense. "It would be easy to say it kicks the can down the road. I could maybe step in on that and pile on, but I really don't think that's the intention at all this time," said King. "The effort is to sequence these things. If we do not and the debt ceiling pushes on us and it gets delayed, it pushes us up against the sequestration requirement that we have." Sequestration is the package of defense and entitlement cuts that was mandated by law after the failure of the 2011 super committee to find common ground in addressing the debt crisis. "The sequestration and the debt ceiling could get pushed into the continuing resolution, which is a hard shutdown of government March 27th," said King. "Those things need to be in a different order. We need to deal with this debt ceiling when we can actually let the leverage of the debt ceiling work in our favor rather than against us. So I give leadership credit for calculating that part.&ququot; The part of the bill that bothers King is the demand that lawmakers in the House and Senate forfeit their pay until their chamber actually produces a budget. The move is clearly aimed at the Democratic-led Senate which has not produced a budget since 2009. King likes the idea in principle but says it's simply unconstitutional. "I'd like to do that. I favor it from a policy standpoint, but when I go back and read the 27th amendment to the Constitution, it reads, 'No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened,' said King. "It's hard to argue that varying the pay does not include freezing it for as much as 20 months. I'm begging them to respect the Constitution and find a way to get the same thing done without violating our oath of office. "I haven't dug in hard against it. I want somebody to give me another argument, but I don't want to have to suspend my lifetime of saying the Constitution means what it says and it means what it was understood to mean at the time of ratification" he said. "The language is clear in the 27th amendment in my view." King also explained why he believes delaying the debt ceiling fight until after the continuing resolution is resolved offers his party much more leverage in forcing spending cuts and entitlement reforms. "The bottom line is this. Our leadership, after the election in 2010, made it clear they were not going to allow the government to be shut down. I think by now they understand if you preclude a potential shutdown, whether it be initiated by the Senate, the president or in the unlikely event the House, if you take those off the table we don't have leverage," said King, who says leadership is now ready to stare down the Senate and President Obama on these key issues. "That becomes a different posture and I think we can get there," said King. "I know the track record over the previous Congress doesn't say so, but I'm listening to the tone and the words and looking at the body language and I'm encouraged that there is a lot of Republicans that are going to dig in. I think this freshman class appears to be pretty strong here too." King is confident that the pay threat would motivate the Senate Democrats to move on a budget as well. He says New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has already indicated Democrats are receptive to that. "That tells me they're already starting to accommodate. (Schumer's) comment was that they were producing a budget in secret. Now they're getting ready to talk about it publicly," said King. |
| The Real Story of Mary Doe |
| Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:18:47 EST Forty years ago Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion through two landmark decisions, but the "plaintiff" in one of the cases says she is pro-life, never agreed to be involved in the case and was the victim of "lies,fraud and deceit" to promote a political agenda. A Texas case known as Roe v. Wade became the more famous of the rulings, but equally important was a Georgia case known as Doe v. Bolton. The woman known as "Mary Doe" in the latter case was later identified as Sandra Cano. She says a crisis in her marriage ultimately led to her becoming a legal and political pawn. Cano says despite having a horrible husband, she tried to stick it out because she firmly believed that marriage vows were for a lifetime. The couple had three children, but a variety of problems led to the older kids being placed in foster care and the third given up for adoption. As the marriage deteriorated further, Cano discovered she was pregnant again. Around the same time she decided her marriage could not be saved. "I had had enough of him. He was in and out of jail at different periods in the marriage. He didn't provide, didn't take care of me," said Cano. " And when you're not very knowledgeable and you don't know how to care for yourself very much, I was dependent on others and trusted this one or that one. "I went to Atlanta Legal Aid. I said I have no money. I said I need an attorney. I said I want my children out of foster care and I want a divorce from my husband," she said. "Little did I know going to the legal aide was going to result in me being a plaintiff in abortion, which is something I've never been for, I've always been against. I never sought an abortion, never sought to be a plaintiff in this case. I was in the dark about it for a long, long time. I think the public knows more about the case than I do. I was never a participant. I was never, in my mind, told, 'You're going to be a plaintiff on abortion.'" Cano divorced her husband, gave birth in November 1970 and gave up that child for adoption as well. She thought the story would end there, but a surprise was waiting just over two years later. "In '73, I was in my mother's bedroom. her and my stepfather were excited, 'You won. You won,' and I'm thinking, 'What have I won?'" said Cano. As a pro-life woman who had never sought an abortion, Cano was profoundly devastated to know that she had unwittingly played a role in the fight to legalize abortion as a result of her earlier meetings with attorney Margie Pitts Hames. "I carried the burden for a long, long time of thinking because of me abortion was created," said Cano. " It was not a pretty picture to live with and the weight on my shoulders was tremendous." Cano then decided to find out once and for what her unintentional role had been in the abortion cases. She filed a request to search through the records pertaining to "Mary Doe". That took her to the National Archives, where she came across an envelope marked "identity of Mary Doe". Cano thought she would find her answers right then and there, but things weren't that simple. "I'm thinking, 'OK. This is what I need.' So I took the envelope and I was fixing to open it," said Cano. "That woman (at the National Archives) came and really quickly stopped me. She said, 'Oh, no no no, you can't open this.' I could have went to jail, federal prison for opening something that supposedly was mine." The next step was to unseal the records and a federal judge granted her request, a move that did not sit well with Cano's former attorney and Doe v. Bolton litigator Margie Pitts Hames. "I'd always thought she was a friend because she seemed like she wanted to help me," said Cano, who adds Hames showed her true colors on that day. "Margie was very upset. I got a call from her daughter who (asked) why I wanted to destroy her mother's life. It's not that I wanted to destroy her mother's life. There was a wrong done here, a terrible wrong. My name had been used in something and I was digging and trying to get the result to prove to the world I don't believe in abortion. It's wrong." Cano is now a vocal defender of the unborn and says she needs to speak out for two reasons, to explain the "lies, fraud and deceit behind the case connected to her and because of her ardent belief that all life should be defended. "Abortion is wrong. It's so terribly wrong. How can we play God and how can we take the life of an unborn child because it's not convenient, we made a mistake or the timing wasn't right. In other words, the baby has to pay the price for the sins of the mother and the father. That's not right. That baby is entitled to life," said Cano, who says adoption is an excellent option for anyone who feels they cannot care for a child. |
| Family Reflections on Dr. King |
| Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:56:16 EST Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a towering figure in the civil rights movement and the fight for racial equality, but he was also a big kid at heart who would be both impressed and sad at where this nation is nearly 45 years after his death. Monday is the federal holiday honoring Dr. King, who would now be 84 years old if he were alive today. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968. In connection with her uncle's birthday, Dr. Angela Farris Watkins is releasing a new book of family memories entitled, "Martin Luther King, Jr.: A King Family Tribute". Watkins is the daughter of King's sister, Willie Christine King. Watkins spoke at length about her childhood memories about Dr. King, but she also explained how her uncle would look upon the 45 years since his death with mixed emotions. "I think he would be very proud of the progress that we've made but he would also be very saddened by the prevalence of violence," said Dr. Watkins. "He would want to continue writing, speaking, preaching about the power of nonviolence and the power of infusing love into our society and how much more power that offers us. I think he would have mixed emotions, again some pride but also wanting to push us forward to be better." Watkins says her new book is meant to put a more human face on her uncle, who is often limited by history books to one aspect of his life. Watkins says Dr. King was very unremarkable in many ways but had very strong character when it mattered most. "It becomes important for us to understand who he was as a human being, to know that he really was a regular guy, that there was really nothing special about him as a person other than that he had a willingness and a commitment to make the sacrifices and provide the leadership that was necessary to effect that level of change," said Watkins. The book is a collection of reflections on Dr. King by many different family members. Watkins has young but very vivid memories of her famous uncle. "I had about four years with him. He came over to my house for regular visits. For me, he was somewhat of an adult playmate and I have some very fond and vivid memories of our time together," said Watkins. But her work on the book also led her to some discoveries into Dr. King's strategies of combating violence, including his overture to the psychology community. "I happened upon a speech that he gave to the American Psychological Association, where he charged psychologists with expanding the mission of psychology toward liberation and directing people to guard their behavior in a way that would be nonviolent," said Watkins. "What we see as his philosophy of nonviolence can really be considered as a really wonderful behavioral approach to our own personal issues as well as societal issues." Most of all however, Watkins wants Americans and others around the world, to know Dr. King was a regular guy with a big heart. "It really is important that his family takes the responsibility for making sure that everyone knows that he really was an ordinary person and that he loved his family and his family loved him back," said Watkins. |
| Oprah-Bama |
| Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:45:47 EST As President Obama is inaugurated for a second term, the Capitol Steps are looking back on his historic 2008 win and inauguration. They take special interest in Oprah Winfrey's role in promoting Obama and whether she should have taken a leading role in the administration in their fun parody, "Oprah-Bama". Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton. |
| Death of the Nude Scanners |
| Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:56:40 EST Privacy groups are cheering the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for announcing it will not renew its contract with the maker of the controversial body image scanners that allowed security personnel to see nude images of air travelers. The TSA says the decision resulted from Rapiscan, which makes the scanners, being unable to develop software to alter graphic images of passengers into generic-looking figures. These were also the machines using so-called backscatter technology that had health official worried about cancer risks for frequent travelers. Mark Rotenberg is executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of the most vocal critics of the enhanced airport screening procedures that were implemented in late 2010. He says this is a huge win for personal liberty. "We think it's an important victory for privacy. We've spent many years trying to persuade the TSA and others that this was not an effective security technique and the costs to privacy were simply too high. It appears now that the agency has finally conceded that that's correct. I think the benefit is that airline passengers in the United States will have a little bit more privacy without any loss of security." Rotenberg says his organization was part of a massive coalition committed to restoring rights and dignity to American travelers. "There was a lot of political pressure on the agency, a lot of travelers objected," said Rotenberg. "There were lawmakers, scientists, privacy groups certainly. I think the bottom line here was a sense that it just wasn't appropriate for federal officials to be looking at the images of naked air travelers which is what these devices had made possible." There was one other major frustration with the backscatter technology, according to Rotenberg. While the machines were very effective at giving TSA workers an intimate look at passengers, they were terrible at actually detecting banned items. "I think there was a real question with the effectiveness of these devices and whether they really do provide better security than the metal detectors and visual inspection that the airlines and security official had done in the past," said Rotenberg. "We don't think the answer's clear. The devices have a limited functionality. They have not, at least according to the TSA, identified any materials that wouldn't have been found through some of the other screening procedures." However, all this does not mean a return to metal detectors. Scanner featuring the millimeter wave technology will still be used. Those machines also capture graphic images but they are immediately filtered to look generic for the security screeners. Rotenberg says the EPIC will work to make sure these machines are used responsibly as well, but right now his group is largely fine with them although he believes they would be best used for secondary screening procedures. Rotenberg says the government will probably try to infringe on privacy again down the road, but for now citizens have won a major victory. "The privacy issue is not going away. The government has taken a number of steps over the last few years that do raise public concern," said Rotenberg. "I think the good news today, and the TSA has essentially conceded this, is that they can do airport screening without having to look under everyone's clothes. We think that's right. There should be security solutions that don't require people in the United States to sacrifice their privacy." |
| Why Radicals Love the Blind Sheikh |
| Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:01:26 EST An ugly and confusing terrorist attack at an Algerian gas facility is getting even more troubling as the Islamic radicals now demand the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and another prominent terrorist in exchange for the remaining American hostages. Abdel Rahman is the blind sheikh now serving a life sentence for masterminding the 1993 attack against the World Trade Center. Terrorists are also demanding the release of Aafia Saddiqui, who is imprisoned on her conviction for attempted murder. And the captors in Algeria are not the only ones who want to see Abdel Rahman released. The new leaders in Egypt are also urging the U.S. to free him. But why is Abdel Rahman so revered? "He is the most iconic symbol to Islamic supremacists the world over of not only their struggle against the West but their deep-seeded conviction that they will win that battle," said Andrew C. McCarthy, the lead federal prosecutor in the case that put Rahman and 11 others behind bars. "He is thought of internationally as somebody whois virtually without equal in facing down the United States in particular. That's not just because of the 1993 Trade Center bombing and the plots that occurred right after that to try to take out New York City landmarks but the fact that Osama Bin Laden, someone else that was thought very highly of as an iconic figure in the international jihad, attributed to Abdel Rahman the credit for issuing the fatwa that approved the 9/11 attacks. So he's a singular figure in this global movement and that's why really since we imprisoned him in the summer of 1993 they've been agitating for his release." Despite the adoration that Islamic radicals have for Abdel Rahman, the assumption of most is that the Obama administration will obviously reject the demands. McCarthy isn't so sure. He says the odd response from the administration following Egyptian efforts to free Abdel Rahman leads him to believe there is some chance this could happen down the road. "I think (the terrorists) may be rebuffed in the here and now, but we had very good reason to think that based on the reporting from the Egyptian press and from the strange silence of the Obama administration in the face of some of these demands for the blind sheikh that the State Department was already broaching the possibility in negotiations with Egypt on returning the blind sheikh on some cockamamie humanitarian grounds," said McCarthy. "So I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. I think if Obama had been defeated, the blind sheikh would have been returned to Egypt sometime in the 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, and I'm still not convinced that it won't happen. I doubt it will happen right now simply because you don't want to appear to just surrender to these terrorists." Over the past two years, radical elements have achieved great success in North Africa, ranging from the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels in Libya to the more recent uprisings in Mali that have spilled over into Algeria. McCarthy says this surge in radical power should come as no surprise. "Since 9/11 and actually even before 9/11, we talked about this as a global movement which is precisely what it is. We've even seen it have inspirational and animating effect in our country, in our own borders," said McCarthy. "This is exactly what we've always said it was. Al Qaeda is an international movement with tentacles that operate globally and cooperatively with a lot of affiliated Islamist organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood from time to time. So I don't know why anyone should be surprised that what we've always regarded as a global movement turns out to be a global movement." McCarthy says the U.S. expedited chaos in Africa by deciding to topple Moammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. He says in addition to removing someone who was largely cooperating in the fight against terrorism, Gaddafi's weapons arsenal was left vulnerable to radical elements and many of those weapons are now being used to fight the French and others in Mali. |
| How We Got the Mess in Mali |
| Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:19:26 EST Events in the African nation of Mali are very rarely on the front burner for most Americans or even the American government, but the rise of several Islamic groups there and a related crisis in neighboring Algeria now have our attention. The most alarming events played out this week in Algeria as terrorists seized over 40 hostages, with anywhere from three to seven of them being American. A subsequent rescue attempt by Algerian troops resulted in multiple deaths and the fate of the Americans remains unclear. The abductions came in response to French officials sending troops to Mali in an effort to defeat the radical elements there. Answering the question of who is on the rise in Mali is more than a little complicated, but experts see multiple groups working together to take control. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, where he is also director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization. He says not all elements of the rebels are radical Islamists but they are certainly part of the mix. "You have several different groups and these include groups that are a bit more secular and with their own aims," said Gartenstein-Ross. "Secondly, (are) Islamist groups who aren't necessarily global jihadists, and third is Islamist groups that are global jihadists. "So there's a mix of groups which has contributed to a lot of inaccuracy within public discussion of northern Mali. But sum it up concisely and simplifying a bit, it's a place where, although Al Qaeda hasn't formed a seat of its own, as some people have described it, Al Qaeda's north African contingent was able to find great space to operate. Meanwhile, some of the very darkest, most hard-lined versions of Islamic law were being put into effect," he said. Gartenstein-Ross says all of those developments were of concern to the French, but the very real threat of a terrorist attack on the European continent ultimately triggered its military involvement. So now that Americans have been caught up in all this, will American policy or level of involvement in the region change much? Gartenstein-Ross doesn't believe it will. "It doesn't necessarily mean the U.S. is going to play more of a role. What the U.S. is going to do has also been a subject of contentious debate. You initially had the Pentagon say that it would provide assistance to the French, surveillance helicopters and the like," said Gartenstein-Ross. "According to the latest reports, the White House is now backing down so you may end up having the Pentagon's view that it should provide support but not boots on the ground winning out over the White House's view. I do think what happened in Algeria may prod us a little bit more to provide non-lethal support to the French to make sure that we come through in that regard." He also points out that the U.S. is still feeling over-extended militarily, so while Mali is seen as a threat, the Obama administration is not at all eager to play a leading role in this ordeal. |
| Obama's 'Extreme Proposals' |
| Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:04:19 EST President Obama outlined several major legislative initiatives that he claims will reduce gun-related violence, but officials at Gun Owners of America say the proposals will assault Americans' right to keep and bear arms and do nothing to prevent senseless killings. The Obama legislative agenda includes several controversial items, starting with universal background checks to make sure guns are not purchased by felons or "someone legally prohibited from buying" a firearm. Mike Hammond is served in the offices of three U.S. senators and is now general counsel at Gun Owners of America. He says this provision should be opposed on two grounds. His first concern centers around the people Obama thinks should be prohibited from buying guns. "In about 150,000 cases, we're talking about veterans who came back from Baghdad or Kabul, perhaps sought counseling for a traumatic experience and as a result the Veterans Administration appointed a fiduciary to supervise their financial affairs and then sent their names to this secret list in West Virginia that prohibits people from owning guns," said Hammond. "These people didn't do anything wrong. They served their country honorably and there's no reason they should lose their constitutional rights because they sought someone to counsel them." While Hammond fears law-abiding Americans could easily be blocked from exercising their Second Amendment rights, he also claims involving the government in each firearm transaction sets the stage for more heavy-handed actions from Uncle Sam. "It's increasingly clear to us that the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are using these secret lists to begin to compile the beginnings of a national gun registry," said Hammond. "I personally drafted the Smith Amendment, which would prohibit them from using the Brady Check in order to create a national gun registry. But when senators have recently asked the FBI, 'How are you complying with the Smith Amendment and how long are you keeping the names?' they're told to go take a long walk on a short pier. There is a danger that the Obama administration wants to create this gun registry using this universal check. There is no way in heaven's name that we are going to consider anything like that." Hammond says a national gun registry is a slippery slope to government confiscation of weapons once the government knows where they are. He uses recent events in New York state as an example, since Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed new gun control legislation and then alluded to confiscating firearms that are now deemed illegal. In pushing for the background check, Obama contended that 40 percent of gun sales have no background checks. Hammond says that statistic is pure fiction. "They asked the FBI about that and basically the FBI said that the gun control advocates, for lack of a better term, just pulled that statistic out of their ear. I mean they just made that statistic up," said Hammond. The biggest Congressional fight will likely center around Obama's call for a ban on assault weapons and his demand that magazines carry a limit of 10 bullets. The president says weapons used in a theater of war should not be brought into a movie theater. "That is a lie. When I was in the military I had a weapon that was designed for the theater of war. It was called an M-16 rifle," said Hammond. "It was a fully automatic rifle. Unless you get a special license from the FBI, you can't own one of those guns in America. That is an absolute lie." "What the AR-15 is is a gun that is designed cosmetically to look like a full automatic but operates nothing like it," said Hammond. Hammond also rejects the proposed limit on bullets in a magazine, saying shooters like the ones in Connecticut and Colorado could just as easily have brought multiple guns and multiple magazines and achieved the same horrific response. Looking at the big picture of the debate, Hammond believes that Obama reached too far in this agenda. "Obama, in this case, has dramatically overshot and I think he has overshot in a way that is going to destroy his entire gun control package," said Hammond, who said that Obama initially leaned toward restoring the ban on semi-automatic weapons that was in effect between 1994-2004. He says that ban didn't address some of the more recent cosmetic features on guns like the one used in the Sandy Hook massacre so the scope of this legislation got much bigger. "So he began adding more guns and more guns and more guns," said Hammond. "The people who know what guns are out there tell us that the resulting legislation now will ban probably about 50 percent of the long guns currently in circulation and about 80 percent of the handguns in current circulation. Let me state that again. Barack Obama and his proposals would ban most guns currently in circulation." Hammond also rejected the president's 23 executive actions, particularly the ones that encourage doctors to ask patients about guns and share that information with the government. |
| Audit and End the Fed |
| Tue, 15 Jan 2013 15:08:34 EST Ron Paul may have retired from Congress but his dream for the Federal Reserve to be audited and ultimately abolished is alive and well. Georgia Rep. Paul Broun was a staunch ally of Rep. Paul's legislation to audit the Fed and is now the lead sponsor of a bill identical to the one that easily passed the House in the 112th Congress. "I'm an original intent constitutionalist, as was Ron Paul while he was here" said Broun. "We should audit the Fed. Hopefully we get rid of the Fed, and I introduced a bill to do that also." Broun says it's incredible that the public knows virtually nothing about an institution with so much power over our economy. "Congress has basically abdicated its duty to control money and the monetary supply and control of our money supply as a nation over to this semi-governmental agency that's not really governmental," said Broun. "In reality, we have had no auditing. We have absolutely no idea what they're doing over there. We've had this quantitative easing now into the third time, which has been totally unproductive in trying to get our economy going. The Fed housing policy was part of the reason we had the housing bubble and crash. They're still managing our monetary supply. They're creating more and more dollars that have no or very little value behind them. Our dollars are becoming worth less and less. As time goes on, they're going to be worthless." "It's absolutely critical that we audit the Fed so the American people can see what's going on over there," said Broun. "Do it from top to bottom so that we can have transparency in this entity called the Federal Reserve. Hopefully, the American people will see that we need to go back to the gold standard, which I've introduced, and get rid of the Fed." The congressman says it's ridiculous that the only clues we get on Fed actions are in the periodic comments from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. "We see what he says, but we really have no clue how they're managing our money across the board, how they are dealing with big banks or small community banks. We have no idea what they're doing in creating monetary policy," said Broun, who says lawmakers don't even know how much Bernanke and other Fed officials earn in salary or have in the way of benefits. The GOP-led House easily approved the bill to audit the Fed in the previous Congress, but Broun says it died on the other side of Capitol Hill. "The problem is Mr. Obstructionist, Harry Reid, threw it in the trash can over on the Senate side. So hopefully we can get the Senate moving on it by getting the American people demanding that we audit the Fed," said Broun. Broun reiterated that his ultimate goal is to abolish the Federal Reserve and return control over monetary policy to Congress. He admits people don't have much confidence in Congress either, but Broun contends putting Congress in that role at least offers the chance of that power and money ultimately returning to the the states. "I'm a Marine and I'm fighting for liberty, and everything I do up here is fighting for the future of our nation," said Broun. |
| The Folly of the Coin |
| Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:56:54 EST Over the weekend, Treasury Department officials announced the Obama administration would not pursue the minting of a trillion dollar platinum coin as a way of reducing our debt or deficits. But many on the political left are still pushing the idea as legitimate and urging the president to reconsider his position. Most Republicans were watching this movement with a combination of amusement and bewilderment, but the traction behind the coin idea is now leading to legislative efforts to prevent the government from ever pursuing such an idea. Oregon Rep. Greg Walden is also chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He says Democrats are toying with this idea only through gross misuse of a law passed in the 1990s aimed at platinum coins for collectors. Walden's new bill would block an economically reckless move in the future. "It would basically take away this authority by limiting the value of the coins to a very small limit and prevent this from happening," said Walden. "You could still mint a platinum coin but it would be for the purpose it was intended for, a coin collector's coin." Walden says it doesn't take an economic genius to figure out why creating a trillion dollar coin would be a huge mistake. "When you're adding false value to the supply, you diminish the value of the money people are holding. It just can't work any other way," said Walden. "They can spin it here or spin it there but if the government's creating money from where there is no value then they're devaluing the money that we have. History's littered with countries that have attempted to go down this path." It's unclear how urgently Walden's legislation will be pursued now that the Obama administration has rejected the idea of the coin. But Walden says the liberal embrace of this idea illustrates how hard it is to achieve common sense solutions across the aisle on the bigger fiscal challenges to the nation. "This is the kind of lunacy that is rampant today in Washington. You have a president who says we don't have a spending problem. How can you say that when the Congressional Budget Office just told us that we're already $293 billion in the red this fiscal year that started October 1 and will go over a trillion dollars in the red once again, five years in a row all under this president by the end of the fiscal year," said Walden. "We have a spending problem. It's like an addict who doesn't believe he has an addiction. Eventually, you've got to admit you have a problem. Then you've got to get on a recovery plan so that you can get over your addiction. We have an addiction on deficit spending. People think there's an easy way out and there isn't. We've got to make the difficult but important choices to get America on the right track." So do those tough choices include House GOP leaders being willing to allow a temporary partial government shutdown during the debt ceiling debate to demand spending cuts and entitlement reforms? Walden, a member of leadership, indicated the party is prepared to take that step. "I think that we have to get these reforms and at some point you have to draw the line in the sand or in the concrete and just stop this runaway spending," said Walden. "I hope it doesn't get to that. I was a small business owner for 22 years. You didn't want to default loans. You didn't want to do these things, but you did have to face up to reality and the reality is we've got to get spending under control. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, but it may well. It's time to have this fight." |
| Hole in the Center of the Ozone |
| Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:34:40 EST It was a busy week for former Vice President Al Gore. First, he sold Current TV to Al Jazeera. Now the Capitol Steps recruit Gore to respond to a new report suggesting 2012 is the hottest on record for North America. |
| Giglio Ouster 'Obviously Bigotry' |
| Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:29:43 EST Prominent evangelical Christians are alleging liberal bigotry is to blame for pastor Louie Giglio being forced to back out from delivering the benediction at President Obama upcoming inauguration. The Presidential Inauguration Committee announced Giglio as part of the ceremony on Tuesday. Within hours, pro-homosexual marriage sites had uncovered a sermon Giglio delivered in the 1990s on the topic of homosexuality. "If you look at the counsel of the word of God, Old Testament, New Testament, you come quickly to the the conclusion that homosexuality is not an alternate lifestyle...It is sin in the eyes of God, and it is sin according to the word of God," said Giglio in that sermon. 1cOur message is we know Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is powerful enough to do anything and everything. And the only way out of a homosexual lifestyle...is through the healing power of Jesus. 1d Most evangelical Christians are wondering what the uproar is all about. "Louie Giglio was simply reflecting what the scriptures have taught for 2,000 years, what Christianity has believed and taught for 2,000 years," said Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis at the American Family Association and host of Focal Point on American Family Radio. "The viewpoint he expressed in his sermon is the viewpoint that was universally held in the United States from our founding, from Jamestown 1607 all the way up to the mid-1970s there was virtually unanimous consensus about the understanding of homosexual behavior." "It's troublesome to me that he would be accused of being anti-gay," said Fischer. "If you listen to that sermon, he is for the homosexual. Here is a lifestyle that is self-destructive, and he's offering them hope, he's offering a way out and he's offering the possibility of change. That is not a message that is anti-gay. It is actually a message that offers hope and redemption to the homosexual. It's obviously just bigotry that we was bounced from the platform." There have been inaugural prayer controversies before. After the 2001 inauguration of George W. Bush, both Rev. Franklin Graham and Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell were accused of not being inclusive because they prayed in the name of Jesus. However, Fischer believes the liberal outcry against Giglio takes the intolerance of the political left to another level. "I think it does represent a watershed moment," he said. "This represents a significant shift in the Obama administration that Rick Warren was allowed to be a part of the inauguration in 2008 despite the fact that he was a supporter of natural marriage. Now someone who holds a virtually identical position to the one Rick Warren held has been banished from the program." Fischer says the persistent scorn directed at anyone defending traditional marriage is reminiscent of another controversial chapter in American history and he says a recent quote from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler sums up the attempt to marginalize Bible-believing Christians. "We've got a new form of McCarthyism here," he said. "Do you now or have you ever believed that homosexuality is a sin?" Rather than defend its selection of Giglio, the Presidential Inaugural Committee indicated concern over Giglio's words from the 1990s. 1cThey don 19t reflect our desire to celebrate the strength and diversity of our country at this Inaugural, 1d said committee spokeswoman Addie Whisenant in a statement on Thursday. 1cPastor Giglio was asked to deliver the benediction in large part for his leadership in combating human trafficking around the world. As we now work to select someone to deliver the benediction, we will ensure their beliefs reflect this administration 19s vision of inclusion and acceptance for all Americans. 1d Fischer finds that statement laughable. He says while preaching tolerance, liberals are clearly intolerant towards someone who holds different beliefs. "The inaugural committee does not believe in diversity at all," said Fischer. "If they believe in diversity, they would celebrate the presence of Louie Giglio on the platform. Here is the wonder of the American experiment, that we have room for a wide range of views on controversial topics." Instead, he says a very different message is being sent. "They don't believe in diversity at all. They believe in a 'monoversity'. 'If you don't think like we do, believe like we do, speak like we do you are going to be ostracized, marginalized and silenced," said Fischer. And much like the Chick-fil-A flap last year, Fischer says Christians are fed up with the lectures from the left. "More and more Christians and social conservatives are going to say, 'Look, I'm tired of us getting pushed around here. The values that we believe in this area are values that were shared by the founding fathers, same set of moral values that built the United States into the greatest, strongest and most prosperous nation in the world. I'm tired of backing down on this issue. I'm tired of apologizing for this. I'm tired of Christian leaders who apologize for this. It's time for us to show some strength and some moxy. We're going to start to see some pushback against these bullying tactics from the left," said Fischer. |
| Assad's Desperation |
| Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:27:58 EST Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used some chemical weapons against his own people and will likely use more as his grip on power becomes increasingly tenuous. That's the assessment of retired U.S. Army Maj. General Paul Vallely, who also warned of a growing humanitarian crisis among the rebels and explained why he doesn't fear radicals rising to power if Assad falls. Vallely says Assad is using the threat of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction as a last resort, but he says there is compelling evidence some of those weapons have already been deployed. "He's already used chlorine gas to an extent, and phosphate," said Vallely. "We have videotape of children being hit with the phosphate chemicals and the severe burns." Vallely says Assad has many more horrific weapons at his disposal. "We know that he has sarin gas. We know he has WMD. Much of it was transferred from Iraq in 2003 to several sites in Syria," said Vallely. "He's already used helicopters to spray chlorine gas. That has come from the validation from the Free Syrian Army commanders on the ground who I met with just six weeks ago." Government tactics, the use of catastrophic weapons and the onset of winter are combining to create a quickly growing humanitarian crisis among the Syrian rebels. "Assad is trying to starve the people now in all those areas like Aleppo and Homs," said Vallely, who notes that supply lines have been cut off, leaving the people without food. He says Turkey has sent flour to some of the hardest hit areas, but it's hard to cook anything with it because all available wood is being burned to provide warmth. But while the conditions seem bleak for the rebels, Vallely believes they will prevail sooner rather than later. "No, I think it's maybe shorter than we think. The Free Syrian Army and others have attacked four of the airports, so you have international flights being cancelled. The Russians are re-thinking their strategy, so they're looking at how to remove themselves," said Vallely, who also says the Iranian are still actively supplying the Assad regime. One of the greatest concerns about the rebels are the elements with rather clear ties to Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Vallely says he understands the fears that backing the rebels could lead to another Egypt, but he's confident that wouldn't happen in this case. He says the U.S. can play a major role without putting any troops on the ground. Vallely contends supplying them through Turkey would not only achieve a desired result but allow us to identify a legitimate successor to the Assad regime. His choice for that role is the leadership of the Free Syrian Army. But even beyond what might come next in Syria, Vallely says it is imperative that Assad be removed from power. "Assad is worse than Hitler in many ways, and they did nothing about Hitler until it was too late and millions were killed," said Vallely. "It's the same thing with Assad. Over 60,000 killed now in Syria." Ultimately, Vallely sees the civil war in Syria ending much like another uprising in the region, and that would be bad news for Assad.. "His time is numbered," said Vallely. "Just like Gaddafi." |
| 'The Status Quo is Not Acceptable' |
| Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:18:49 EST The fiscal cliff and an an awkward vote for Speaker of the House combined for a rocky start to 2013 for House Republicans, but Georgia freshman Rep. Doug Collins says what will define the GOP in the days to come is firm resolve to address spending, debt and entitlements in a meaningful way. Collins is a former pastor and military chaplain who represents a newly created district in the Peach State. He says a lot of Republicans weren't happy with the final fiscal cliff deal but the real obstacle to progress is President Obama. "When you have a president who says spending is not the issue and is very content to continue to add to our deficit, it really is such a disconnect and really an arrogancy about this administration and Senate Democrats," said Collins. "From our perspective, there's a unity of going forward saying it's time to address spending. The (fiscal cliff) plan that was passed was not something that was not very good to many of us. That's past us now. Now we've got to really concentrate on what's really causing problems and that's our spending." In meeting with fellow freshmen and some veteran GOP lawmakers, Collins says the resolve for the House majority to stand its ground is palpable. "We are elected representatives. The House of Representatives represents one-third of this triangle between us and the Senate and the president. We were elected just like they were and it's time for us to stand on the principles that got us there. I think there's a resolve this time, especially after what's been going on over the past month," said Collins. "Let's put together a positive outlook forward and that means that we put forward what we believe is best for this country. It's reforming our Medicare and Medicaid programs, looking forward to sustainability to Social Security. These were promises made to the American people but they need to be sustained promises. And then also just a steady resolve to understand that no matter what, spending is our issue and we've got to continue to hold firm on that." Collins says Republicans not only need to hold firm in demanding spending cuts but they need to insist upon real cuts right away. "We've got to have spending cuts that are not just projected over 10 years," said Collins. "I think there's got to be real spending cuts that are in the next two years, three years, four years, five years out that are very measurable and very manageable." Collins says Congress also has to get back to accounting for spending. He voted against emergency funding for Hurricane Sandy victims because there weren't cuts made elsewhere to pay for it. "I understand needing to help with the Sandy relief and wanting to be part of that, but when we come up with it and say it's just going to add to the deficit. We've got to get on regular order. We've got to pass budget bills. We've got to pass appropriations bills. We've got to do the job the American people sent us to do." Another issue Congress will likely address in the coming weeks is the Obama administration's push for new gun restrictions. Collins believes more gun control laws aren't the answer, and he's especially concerned about Vice President Biden's comments suggesting Obama may use executive orders to bypass Congress to get what he wants. "This president was not elected to do things by himself. Simply saying that he will handle things by executive order is an affront to the American people and an affront to the Constitution," said Collins. "We are not just elected bodies in the House and Senate that were elected there just to go along or rubber stamp whatever he wants. That is a mistake, and I would urge the president and the administration to head down that path." As for the gun policies Obama is pursuing, Collins says as a pastor and chaplain he's fully aware of the pain and grief involved in these horrific events. However, he says focusing on the instruments of violence rather than the troubled people behind the murders is a mistake. "To make ourselves feel better by simply going after a political agenda that deals with one of our base fundamental rights in the Second Amendment is just a mistake," said Collins. " I think it's an emotional reaction to several events that have occurred over the past year. That is the message I hear from a lot of people and especially in our district, but my hope would be in this Congress that we would look at the tragedy of what happened with a sick individual who did a sick and perverted and unjust act and look at our response to it." |
| Debt, Defense & an 'Idiot' |
| Tue, 8 Jan 2013 15:28:26 EST Republicans are ready to shut down the government to force real spending cuts, Harry Reid is an 'idiot' and Chuck Hagel should be rejected by the U.S. Senate as our next defense secretary, according to Louisiana Sen. David Vitter. The second-term GOP senator says many in his party reluctantly went along with the final fiscal cliff agreement but Vitter insists there is a clear line in the sand. "I wasn't the overall bill I would have drafted if I were king for the day because it didn't include major spending cuts and reforms and that's what we need to do and that's what we're turning toward," said Vitter on the aftermath of the fiscal cliff deal. "I know people are tired of hearing about showdowns, but the next big showdown is going to be about spending because that's the fundamental problem and the fundamental challenge which has led to these unsustainable levels of debt." Vitter says lawmakers are keenly aware of the debt ceiling debate that will have to happen by early March and he says President Obama's goal of quietly hiking the ceiling is a fantasy. "I don't know any Republican who's going to be in favor of even considering increasing that without huge spending cuts and reforms. Certainly, that's my position," said Vitter. Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey has said the GOP should be ready for a temporary partial government shutdown and Texas Rep. Kevin Brady backed the idea in an interview with us last week. Sen. Vitter is also comfortable with that outcome if lawmakers don't get serious on spending. And he says Americans should not fall for talking points on the political left suggesting that America will default in the government shuts down. "We also need to make clear to the American people, we're not talking about defaulting on our debt. That is a huge scare tactic," said Vitter. The senator also made headlines in the first days of the year for his rebuke of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Vitter referred to Reid as " an idiot" for suggesting that Hurricane Sandy victims have suffered much worse than Hurricane Katrina victims in his push for disaster relief legislation. Reid later said he misspoke, but Vitter says his assessment of the Democratic leader remains unchanged. "We learned what I already knew about Harry Reid I think, that he is an idiot," said Vitter. "The statement was just completely wrong factually wrong and idiotic. It was insulting to gulf coast resident who have been through a lot. Sandy victims have been through a lot. That was a horrible storm and horrible human toll. I'm not trying to compare storms but that's what Harry Reid brought up. He not only compared them, he got it absolutely wrong, because by every metric Katrina was the worst natural disaster we've ever endured as a country." The Senate disaster relief bill was panned in the House because of what the GOP perceived as egregious pork and unrelated money for special interests. Vitter says it's important to get wasteful spending out of this and all legislation and Senate Republicans tried unsuccessfully to root out unnecessary spending in the Democratic disaster relief bill. Vitter says Sandy also revealed the many remaining deficiencies in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He says there are many improvements that could be made, but he says one great lesson from these storms is the value of pre-existing contracts between local government and contractors for debris cleanup. Vitter says that provides badly needed jobs in the wake of a disaster and greatly reduces the cost to taxpayers compared to negotiating a contract after a disaster strikes. Vitter is also bracing for a fierce U.S. Senate fight over the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary. Vitter is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee which will conduct the confirmation hearings. While some members remain on the fence over Hagel, Vitter isn't one of them. He's strongly opposed to the nomination. "Unfortunately, it's not just one or two stray comments. It's a long history on his approach to the Middle East," said Vitter, who offered a lengthy list of issues where he believes Hagel was badly in error. "He was one of only two senators who voted in 2001 against renewing the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. He voted in 2007 against designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. He opposed the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act. He said publicly that an attack on Iran would be exactly the wrong idea. So at least in his own mind he's taken that off the table." Vitter says Hagel also has a history of criticizing the Israeli lobby, urging direct relations with Hamas and being very bullish on the Assad regime in Syria. The senator vows vigorous questioning during the confirmation process but would not offer any predictions on the nomination. |
| 'They're Doing It All Backwards' |
| Mon, 7 Jan 2013 15:37:18 EST President Obama nominated former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense on Monday, igniting a fierce Senate debate over Hagel's positions on Israel and Iran and whether he's the right choice for the job. Retired U.S. Army Maj. General Paul Vallely is not impressed with the choice. Even before positions on key issues are considered, Vallely says Hagel is lacking in two key areas. "He doesn't have that much corporate experience or running money, so I don't think he's strong on appropriations," said Vallely. " I don't think he has much strength in international relations, which is very important now in light of the international use of our military force around the world." Gen. Vallely is also very frustrated by what he considers a troubling and persistent lack of vision from the top of our Defense Department. "What I'm concerned about is that lack of a strategic thinker at the Pentagon today in light of the threats that we have," said Vallely, noting that he can't cite a single example of progress achieved by recent secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta and he fears Hagel would be more of the same. "There are far more experienced people that haver some strategic thinking capability that would be able to look at today and tomorrow and look at our threats and then construct the force or structure the armed forces to meet that threat and then the funding to support the structure." "They're doing it all backwards now. They're looking at the money and looking at cutting this and cutting that, which is really not looking at the threats on our borders, the Middle East threat with Iran, what's happening worldwide on the international chessboard," said Vallely. "So that's what concerns me more than anything and that's why I don't think Chuck Hagel is qualified." So what in the Hagel record gives Gen. Vallely pause? The challenges in the Middle East top the list, especially as it relates to Hagel's record on being critical of Israel, the ongoing civil war in Syria and what many see as a soft approach on the Iranian nuclear threat. "I don't think he's well-schooled to understand internationally what the threats are to America," said Vallely. "I don't hear him talking in a global, strategic sense that he's got a good feel for it. I would say he's also very naive when it comes to Iran and their two main threats in the world - number one is nuclear proliferation. Second is support of international terrorism and the global caliphate. Unless he can articulate that well, then he's not qualified to be Secretary of Defense." Vallely predicts that while the confirmation process may be noisy, enough Senate Republicans will go along with the nomination to avert a filibuster threat. |
| 'I've Taken Stands on Both Sides' |
| Fri, 4 Jan 2013 15:19:14 EST President Obama nominated Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Assuming Kerry is confirmed, the new position will give him the highest profile since his unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign. As a result, the Capitol Steps reflect back to that campaign and their parody highlighting the senator's most famous gaffe. Our guest is Capitol Steps Kerry impressionist Mark Eaton. |
| Obama's Gun Ban Fallback Plan? |
| Thu, 3 Jan 2013 16:27:00 EST President Obama, Congressional Democrats and even some Republicans plan to push new gun control legislation in the 113th Congress, but defenders of the Second Amendment fear Obama is poised to enact the restrictions through the executive branch if Congress is not cooperative. John M. Snyder heads the gunrightspolicies.org blog and has worked for organizations from the National Rifle Association to the Second Amendment Foundation to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. He says Obama and his allies have already chartered what regulatory course to pursue through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). "We have some confidential information that he may order the ATF to reclassify certain models of semi-automatic firearms as Title 2 guns under the Gun Control Act of 1968," said Snyder. "What this would mean is that people could not obtain these without going through a terribly difficult process that includes registration of each firearm and paying a severe fee for the ownership of each one." Snyder says an even more drastic approach from Obama would be to try to ban semi-automatic weapons altogether. "Also, there is the possibility that the administration could try to declare that the administration could try to declare that semi-automatic firearms are fully automatic firearms or machine guns under this Title 2, in which case they would be banned because of an amendment that's on the books the Gun Control Act of 1968. Snyder is referring to what's known as the Hughes Amendment, which forbids the acquisition of any new fully automatic weapons or machine guns. The possible strategy is not a new idea, according to Snyder. He says liberal groups have advocated the move for years but Democrats have been reluctant to pursue it because of the massive public backlash that will ensue. "This is an ongoing project of theirs and they use a lot of these tragedies to try to advance their cause in a public relations sense. So far they've been unable to do that," said Snyder. "It appears that the public is catching on to them and they know what their game plan is generally speaking. So a lot depends on their frustration, the political situation at the time and a number of other factors too." Even if the Obama administration were to bypass Congress by imposing new regulations, there is still one card left for pro-Second Amendment forces to play - the House of Representatives removing funding for the ATF or abolishing it completely. But would the House GOP actually do that? Snyder is confident it would. "I wouldn't be surprised. I think the House is really furious with the president," said Snyder. "The Republicans would like to cut budgets of the federal government because they think the federal government is taking too much money and spending too much money, and a good place for them to cut would be in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. If there is strong enough public support against the activities of the federal government, the House of Representatives will develop a plan to slash the budget of the agency. I think it's a real possibility." |
| He's Not A Serious President |
| Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:31 EST As the 113th U.S. Congress convenes, House Republicans are a bit fractured but are ready to fight hard in vital debates ranging from the debt ceiling to job creation. Texas Rep. Kevin Brady is the top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee and is also a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. He says the recent fights over the fiscal cliff legislation splintered the GOP, but no one should anticipate anything shocking in today's election for Speaker of the House. "We're having real, honest differences about what's the best strategy to maximize our power and influence," said Brady. Which fights do we focus on and got to the mat for? Which ones are we simply not able to pull across the line as we would like to have? I don't know if there'll be other alternatives, but clearly the choice is between Nancy Pelosi and Speaker John Boehner. There's no question about who I support - John Boehner. Should he decide not to seek the speakership today or sometime in the future, whenever that would be, I'm going to support the most conservative candidate." Asked about whether that statement indicated Boehner might not stand for Speaker of the House on Thursday, Brady poured cold water on such speculation. The congressman says he has every expectation that Boehner will run and will win. Rep. Brady says despite the GOP's frustration during the fiscal cliff debate, the party is fired up and ready to fight when the debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling arrives in a few weeks. Brady says House Republicans succeeded in denying President Obama unlimited power to raise the debt ceiling in this week's vote and they're ready to fight for fiscal sanity again. "The debt ceiling vote is our strongest leverage for getting authentic spending cuts, forcing these guys to the table," said Brady. "This president, in my view, having gone through several rounds of watching him operate. He's not a serious president on these issues. He's not someone you can count on to tackle big issues, just like in this case where he was basically ignored and the vice president had to step in eventually to do business. I really don't expect him to lead on these issues." Brady indicated that Republicans are ready to go even further than before in order to demand spending cuts. He says Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey is right that the GOP must be ready to accept a partial temporary government shutdown if that's what is needed to impose real discipline. "Senator Toomey is right. If we don't get this right, I think we're looking at another downgrade of our credit rating in America," said Brady. "We may have avoided the so-called fiscal cliff. We're still in a fiscal ditch in a major way. Nothing changed from that standpoint and it has to change." Brady did reluctantly vote for the fiscal cliff bill on Tuesday. He says he was extremely disappointed over the lack of any serious approach to spending or entitlement reform, but he says the need to make permanent as much tax relief as possible and to block President Obama's goal of unlimited power to raise the debt ceiling. |
| Dissecting the Fiscal Cliff 'Fix' |
| Wed, 2 Jan 2013 16:19:54 EST Congress passed legislation to avert the "fiscal cliff" just hours into the new year, but whether the bill is better than no bill at all remains a subject of fierce debate. National Taxpayers Union Executive Vice President Peter Sepp is not impressed with the final product or how Congress went about it's work. "Congress still had time to pass a better bill than this. They will say that this was the best deal that was politically possible. I think that had they gotten to this work sooner, even right after the election in more earnest, they might have come up with a better package," said Sepp. But Sepp does believe there are least a few bright spots. "We obviously did secure permanent tax relief through the 2001 and 2003 laws for about 98 percent of Americans. We also permanently extended the so-called patch that protects about 30 million Americans from having to pay the dreaded Alternative Minimum Tax," said Sepp. But that's pretty much where the good points end, according to Sepp. He says the worst part is that Congress is clearly not serious about spending, since the Congressional Budget Office announced the bill adds $41 in new taxes for every new dollar in spending cuts. "This is obviously the worst part of this legislation. Members of Congress decided they're going to try and separate the spending side of the ledger question from the tax side of the ledger question," he said. "People have a right to be cynical of whether Congress will ever be able to get to the important business of controlling expenditures and reforming entitlement programs after this. This is by far the biggest punt of a season's worth of punting on fiscal issues." Sepp also says there's a mountain of bad news in here too, even beyond the higher marginal, capital gains and dividend rates for wealthier Americans. Sepp says the worst part may be that the tax code is even more convoluted then ever. "Couldn't we have done better here, especially just reforming the system overall?" said Sepp, noting that while most people think capital gains rates are headed up to 20 percent for wealthier Americans, the real story is much more complicated. "There will be several different rates. You'll have zero percent, 15. 18.8, 20 percent, even 23.8 percent. And this makes an important point," he said. "There's going to be a lot more complexity introduced in the system because of this bill, especially for for higher-income earners. If you earn more than $450,000 as a joint filer, you've got a new income tax rate. More than $300,000? You're going to start losing some of your itemized deductions. More than $250,000? You may have to pay a new surtax thanks to the 2010 health care law. You can bet the tax preparation industry will be busy at the next tax filing season." Sepp says the new bill not only further clutters the tax code but is the result of failed efforts to simplify it. President Obama wanted to raise marginal rates on individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples making north of $250,000. Republicans argued that would be crippling for small-businesses that often file in the highest individual tax bracket. Sepp says now that those numbers up are pushed up to $400,000 and $450,000 respectively, small businesses will get a bit of a reprieve but not much. "Moving this threshold up might take some of the edge, some of the sting out of the tax increases but it won't entirely help job creators," said Sepp, noting that the loss of deductions and the new health care surtax will apply to those businesses that file as individuals. Despite the political rhetoric, Sepp points out all working Americans will see a tax increase because the two-year reduction in the payroll taxes expired in this legislation. "That will be a surprise, an automatic two-percent reduction in most people's paychecks, at a time when most folks are still skittish about the economy. Just look at the poor showing of the last retail shopping season for the holidays. This could not be worse timed," said Sepp. |
| 2012 Passings - Part 2 |
| Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:05:54 EST Greg Corombos remembers more of the prominent names who passed away in 2012. From Dick Clark to Andy Griffith to Whitney Houston, Corombos reflects on the incredible performers we lost in film, television, music and beyond. |
| 2012 Passings - Part 1 |
| Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:53:02 EST Greg Corombos reflects upon the prominent figures who passed away in 2012 - from the first man on the moon to a conservative firebrand to a pair of college football coaching legends. In this segment, Corombos remembers those we lost in the arenas politics, media, business and sports. |
| 'You Need to Get in the Ring' |
| Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:38:33 EST Plenty of people have experience in politics, but few in politics have much experience in the business world. That's why entrepreneur Pete Snyder is running to be the next lieutenant governor in Virginia. Virginia's statewide offices are on the ballot every four years in odd numbered years and all three of Virginia's statewide offices are up for grans next year. Snyder has long been active in Republican politics but never sought office himself. Instead, he spent the past 13 years starting and growing New Media Strategies, the first social media marketing company. He also had no plans to join this race until he saw the election results in November and his wife actually planted the idea in his head. "I went into a deep depression for about a week (after the election)," said Snyder. "My wife kicked me after a couple of days and said, 'Hey honey. What the heck are you doing? If you really firmly believe that we need more private sector people involved in governing and more people that actually signed the front of a paycheck, you need to get in the ring.' And that was really it." Snyder says he had no intention of running for governor against his good friend Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, so running for lieutenant governor was the logical choice. He is one of seven Republicans in the field, but Snyder says a career in business rather than a lifetime in politics separates him from most of his GOP rivals. "The entire field is made up of career politicians, current officeholders or those who have sought office before and I'm the only private sector person in the mix," said Snyder, who pointed out he thinks highly of many of the other Republicans in the field. "I'm the only person who's been an innovator and a job creator and that's really what I'm going to be bringing to the table. My focus is going to be one of big ideas. While the stakes have only gotten higher in politics in Washington and in Richmond, it seems that the politics have only gotten smaller. The ideas have only gotten smaller. So we have a campaign based on big ideas." Education reform is at the top of Snyder's priority list. He says union power has allowed some terrible policies to remain on the books. "If you look at Virginia's education laws, you would think they were written by the teacher unions themselves, which is preposterous because in Virginia we don't even negotiate against teachers unions," said Snyder. "Things like teacher tenure still exist. Last in, first out still exists. We have some of the worst grades on charter schools." Snyder says the private market should be allowed to flourish in the education arena. He says the model should be Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina wiped out so many schools the government couldn't get enough open and the private sector came to the rescue. "Since then, kids are being educated, test scores are going through the roof and more kids are going to college than ever," said Snyder. "We need more of that in Virginia. We need to take down the teachers' unions and their influence and add many more free market elements to reward our best and most innovative teachers and to actually have our kids be learning." On the economy, Snyder says some areas of Virginia are doing well but others are not - like southwestern Virginia which is facing double-digit unemployment. Snyder wants to spur greater investment and encourage small and large-scale entrepreneurs to do business in the commonwealth. One way Snyder says that can be spurred is to eliminate the state corporate income tax. |
| Muzzle Joe |
| Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:21:49 EST Vice President Joe Biden has provided a wealth of material to comedians, so the Capitol Steps use a bunch of Biden missteps as the focus of their new Christmas parody "Muzzle Joe". Our guest is Capitol Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| 'We're Trapped' |
| Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:53:09 EST House Republicans spent Thursday moving toward passage of what being called Plan B. That's the compromise plan offered by House Speaker John Boehner that would raise taxes only on Americans earning more than one million dollars per year. Even after House passage, the plan faces a very uncertain future since Senate Democrats refuse to consider it and President Obama has said he would veto it if the plan ever reached his desk. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul sees Republicans effectively trapped in these negotiations. He says the only choice left for the GOP is whether to insist on the best solutions that will be rejected by Democrats and lead the nation over the fiscal cliff or accept some tax hikes to preserve lower rates for well over 99 percent of taxpayers. "The Republican message needs to be and should continue to be that we're for lower taxes, not raising taxes on anyone, that it's bad for the economy to raise taxes," said Sen. Paul. So does that mean that Paul would oppose Plan B if it were allowed to come before the U.S. Senate? Not exactly. "To tell you the truth I have mixed feelings on it," said Paul. "The literal nature of the vote will be that preserve tax rates for most people. In all reality, I might vote 'yes' on it." Paul says the sad reality is that Democrats have painted Republicans into a corner and taxes will go up no matter what. "We're trapped. The tax rates are going up if we do nothing. I would just as soon protect everybody, but if I'm only given the option of protecting some people, it's going to be hard for me to vote 'no' on protecting some people," said Paul. But the senator is offering no illusions. He says whatever happens will damage the economy and will make another recession more likely. "Nothing really good is going to come from this. Taxes will go up. It will be bad for the economy and I think it will lead to more job loss. I think raising the tax rates may lead to less revenue as well. So I don't think anything good comes of this," said Paul. "This on top of the Obamacare taxes, on top of the Obamacare regulations, the Dodd-Frank regulations. It's a recipe for a recession. It's a huge mistake. I really think six months from now everyone will be regretting that we allowed the president to raise taxes." Paul is also not happy with the very limited opportunity for most lawmakers to influence the debate or even their own leaders. "I would say the average senator over here has zero impact on what's going to come up for a deal. So that's another reason we're kind of in a box. We don't get to vote for anything we want to vote for. We're going to vote for whatever big, nasty package comes over," said Paul. |
| 'I Think You Go Over the Cliff' |
| Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:41:17 EST Recent reports suggest a deal between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner to avert the fiscal cliff may be possible in the coming days. But if a deal happens, it may well be a result of the Republicans giving the most ground. Boehner has already offered to raise taxes on those earning more than a million dollars per year, but the Obama administration says that's not enough. Obama is reportedly offering to raise the ceiling a bit higher on those protected from a tax increase. In return, he wants two years of hassle-free debt ceiling increases. South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney is a member of the House Budget Committee. He says a good deal could be struck, but he warns that Republicans should choose the fiscal cliff before they embrace an Obama plan that he says increases taxes, government and spending with no signs of reform. "I think you go over the cliff. I think you could turn to the American people and say, 'Look, the president had it in his ability to keep your tax rates low. Since he didn't get his pound of flesh out of this small group of people over here, you're paying for it," said Mulvaney. "I think folks will realize that. I think they know what they voted for. They voted for somebody who, ultimately, was going to raise their taxes. One of the best lines I heard during the presidential campaign was Paul Ryan say, 'You may say you want to raise taxes on the rich right now but be careful because pretty soon the rich is going to be you.'" Mulvaney says the rich used to mean people who made a million dollars, now that standard down is down to $250,000 and soon it will be $150,000 because deficits remain huge and the appetite for spending remains high. Mulvaney says Republicans need to realize that Democrats want to go over the cliff because there's nothing they're all that committed to saving. "This is a president who wants to raise taxes. Think about that for a second. What are we fighting over? The Bush tax cuts, which the Democrats hated in the first place," said Mulvaney. "They said they didn't want it. They said it really didn't help the middle class. It was a giveaway to rich Republican friends. They didn't want these things in the first place. So to think now that they're going to the mat to defend those portions of the Bush tax cuts is a joke." And the policy wins for the Democrats wouldn't stop there, according to Rep. Mulvaney. "Plus, what else do they get? They get massive defense reductions - the holy grail for many within the extreme left wing of their party," he said. As a result, Mulvaney says we're right back to where we stood prior to the debt ceiling deal in the summer of 2011. Mulvaney strongly opposed that deal and says the same principles should still apply to any proposed deal. "One of the reasons we're here now is that when we faced almost an identical situation two years ago, Congress simply passed a two-year, short-term fix," said Mulvaney. "This so-called fiscal cliff, with the exception of the sequester portion of it, came up in December 2010. Instead of fixing it then, Congress chose to kick the can down the road." Mulvaney is not overly impressed with the plans offered by Boehner on behalf of the GOP, but he believes the Speaker's biggest error is in assuming Obama and the Democrats want to find common ground. "You know I've been critical of him in the past, critical of some of the things he's proposed," said Mulvaney. "In all frankness, and I'd say this if he were sitting next to me, I think he's wasting his time. I don't think the president wants a deal." Mulvaney says there are plenty of ways to make this deal a strong one and he's even willing to swallow some bad parts to get some good things. Mulvaney points out that he did vote for one plan to raise the debt ceiling known as Cut, Cap and Balance because it addressed spending and debt in meaningful, long-term ways. Ultimately, that bill failed in the Senate. This time, Mulvaney says Democrats must be willing to accept entitlement reforms that might not normally embrace. "I think you've got to see real entitlement reform. And by the way you can end the conversation there if you take Nancy Pelosi at her word," he said. "At her press conference, she said no to entitlement cuts. She said, 'Now we have clarity on that.' If don't change the way we do entitlement programs it's unlikely that we're going to have any type of agreement on this. If Democrats expect Republicans to compromise on something that is an A-1 priority for us which is taxes and tax rates, they have to be willing to compromise on something that is an A-1 priority for them which is entitlements. If they take entitlements off the table as Ms. Pelosi did, then I see really no way to get to any type of agreement." Specific Medicare reforms pushed by Mulvaney and other Republicans include slowly raising the retirement age, changing the cost of living adjustment and means-testing recipients so that wealthier retirees would either pay more or receive fewer federal benefits. "So we've offered real ideas on how to fix Medicare and similar changes in Social Security. We've talked about the block granting of Medicaid to the states. So we've given specific ideas and instead of getting a negotiated response we get a door slammed in our face and told, 'No thank you.' That's not an avenue toward getting a deal done," said Mulvaney. |
| Exploiting a Tragedy? |
| Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:59:39 EST In the wake of the horrific killings in Newtown, Connecticut, many lawmakers have called for new gun restrictions to be enacted - from a renewal of the assault weapons ban to mandatory limits on the size of ammunition clips to new laws prohibiting the mentally ill from owning firearms. Erich Pratt is communications director at Gun Owners of America. He tells us why more restrictions will likely lead to more of these tragedies rather than less. He details why arming teachers and administrators has proven successful elsewhere. And he explains why he believes the assault weapons ban is grossly misleading, why the size of a killer's ammunition clip is irrelevant as long as law-abiding people don't have their rights infringed and why the mental health issue is also largely a red herring. Listen here for our conversation with Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America. |
| Capitol Steps Holiday Favorites |
| Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:13:51 EST The Capitol Steps continue their pattern of combining our favorite Christmas melodies with the political and cultural events of our day. Today their holiday parodies include "The 12 Days of Twitter" and "Temperatures We Have Heard Are High" featuring former Vice President Al Gore. |
| Morsi, Egypt and Sharia |
| Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:45:35 EST Massive protests filled the streets of Cairo in recent weeks following the announcement from new Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi that he was greatly expanding his powers and that they would not be subject to judicial review. Many of the same demonstrators who demanded more freedom and the resignation of Hosni Mubarak almost two years ago angrily rejected Morsi's power grab. Eventually, Morsi relented and declared he would not pursue the expanded powers. But before anyone expects a tidal wave of freedom in Egypt, Arabs for Israel Founder Nonie Darwish says there's no such thing as a free Muslim country. "The Islamic system, wherever it is, whether in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, doesn't matter. You can only have two forms of government" said Darwish. "It can only be a theocratic Islamist government like Iran and Saudi Arabia or a military, semi-secular dictatorship that have a double face. They appear as Muslims but really they are tyrants." Darwish says all these debates over whether to follow Sharia law are disingenuous because all Muslim nations officially adhere to it. The only question is whether Sharia is enforced. "A Muslim head of state has to rule by Sharia under Islamic law, and all these constitutions in the Middle East have an article that states Sharia law is the law of the land," said Darwish. "Sharia states that any Muslim head of state that does not want to rule by Sharia becomes an apostate and illegitimate and should be removed from office. The number one duty of a Muslim head of state is to do jihad against non-Muslim countries." As a result, Darwish says any Egyptian leader pursuing policies Americans approve would run into major problems very quickly. "If a Muslim head of state, let's say Morsi, wakes up one day and says, 'I want to be a real democrat. I want to rule for freedom, equal rights for women, equal rights for Christians, make a peace treaty with Israel and end the jihad against Israel,' what's going to happen to Morsi the next day? He's going to be assassinated exactly like what happened to (former Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat." The notion of Muslim liberals should not be encouraging to the U.S. either. Darwish says the popular notion is that these people are reformers, but she says that's not true at all. "Don't be fooled by the words 'liberal Egyptians,'" she said. "Some of these liberal Egyptians are the most tyrannical and socialist, many of them are very anti-semitic. They are not for rights. They are not for the peace treaty with Israel and they attack any president who has good relations with America." Darwish says Morsi has taken tremendous heat inside Egypt for getting good reviews from the United States for his role in brokering the recent Israel-Hamas cease-fire, with one newspaper calling him a "puppet of America". Darwish notes that she is no fan of Morsi or the Muslim Brotherhood but claims he should not be forced from office now but rather in fair elections when his term is over. |
| Assad's Last Days |
| Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:58:25 EST Two lingering headaches in America's foreign policy took on new dimensions this week as North Korea fired a missile over Japan and launched a satellite and the U.S. formally recognized the Syrian opposition in its battle against President Bashar al-Assad. Retired U.S. Army Major General Paul Vallely was deputy commanding general for the Pacific and also returned from consultations with military officials from the Syrian opposition. He says Assad's days are numbered. "Assad will fall. The information I got from the Syrian generals that he'll either be evacuated with his family to Russia or probably most likely to Iran," said Vallely, who estimates Assad will be gone within 30-60 days. He says the rebels are successfully attacking airfields and have essentially shut down the main airport in Damascus, although Iranian planes are still getting in to provide much needed supplies to the beleaguered regime. One of the complicated aspects for the U.S. in this war is the odd combination of partners in the Syrian opposition, which ranges from those truly seeking a freer, more stable society to verified elements of Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups. Vallely confirms those Islamist elements are part of the mix but he is confident the good parts of the coalition are in position to assume control when Assad falls. In his meetings with some 75 opposition leaders, Vallely says he came away feeling good about what will replace Assad. "Nine of those were Syrian generals, high level generals that worked for Assad who defected and now control the Free Syrian Army, which controls about 65 percent of the opposition forces," said Vallely. "So you've got a number of groups over there - Islamists, radicals - but you also have members of the Free Syrian Army who are looking for freedom and looking for a future Syria." Vallely says he was very impressed with the people he met with and those people are representative of the vast majority of of the Syrian opposition. "I felt very comfortable with the commanders that I met with. They're not Islamist or radicals. They detest Hezbollah. They detest Al Qaeda," said Vallely. Nonetheless, Gen. Vallely says the radical minority elements of the opposition will try to assert themselves when Assad falls and it is imperative that they fail. He says this has gotten more complicated in just the past few days as money is now pouring in to support an effort by radicals to take control. "I got word yesterday that one of the reasons Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood is because if they can take over like they've tyaken over in Egypt, they can control a whole new pipeline across Syria into the Mediterranean near the port of Tartus and Latakia," said Vallely. "That has not been exposed yet. The first time I've exposed that is on your show today, so that's new information." Vallely says the opposition is worried that Assad may deploy chemical and biological weapons as his grip on power continues to slip. He says Assad is already bombing hospitals and other population centers. 40,000 people have died and another 200,000 have fled the country. On North Korea, Vallely says we're seeing the same story play out that we saw in the Clinton and Bush administrations. He says while the western nations try to negotiate with a Communist regime willing to starve its own people, the North Koreans are establishing themselves as more serious players on the international stage - all with the full blessing of China. "They're a proxy of China. Everything that they do China knows about and basically supports them in what they're doing," Said Vallely. "So they like to sound the bugles and beat the drums every once in awhile so everyone in the world knows they're alive over there." Vallely says the successful launch will also tighten the North Korean relationships with Russia, Iran and the current Syrian government. He says what's also clear is that U.S. is not willing to do much of anything about an increasingly dangerous and competent regime. "We're pretty much a paper tiger when it comes to threats like North Korea," said Vallely. "So it's trying to influence the international community, that they can stand up and be a missile power and develop nuclear weapons. At the same time, the West is very weak when it comes to standing up to a lot of threats today, including our government. Just coming back from over in the Middle East, you know we just have no credibility anymore." |
| The Obamacare Resistance Movement |
| Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:57:46 EST 2012 was a very bad year for opponents of the Obama health laws as they suffered an agonizing loss at the Supreme Court and blew an opportunity to change course on Election Day. Nonetheless, efforts to stop or at least slow the implementation of key provisions continues. State leaders, religious officials, national Republicans and even some national Democrats could play critical roles in this effort. Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute, one of the leading health policy organizations in the country. She says the conditions are clearly not ideal for Obamacare opponents, but she says there are glimmers of hope on the Congressional front. "The Speaker (John Boehner) has made it very, very clear that while it's going to be very difficult if not impossible to repeal the law as long as President Obama is in the White House, because he'd veto it, they have a lot of power to investigate and to defund," said Turner. "This administration needs more money to set up these federal exchanges, these marketplaces around the country because states are refusing to do it. And they need money to do that. Well, if the House doesn't appropriate it then what's the administration going to do?" Turner points out that Obamacare was trumpeted as a one trillion dollar cost over 10 years. That projection has already ballooned to $2.6 trillion and the program isn't even up and running yet. She says the administration may try to use some accounting tricks and that's where the GOP-led House can play a key role. "If they take it from a bucket that's designed to be spent for something else and they spend it on that, then the House is going to need to investigate that," said Turner. Repeal of certain components within the Obama health laws are also possible. "There are some parts of this law for which there is bipartisan support for repeal, including the medical device tax," said Turner, alluding to a growing concern among Senate Democrats over the impact of that tax. "Also, this Independent Payment Advisory Board that is going to become the Medicare rationing board. There's support on both sides of the aisle for (repeal of) that hatchet attempt and effort to cut back on health care costs." But given the make-up of the incoming Senate and President Obama's re-election, is there really a chance something like the Independent Payment Advisory Board could be scrapped? "Absolutely. A lot of Democrats, including people very much on the left end of the continuum are saying that they do not believe that a bunch of 15 un-elected, unaccountable bureaucrats should have control over literally hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare spending," said Turner, who says a growing number of Democrats also fear the almost complete lack of legislative or judicial oversight for the panel once it's up and running. Turner admits such an effort at repeal would require two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate since President Obama would be sure to veto the bill. As for the resistance movement outside of Washington, Turner says the signs are everywhere. She says many people are making the simple decision to pay the $95 fine for not purchasing health insurance instead of spending over $5,000 on a policy, businesses are also finding it much easier to drop coverage and pay the fine than provide the coverage mandated in the law and nearly half the states are refusing to set up new health care exchanges. And Turner says the vocal opposition of the Catholic Church to the contraception mandate is a key player in all of this as well. "You're seeing this Obamacare resistance movement starting with citizens and businesses and religious leaders and states, all saying we can't comply with this law and we're going to find a way around it," said Turner. |
| A Supreme Test for Marriage |
| Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:57:53 EST On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments next year on two critical cases related to the definition of marriage. One case stems from California, where a federal court struck down a 2008 state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Also under consideration by the justices will be the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage in the traditional manner for the purpose of government functions. The act also allows the individual states to determine their own individual definitions for marriage. Both these cases will come before the Supreme Court in the spring and a decision will likely come down in June. Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver says this development brings good news and bad news and he's not at all confident that the court will make what he believes to be the right decision. "I'm pleased that California's not going to have same-sex marriage," said Staver, noting that the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the Prop. 8 case would have enshrined gay marriage as the law in the Golden State. "On the other hand, I'm never comfortable with the Supreme Court on issues such as this because you never know what they will do. We saw this with Obamacare. Of course, going back 40 years roughly, we saw this in 1973 with abortion. If they were following the rule of law and the Constitution, no question it's a no-brainer. The Constitution clearly does not sanction same-sex marriage nor does it prohibit a state from passing a Constitutional amendment like California did that affirms the definition of marriage. But this is the Supreme Court and these are justices that don't necessarily find themselves adhering to the rule of law - at least some of them - and consequently, you have to have a bit of concern when you go up to the high court on this issue." Staver says it's very possible and maybe even likely that the Court will look for a way around issuing some landmark ruling and instead come to a much smaller verdict that questions whether the U.S. House of Representatives has standing to pursue it's appeal of the rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act or whether supporters of Proposition 8 are in a position to properly take their case to the Supreme Court. If either or both appeals by traditional marriage backers are denied based on standing, the justices may never even get to the merits of the cases. Staver says that would lead to a rather confusing situation. "That would leave in California only the district court decision which is for the northern district of California. So only the northern part of California would be under this ruling," said Staver. "The central and southern part of California would not and certainly would not go across the borders of California." Similarly in the Defense of Marriage case, Staver says rejecting the appeal on standing would limit the ruling to the southern parts of New York. "That would make an odd situation, but it would certainly limit the impact of this decision," he said. Politics have favored traditional marriage forces until very recently. Backers of man-woman marriage succeeded in the first 32 states where this battle was fought. On November 6, however, voters in three states ratified state laws legalizing gay marriage and a fourth state rejected a traditional marriage amendment. Staver says popular sentiment should have no impact on the deliberations of the justices but he's not holding his breath. "Some of these justices no doubt may ultimately put their finger up in the air. If they did, they would see that the vast majority of states have passed constitutional marriage amendments," said Staver. "When you add that to the statutory amendments you've got over 40 states that have passed these amendments. Clearly if you're weighing them in the balance, the majority of states ultimately win, not what we just saw in November." If the Supreme Court does end up issuing a far-reaching decision, Staver is not optimistic given the current complexion of the court with four reliably liberal justices and moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the majority opinion in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case that struck down anti-sodomy laws and opened the door to the gay marriage movement. "I'm not real excited about taking this up there and having the very essence of our society, the first form of government, marriage decided by one swing vote. That's concerning to me and it should be concerning to everybody." |
| 'That's Not Leadership' |
| Fri, 7 Dec 2012 15:35:59 EST America will fall off the proverbial fiscal cliff in less than four weeks unless Congressional Republicans and President Obama find common ground. But Georgia Rep. and House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price says President Obama's unwillingness to have serious negotiations is undermining the process and is a disservice to the American people. He says all the attention is focused on tax rates for the rich but he says the avalanche will involve much more than that. "Look this is tax rates, it's spending, it's pro-growth policies, it's the Alternative Minimum Tax, the Death Tax, capital gain, dividends, the sequester, all of the things related to health care with the 'Doc Fix' and the like. So this is huge," said Price. "Sadly, the president has moved this into the direction of just politics, about two levels of tax rates on people that he believes are 'too successful.'" Price says American voters delivered a pretty clear message about bipartisan cooperation in November but the President wasn't listening. "The country wanted divided government. It didn't want one-party government. But it wanted us to get back to work and solve these challenges," said Price. "Sadly, he continues to be basically in campaign mode. That's not leadership. That's not the kind of leadership that will allow us to solve these challenges." The congressman increasingly fears President Obama doesn't even want to strike a deal and that he may be content to fall off the cliff. "In my most cynical moment, I step back and say, 'I guess he does want the taxes to go up and he wants the spending to go down in the area of our national security," said Price. "It really is destructive to the economy and that's why we're so concerned. This will be harmful to real people. This isn't just some fictitious challenge out there. These are real people's lives that are going to be effected in adverse ways with the destruction of jobs and decreased opportunity within our economy." Price is not only frustrated by what he perceives as Obama dictating the terms of any deal but that neither party seems ready to do what needs to be done most - cutting spending and reforming entitlements. He says even the most recent offer from House Speaker John Boehner doesn't address the biggest issues. "No. The proposal that's currently on the table from our side actually just plugs the current challenge that we have, but it doesn't solve the issue," said Price. "The president has refused to even consider solving the issue. We spend about $3.5 trillion annually in this country. $2.5 trillion of that - ballpark figure - is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest on the debt. So unless we solve the challenges in those arenas by saving and strengthening and securing those programs, we will never get our fiscal house in order. What that means is that we will never get jobs created or a vibrant economy going." Rep. Price is not a fan of tax increases in any form but he does believe raising taxes on the wealthy through closing deductions would cause less damage to small businesses than a direct hike in marginal rates. In fact, Price says any marginal rate increases are out of the question for him personally and the vast majority of GOP members. Another issue drawing fierce discussion on Capitol Hill is the decision of a House Republican steering committee to strip four conservatives from committee slots - two from the House Budget Committee and two from the House Financial Services Committee. Unnamed sources say the moves were made when the four members failed to obey party leaders in backing the 2011 debt ceiling deal that led to the fiscal cliff. Three of them also rejected the House GOP budget authored by Paul Ryan. Price says whatever motivated leaders to shake up the committees, it's not a good thing for the party. "In the big picture it's probably not helpful," said Price. "This is a time when unity of purpose is extremely important and I think that anytime we divide ourselves, fight amongst ourselves it's not helpful," said Price. "The folks on the left of the ideological spectrum, they are the ones standing in the way of real progress. It's not the folks in the Republican Conference in the House of Representatives." |
| Twinkies and Political Correctness |
| Fri, 7 Dec 2012 14:49:01 EST The Capitol Steps have fun with multiple stories this week. First, in "Twinkie, Twinkie," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pours out his heart over Hostess closing operations. In the holiday parody, "Have Yourself a HanakwanzaChristmas," the Steps lampoon the politically correct effort to remove all distinction from any holidays at this time of year in the fear of offending someone. Our guest is Capitol Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport. |
| 'We're Clearly Being Punished' |
| Thu, 6 Dec 2012 15:16:47 EST House Speaker John Boehner is working feverishly to find common ground with the Obama administration to avert to coming fiscal cliff, but the Speaker and his lieutenants may have an even bigger problem now that four conservative lawmakers have been stripped of key committee positions for not being loyal enough to the GOP leadership. The decisions came from a Republican steering committee tasked with making committee assignments. The panel stripped Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp and Michigan Rep. Justin Amash from the House Budget Committee. Arizona Rep. David Schweikert and North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones were given the boot from the House Financial Services Committee. Their specific transgressions aren't clear, but all four members voted against the 2011 deal to raise the debt ceiling and three of them voted against the House GOP budget authored by Paul Ryan because they didn't think it brought the nation's finances into balance quickly enough. In reality, the four members have not been told why they lost their committee assignments since no one has reached out to explain this decision. "I was given no reason, none whatsoever," said Huelskamp, who was also stripped of a post on the House Agriculture Committee, ending more than 100 years of a Kansas being on that panel. "It's just pure crass politics. It's petty and vindictive." A further sign that these moves serve as a message to the rest of the conference to obey orders is the cryptic message from Boehner that he "hopes" more decisions like this will not have to be made. "Clearly the removal was seen as a punishment, and then when the leadership says 'others may be at risk' it's clearly meant as a warning," said Huelskamp. "You've got 240 votes currently in the Republican House - a good strong majority. Three or four votes does not make a difference, but you can use those three or four folks to warn the remainder of the conference." The congressman says he has no heard one word from any of top House GOP leaders and they have even avoided conversations with him on the House floor. But while there has been no official explanation for the committee changes, Huelskamp sees an eerie coincidence. "The deal that the Speaker intends to negotiate and finally present to Republicans is going to be one that's likely to violate the principle of not raising taxes," he said. "On Friday I released a video. I meant it. On YouTube you can find that where I reiterated my pledge to not raise taxes. Less than a business day later is when I got the phone call that 'you're off of the budget committee.'" Huelskamp says the decision of the steering committee is not final and must be ratified by the full GOP delegation. He is also among the conservatives not pleased with the role of incoming Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Steve Scalise on the steering committee. The RSC is the coalition of House conservatives, and includes over 50 percent of the Republicans in the House. "Frankly, the steering committee that makes these decisions, Mr. Scalise is on there," said Huelskamp. "They had a litmus test. They had a list of key votes they used to make their decision. We are asking them to release that list of votes to the public and to the membership. So far they refuse to do that. They're apparently not courageous enough to indicate exactly how they made that decision. Actually, I haven't seen a member of leadership that's actually indicated what the reasons were and they haven't told me either." While the committee changes could be rejected, the odds of that are fairly remote. Regardless, Huelskamp says these sorts of tactics won't change how he does his job. "I can speak for every one of my colleagues that was removed," he said. "This is our voting card. I'm holding my voting card in my hand and I don't turn that over to any member of leadership or any other member of Congress. It's mine and I have a sacred bond with 700,000 constituents. We are clearly being punished by the way we use this card. That's a real disappointment. We were promised a different type of Republican leadership two years ago and it's descended into the same command and control that we've seen far too often in Washington." It's not just the four "punished" Republicans who are upset by this move. Huelskamp says there are members on both sides of the aisle who are recoiling at this move. His constituents in Kansas are even more irate. "Folks are furious. This is exactly what they've come to expect out of Washington of either party," he said. "If you're a man or woman of principle and you want to vote the way you tell your people. This is exactly what I told them I would do and this is what I told leadership how I would vote. Same way for Mr. Amash and Mr. Schweikert. And then be knocked down and punished for doing what you said you'd do. I think we need a lot more of that - not to punish those who said what they would do. Whether you're Democrat, Republican, liberal or conservative, let's just have a little more integrity." The congressman says this brazenly political move also violates core Republican values. "Republican leaders are going to punish conservatives because of the conservative votes. It's because of the votes, and everything else is, I believe, just a smokescreen of trying to reach an end that I think will violate a clear Republican principle," said Huelskamp. |
| More Guns Means Less Crime |
| Wed, 5 Dec 2012 14:47:15 EST NBC sportscaster Bob Costas is trying to clarify comments he made during Sunday night's broadcast that America's gun culture is partly to blame for the murder-suicide perpetrated Saturday morning by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher. Costas now says he's not in favor of repealing the second amendment or denying people the right to own firearms for the purpose of protection or hunting. However, he claims there's no need for anyone to have a virtual arsenal of weapons or to have any automatic or semi-automatic guns. Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt says Costas was wrong in his premise on Sunday night and is just as wrong in his attempts to clarify his position. He's especially dubious of Costas alleging that guns escalate volatile situations into deadly ones. "I appreciate his pointing out the problem of guns escalating situations, because I'm frequently having to rebuke my own guns and tell them to just chill out and stay in the holster," mused Pratt. "That's really silly to impute some kind of ability like that to a firearm. What he's hoping to do is blame anything or anybody but the criminal who made the decision to be a criminal." Pratt noted the extensive history of Belcher engaging in domestic violence and contends that a man of Belcher's size and strength could have easily killed Kasandra Perkins with a kitchen knife or a baseball bat once he became determined to kill her. Pratt says the problem wasn't that Belcher owned a gun. It's that Perkins didn't. "The fact that (Belcher) might have had more than one gun, that other people have more than one gun, that's really not the point," said Pratt. "The point is she didn't have a gun. There weren't enough guns present. That's something that the anti-self defense crowd never wants to engage - that a lot of these crimes don't happen when the criminal mind realizes that the one thing that causes them pause might occur. Namely, 'I might get hurt or killed if I commit this crime.'" Pratt says that immediate deterrent is vital because someone ready to kill isn't really concerned about a looming prison sentence. "They don't care about jail later on. They're mad right now and they want to kill right now. They're not thinking about the future. These are not future-oriented people," said Pratt, mentioning that people affected by drugs or alcohol are not going to be reasoned with. "In the areas of our country where the laws make it easiest for people to go about in public carrying concealed firearms - or openly for that matter - those are the areas where the violent crime rates are the lowest. (Costas) has it completely wrong. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Both in the particular case where this woman might be alive today had she had a gun and the the general proposition that more guns means less crime is a statistically researched fact." And Pratt says the reverse is proven true as locations with the strictest gun control laws often see the highest murder and crime rates. He says these laws simply encourage criminals. "You're telling them their victims are not likely to be able to respond effectively," said Pratt. So that's been the experience of these anti-gun cities." Pratt cited Washington, DC, as a prime example of his argument. He says when the nation's capital had a complete gun ban in place, the murder rate was 25 for every 100,000 residents. In just the few years since the Supreme Court struck down the ban as unconstitutional, that rate has dropped to nine murders for every 100,000 residents. "That only lets people in the District of Columbia have guns in their homes, so home invasions clearly have plummeted," he said. Pratt contends that if the court had allowed conceal-and-carry in the district, the murder rate would decrease even further. Costas says another reason for his concern over guns is that he's never seen a story where an athlete stopped a violent act because he was armed. However, the broadcaster says there are more stories than he can count like the one surrounding Belcher. Pratt says Costas simply isn't supported by the facts and asserts that the vast majority of crimes thwarted by the mere brandishing of a firearm usually go unreported. "There's some 4,000 instances a day when an American uses a gun to stop a criminal attack," said Pratt, who says accounts of self-defense usually only get attention in local media. "A lot of things just don't even get reported to the police, let alone to the newspapers. Once somebody has chased away a criminal they don't really want the bother of going to the police." |
| Dead Men Flying |
| Tue, 4 Dec 2012 16:04:00 EST The U.S. military is not only the world's most powerful fighting force but it's also responsible for some of the most significant humanitarian service in the past two generations. That role largely found its genesis in Operation Dust Off, a concerted military venture in Vietnam to rescue troops and civilians in harm's way. Retired U.S. Army Gen. Patrick Brady is Medal of Honor recipient and was a critical figure in the humanitarian success of the war. He tells the story of the humanitarian work in Vietnam in his book "Dead Men Flying: Victory in Vietnam The Legend of Dust Off: America's Battlefield Angels." "The great thing about the Vietnam War was the humanitarian effort that went on over there - something that the media never covered," said Gen. Brady. "The tip of the spear in that was the "Dust Off" pilots, rescued some one million souls - men, women, children, enemy, friendly, a few scout dogs. If you were hurt, we were going to come get you." Brady's book pays tribute to Major Charles Kelly who orchestrated Operation Dust Off and ultimately gave his life for this country. Brady says the missions served as the template for the rapid response rescue missions of today's military. He says many lives were saved and many people in Vietnam are still grateful for the compassion of the Americans. "Thanks to Dust Off, if you were shot in the jungle of Vietnam your chances of survival were greater than if you were injured on a highway in America. Remarkable remarkable survival rates in that war," said Brady. "In previous wars we just bombed and destroyed everything in our way including civilians. In Vietnam, in the heat of the battle (the American GI) was still building medical facilities, vaccinating those kids, educating them, adopting them and doing everything in every way to care for and care about those people. In my trips back, I can see the kids have grown up. They appreciate it very much. They've treated me very, very well. They're wonderful people." Brady describes the pioneering strategies for rescuing Americans and Vietnamese alike and the toll it took on his unit. "We developed techniques to get into the battlefield day or night, in weather. In my case, my faith was a great help to me. The good Lord showed me the way to do it in the fog and in the weather," said Brady. "Of course our primary mission was Americans. That's why we were there, but if there were civilians hurt we had enough resources to take care of them as well." "We had 40 men, a small detachment. We had six helicopters. At any one time, three of those would be flyable because of maintenance and we had one shot up about every four to five days," said Brady. "Twenty-six Purple Hearts. Of those 40 men, 26 were shot. Some of those were repetitious. In a nine and a half month period, we carried over 21,000 patients. Do the math - three aircraft. There was 100 other Dust Off aircraft in country doing the same thing. So we were able to provide those people with treatment and medical care that they'd never seen before." Gen. Brady also said Major Kelly and his subordinates flew into villages and provided basic medical care to many different people in Vietnam. He says it's regrettable that the Communists won the war but he sees a brighter day ahead for Vietnam. "I think Communism is pretty much dead there. They just don't know what to do with the corpse," he said. "Eventually those people will emerge. They are a very productive people, and they're going to do great things." America recorded two victories in Vietnam, according to Brady. In addition to the stunning humanitarian accomplishments, he says American troops won every battle they fought and the politicians in Washington are the ones who lost the war. Brady says it was tough for Vietnam veterans to come home to an ungrateful and even hostile public. But he says that national embarrassment has been corrected and American troops are now lavished with the honor and adulation they deserve. One of the general's main criticisms of how the war was prosecuted in Vietnam was the failure of the government to call up reserve units. He says keeping the numbers up in the military is key to our national security and the current budget sequestration dangers would be terrible for our readiness. |
| Time for Answers on Benghazi |
| Mon, 3 Dec 2012 15:42:43 EST With almost three months elapsed since the September terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Special Operations Speaks is tired of the delay in answers from the Obama administration and is demanding action. "We view the events in Libya as sort of a jigsaw puzzle that's been dumped out of the box on to the table, and there's a heck of a lot of pieces that need to be put together to reveal the big picture," said retired U.S. Air Force Col. Dick Brauer, co-founder of Special Operations Speaks. "Unfortunately, this puzzle box had no picture on it so we're trying to actually figure out what is the truth behind what really happened." Special Operations Speaks is insisting that Attorney General Eric Holder choose a special prosecutor to get to the heart of the story in Benghazi - and not just any special prosecutor. The veterans want a Republican appointed in order to provide the best chance for a full and honest investigation. "The only way we can do this is to put pressure on Congress, we feel, to get Eric Holder and the Justice Department to appoint an independent counsel - a Republican independent counsel - because I'm afraid Eric Holder might put the fox in the hen house so to speak and we would never get the truth," said Col. Brauer. "But the truth has got to come out as to why we let these people die." So what are some of the "puzzle pieces" for which Brauer demands answers? Brauer says there's still no explanation for why the repeated requests for more security in the weeks before the attack were denied. He wants to know why no air support came while the attacks in Benghazi were unfolding. Most of all, he wants to know who gave the order to "stand down" to U.S. forces and even two of the men who lost their lives. "All forces were readily available to go to the aid of the ambassador and his staff - Special Forces strike teams, battalion of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, Special Forces teams in Africa, even the Navy and the Air Force fighters and AC-130 gunships," said Brauer. "The questions arise as to why those forces weren't launched." Brauer is especially incensed at the lack of support for Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. "Specifically, the wild card in all this were the two Navy SEALs, Woods and Doherty, who came to rescue, who did what SEALs do and what warriors are trained to do and that's run to the sound of the guns. They were told specifically to stand down," said Brauer. "That term was used several times, 'Stand down. Don't do anything.' Why? Why were they told that? One of the SEALs was designating with a laser designator, painting a target and calling for a gunship. I expect the gunship was nearby if not overhead and they were probably told not to fire. That's my opinion, but somebody was close by. Otherwise that SEAL would have never lased the target and spotted on a mortar. That was the mortar that killed him as soon as he did that, so he was expecting support that he never got." |
| Citizen Rights & U.S. Sovereignty |
| Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:07:45 EST Utah Sen. Mike Lee is taking a leading role on two critical issues before the lame duck Congress, as he successfully passed an amendment he says will protect the legal rights of Americans. Lee is also spearheading opposition to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, which he says erodes American sovereignty and diminishes the rights of parents. On Thursday, Lee teamed with California Democrat Dianne Feinstein to amend the new version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Lee says they were very concerned that previous language in the law could result in the loss of some of the most cherished rights in the U.S. legal system. "We were concerned that language in last year's National Defense Authorization Act could be read to suggest that the government has the power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely, without trial, without charge, based solely on the nature of the allegations against them," said Lee. "This is dangerous. It violates the fifth and sixth amendments to the Constitution. It's not something that we as Americans should tolerate." The Lee-Feinstein amendment, known as the Due Process Guarantee Act, was easily approved on Thursday evening by a vote of 67-29. "That says basically the opposite of what we read the NDAA last year to say," he said. "It says that if you're a U.S. citizen and you're detained in the United States, you're entitled to charge and trial and nothing in existing law can be read to suggest otherwise." Lee says 20 of the 67 votes in favor of the amendment came from Republicans. The Senate is also expected to vote on the proposed UN treaty on the disabled in December. Lee is taking a leading role in trying to sink the plan. He says all lawmakers want to champion the rights of the disabled and the U.S. is easily the gold standard in this arena. However, he says this treaty is fatally flawed in multiple ways. "It undermines U.S. sovereignty and it tries to internationalize domestic policy. I'm uncomfortable with that," said Lee. But just as troublesome to the senator is what he sees as a threat to parents' rights. "A number of groups consisting of parents of children with disabilities, particularly those who choose to home school their children with disabilities are especially concerned about this because it contains language suggesting that in deciding what is the proper standard of care and educational treatment for a disabled child. The 'Best Interest of the Child' standard shall be a significant factor," said Lee. "The problem with that is that it takes away rights that belong to parents, and it threatens to potentially put the government in charge of decisions that ought to be made by the family and not by the government." Sen. Lee also elaborated on why he believes the treaty compromises U.S. sovereignty. "It contains language embracing what are known as economic, social and cultural rights. This is language that the U.S. has for decades refused to incorporate into any treaty ratified by the United States," said Lee. "It was developed by Soviet bloc countries during the Cold War as an indicator of a willingness to embrace forms of socialism." Sixty-seven votes are needed to ratify a treaty, meaning opponents need just 34 to stop it. Lee says he has 36 votes ready to reject it and supporters would need 67 votes regardless of how many senators are present. |
| Filibusters and Fiscal Cliffs |
| Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:47:34 EST Lawmakers have exactly one month to avert the onslaught of tax hikes and spending sequestration known as the "fiscal cliff". Thus far, Democrats claim anything that doesn't include a tax increase on the wealthy is a non-starter and Republicans assert that they will reject any plan that raises anyone's marginal tax rates. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he is fed up with Republicans killing Democratic legislation through the filibuster. As a result, Reid is vowing to change filibuster rules for the next Congress in order to limit Republican disruption of his agenda. Utah Sen. Mike Lee is closely involved in both debates and is appalled by Democratic tactics across the board. When it comes to the filibuster, Lee says the GOP resorts to the filibuster because of the heavy-handed rules Harry Reid already employs. "He's abusing rules of the Senate by repeatedly denying the Republicans in the Senate the opportunity to present their own amendments," said Lee. "To the extent the filibuster rule has been utilized more by Republicans, it's been largely in response to that abuse." Lee says Reid uses one tactic in particular that shuts down free and open debate. "He has utilized a procedure known as 'filling the tree,' whereby the majority leader may in some circumstances restrict the ability of other members to file amendments, to propose legislation," said Lee. "This is a critical part of the debate process. This is part of what makes the Senate - and has historically made it - the world's greatest deliberative legislative body. So he's got to stop filling the tree and denying our right to file amendments. That's really the problem." Lee says Reid's strategy may be to eliminate the procedure requiring 60 votes to open debate, which would then remove the need to find 60 votes to cut off debate and move to a final vote. Both sides point to the fight in the middle of last decade when Republicans tried to kill the filibuster on President Bush's judicial nominations. Democrats cried foul at the time, saying the move was a blatant violation of their rights as the minority party. Lee says what Reid wants to do is far more egregious than what the GOP was mulling several years ago. "In that circumstance it dealt with the confirmation of presidential appointees," said Lee. "This deals with the legislative power and in this context it's even more important that we maintain our filibuster rights. That's why I hope and I expect that cooler heads will prevail and at the end of the day Harry Reid will not eliminate the filibuster rule, at least in the context of motions to proceed." The senator is also a key voice for conservative interests on taxes, spending and debt as Republicans and Democrats remain far apart in avoiding the fiscal cliff. Lee says there are very important reasons that the GOP can't go along with tax hikes - even if they're only on "the rich". "The reason that we as Republicans don't want anyone's taxes going up is that we understand if you raise taxes on the poor, it hurts the poor. If you raise taxes on the rich, that too hurts to the poor," said Lee. "Ernst & Young has predicted that even if you raise income taxes on the top two rate brackets we will lose 700,000 jobs. And those are not 700,000 CEO jobs. They're not 700,000 top one-percenter jobs. Those are Americans who are by and large working paycheck to paycheck and who are least able to absorb the loss of their job and the income associated with it." So what is the right way to avoid the cliff? Lee says the same principles he fought for during the debt ceiling debate , when he bucked GOP leaders and opposed the deal that led to the cliff and sequestration, will work for America now. "I'm going to continue to be a champion of the 'Cut, Cap & Balance' approach," said Lee. " I was the sponsor of the 'Cut, Cap & Balance Act' the last time around. I've introduced a new, update version of it this time around. The basic gist of the 'Cut, Cap & Balance' approach is to say that, 'We may need to raise the debt limit, but we're not going to do it. We shouldn't do it. We won't do it until Congress adopts permanent, structural spending reform. That would include some kind of a budget plan that will bring us to balance within a few years and would also require Congress to pass a balanced budget amendment and submit it to the states for ratification." |
| The Blame Game |
| Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:24:30 EST There's just one month remaining before American heads over the "fiscal cliff" - unless Congress and President Obama can agree on a way to avoid it. Thus far, both parties have spent most of their time accusing the other of not being willing to compromise. In that spirit, the Capitol Steps take us inside the Congressional impasse with their parody, "We Need Someone to Blame." Our guest is Steps Co-Founder Elaina Newport. |
| What Media Miss in the Mideast |
| Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:27:12 EST Headlines have been flying out the Middle East in recent weeks - from the Israel-Hamas fighting and cease-fire to Mohammed Morsi's attempted power grab in Egypt to special elections being called in Israel to the Palestinians trying to move towards statehood through a key vote at the United Nations. But much of what we're hearing on these stories barely scratches the surface and almost always misses the heart of the story, according to Dr. Mike Evans, founder of the Evans Institute for Middle East Studies and a longtime personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Many observers, for example, were stunned to see a key Muslim Brotherhood figure like Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi play a pivotal role in the cease-fire that ended several days of fighting between Israel and Hamas. While the conventional wisdom suggests Morsi could not possibly be an objective broker given his stated hatred for Israel, Evans says there's something that concerns Morsi even more. "What's happened here is a Sunni caliphate coming out of Egypt, coming out of Turkey, coming out of Qatar is challenging a Shia caliphate," says Evans. "The support that Gaza has got through missiles was Shia. Now the Sunnis have moved in to try to take control of Gaza. So these are two different crosswinds for caliphates that are very important to understand. You have a president in Turkey who wants to become the head of the caliphate for the whole Middle East. You have (Iranian) President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...who wants to be the head of the caliphate for the Middle East for the Shia. These are apocalyptic winds that are blowing." Why are the two branches of Islam at such odds when it comes to their efforts to control the region? "The Sunnis are afraid of an atomic Persia, a non-Arab state," said Evans. "The Shia are terrified of the Sunnis because they hate each other more than they hate the Jews." The recent attempt by President Morsi to accumulate almost unlimited power is not a major concern to Evans. He says Morsi is simply frustrated that people loyal to ousted president Hosni Mubarak still hold key positions in the legislative and judicial branches of government. Evans says there are too many hurdles in the way for Morsi to actually succeed in amassing as much power as he would like. The recent fighting in Gaza was a rousing success for Israel, according to Evans. He says in addition to retaliation for the incessant rocket strikes, Israel accomplished a larger goal. "What has happened just recently with the Gaza short war was in preparation for the Iran attack," he said. "In order for Israel to prepare themselves for the attack, they needed to shut down Iran's infrastructure in Gaza. They did." About three months ago. Dr. Evans told us he had word from very high levels in the Israeli government that an attack on Iran's nuclear program would most likely take place between September 15 and October 15 of this year. So why didn't those strikes take place? "Israel was forced to call new elections," said Evans. "You can't go to war against Iran without a government and Israel's government was coming apart. A lot of this was because of the U.S. The U.S. was meeting with the opposition parties, trying to take the government down." Evans believes Netanyahu will win re-election in January despite the best efforts of the Obama administration to defeat him. If Netanyahu prevails, Evans expects an attack on Iran by the end of the spring. Another issue Evans says is being wrongly reported is Thursday's vote in the United Nations on whether to grant observer status to the Palestinians - which most see as a key step to statehood. Evans sees this as something far less noble. "Lawsuits. This entire move is to try to legitimize their ability to sue Israel for war crimes," said Evans. "They've already tried it in the past and it didn't stick. With this new recognition status, it would give them the ability to file thousands of lawsuits against Israelis, including foreign ministers. That's more fundamentally what it's about than anything else. It's not good." |
| The Road Ahead on Obamacare |
| Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:56:09 EST Barring legal or legislative interference, the Obama health care laws are scheduled to be fully implemented by 2014. In the past few weeks, we've seen a growing number of states refuse to set up health insurance exchanges and some are balking at an expanded state role for Medicaid as well. But while states avoid getting entangled in the bureaucracy, does that mean much for individual Americans? Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey is author of "Decoding the Obama Health Law." She says the states forcing the federal government to create the exchanges will have two major impacts. The first is an almost certain delay in the creation of the exchanges. "Implementation, predictably, will be delayed because the federal government undoubtedly won't be able to set up federal exchanges in all those states by next October when the exchanges are supposed to be up and running," said McCaughey. The exchanges are intended to be a third option for consumers to obtain coverage, along with the more traditional avenues of obtaining employer-based coverage or purchasing it directly. However, the biggest result of these states refusing to set up the exchange could be less taxpayer assistance for those getting insurance through an exchange. "It's going to make a very big difference and here's why," said McCaughey. "The law says that if you go to a state health insurance exchange to buy your health insurance, you are entitled - and I use that word because that's exactly what I mean - entitled to a tax credit. In other words, taxpayer help paying for your health insurance. If your household earns up to $92,300 you're entitled to that help. That's means that the full cost of that health plan won;t be on you. But the law only allows to get that tax credit if you're in a state health insurance exchange." McCaughey says those credits are not promised if the coverage comes through a federal exchange, and the difference could be significant given how quickly premiums are expected to rise. "Those health plans are going to be very expensive," she said. "Even the federal government anticipates that the premium is going to go up seven percent next year - maybe $14,000 or $15,000 for a family plan. That's a lot of money." The confusion over exchanges is just one headache on the horizon. McCaughey says another nightmare is Obama's intention to expand coverage mostly through Medicaid - which is already in dire straits. "That's a program where the cost traditionally has traditionally been split between the state governments and the federal government," said McCaughey. "The federal government says we're going to pay for the entire cost of expanding this enrollment. But states are worried. The federal government can change its mind, break it's promise any time. Since when haven't politicians broken their promises. So the states are very reluctant to enroll a lot of new people in Medicaid and then get socked with the bill when the federal government reneges on its promise to pay the full cost." Even in its pre-Obamacare form, Medicaid is incapable of adequately reimbursing hospitals and physicians. Many doctors refuse to see Medicaid patients as a result. McCaughey says that will only get worse and life will not be any better for those going from no coverage to being enrolled in Medicaid. In fact, she says a Medicaid patient's health is in more danger by the time they find a doctor willing to treat them. "It's kind of broken promise medicine," said McCaughey. "There are quite a few studies that show that a patient on Medicare who has surgery has a substantially higher risk of dying during that surgery than someone who has private health insurance - and in fact a worse risk of dying even than someone who has no insurance at all." |
| Obamacare and the Supremes |
| Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:11:36 EST Opponents of the Obama health laws believed hopes of the Supreme Court striking down the key provisions of the plan were dashed when the individual mandate was upheld in June. But on Monday, the justices ordered the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a suit filed by Liberty University that alleges the individual and employer mandates are unconstitutional because they infringe on the free exercise of religion. That argument was not part of the arguments in the cases decided in June. Liberty contends the mandates require business owners and individuals to fund abortions even though millions consider abortion in gross violation of their religious beliefs. Mathew Staver is chairman of Liberty Counsel and represents Liberty University in this case. He says Monday's ruling doesn't guarantee anything in terms of a final verdict, but it's still very significant. "This is huge. It revives our challenge to Obamacare," said Staver. "I believe it sends a good sign and a good message and I'm very encouraged by the Supreme Court's decision." The appeals court will likely hear arguments in the next few months, with a decision expected in late Spring. Staver previewed the university's case. "We will argue several things, including whether the employer mandate is constitutional," said Staver. "We believe that it exceeds Congressional authority under the Constitution. But even if the Supreme Court were to uphold the employer mandate, we believe that it collides with the free exercise of religion, because Liberty University like other religiously affiliated employers will have to fund abortion. It also requires funding contraception and sterilization which certainly collides with many other Roman Catholic beliefs." Staver says the university will clearly state that all abortions, whether chemically induced by drugs shortly after conception or performed in an abortion clinic are equally reprehensible to many people of faith. "God created human life. Its sanctity and dignity are protected by God," said Staver. "We have no right to take innocent human lives and certainly we cannot be forced to fund the taking of innocent life - basically forced to fund murder. We can't do that. That's a line that we simply cannot cross." There is no middle ground in this fight according to Staver. He says if this law is upheld, people will have to choose between obeying the law and adhering to their faith. "Either you follow your conscience and your free exercise of religious convictions and you disobey the law, or you obey the law and you disobey your conscience and your free exercise of religion. There's no in-between. This is a direct collision with the free exercise of religion that's unprecedented in the scope of our history." Staver notes that the case will inevitably end up back at the Supreme Court, with a final verdict probably coming in the first half of 2014. |
| Flat Taxes & Failed Leadership |
| Mon, 26 Nov 2012 16:11:42 EST With the nation just five weeks away from plunging off the so-called "fiscal cliff", Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says the lines currently drawn in this debate are badly focused - largely due to poor or non-existent. Since Election Day, President Obama has continued to insist that more revenue needs to be generated through income tax hikes on households earning more than $250,000 per year. Republicans, led by House Speaker John Boehner, have said they will not support marginal tax hikes on any individuals or businesses but they would entertain increasing revenue through other changes in the tax code - namely ending some or many deductions. Gohmert has no patience for either position. He says any additional tax hikes would further stifle economic recovery, but he's also appalled by the targeting of tax deductions as a way to boost revenue. "Good grief! Do you know the damage that will do to charity?" said Gohmert. "The people in this administration want the government in charge of everything. We've seen with Hurricane Sandy and Katrina. We've seen whether it's Democratic or Republican administrations how poorly government responds in times of emergency. It is the American charitable beliefs, the American charitable spirit that actually gets help to people quicker." Instead of tinkering around the edges of the tax code, Gohmert sees this crisis as a golden opportunity to overhaul the tax system in a way that provides a massive kick start to the economy. Gohmert says he does feel uneasy when a CEO pays a lower tax rate than his secretary as a result of his income coming on investments rather than salary. But Gohmert says the solution is not to punish the rich, but to bring everyone's tax rate down to 15 percent across the board and then scrapping all deductions - except for charitable contributions and the mortgage interest deduction. "Now is the time, since (Obama's) saying 'fair share' that we say 'you betcha' and nothing will make sure that we're doing fair share more than a flat tax," said Gohmert. Spending cuts are also on Gohmert's agenda. He wants to go back to 2008 spending levels, which he says would instantly reduce the annual deficit by a trillion dollars. Gohmert's approach is not gaining much traction at this point and the congressman says that largely due to a Republican leadership that's not leading much of anything. "Maybe we should say 'the people at the top of our party' instead of leadership because we need to see some leadership and not just being defensive," said Gohmert. " Let's go start pushing what the American people want to see and what they believe in instead of caving in on what this president's wanting to do which is more damage to our economy." Gohmert's frustration with the current House leadership of Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor is no secret. Earlier this month, Gohmert nominated Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House for the coming two years, citing Gingrich's record of balancing the budget and passing welfare reform back in the 1990s. "That was leadership," said Gohmert of Gingrich's tenure as Speaker. "It would be good to have someone (like that). I don't care if it's John Boehner or somebody, but somebody to lead instead of being the one that leads us in caving in. That's not real leadership." Gohmert believes pressure from the American people will be the only way leaders in both parties will end up with the right approach to this mess. |
| Changing the Benghazi Intel |
| Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:13:34 EST Last week, former CIA Director David Petraeus told Congress he knew immediately that the attack on our consulate in Benghazi was an orchestrated act of terrorism and it was described as such in CIA talking points. On Tuesday, new reports suggest that the decision to remove references to Al Qaeda and terrorism from those talking points was made by the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and agreed to by the CIA and FBI. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says this is just the latest revision of the White House narrative. "It contradicts what the Director of National Intelligence, General Clapper himself, testified last week to committees of Congress that he didn't know who made the last changes," said Bolton. "The very fact this story keep changing shows the administration knows it is vulnerable. They made up this story about the out of control demonstration because of the Mohammed video and now they're just trying to find some way to sustain it." If the new report is accurate, it would represent the third version of events offered by Petraeus and at least the second from Clapper. Bolton says Petraeus, like Clapper, was clear in his congressional testimony that he always saw this attack as terrorism. "If he sticks by that story, it's going to make it very hard for the White House to sustain this latest version," he said. "These hearings have just begun. I think we've got a long way to go on this. I just hope the Republicans don't lose heart because of the administration's stonewalling and obfuscation." Bolton says the administration's response to this deadly attack was bad enough, but he sees an even worse repercussion from all the spinning. "The threat of terrorism, quite obviously, is not receding despite the administration's rosy-eyed view of the world," said Bolton. "Not being able to understand reality obviously makes it very hard to formulate policies that protect the United States and its friends and allies around the world. "To me Benghazi was not only a tragedy because of administration failures to grant enhanced security that our embassy in Libya was requesting before the attack, and not only the tragic events of 9-11 itself and not only this ridiculous story that they concocted to explain the attack afterward, but what it reveals about the overall disintegration of American policy in the Near East and in the War on Terror more generally." |
| Israel's Lousy Options |
| Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:01:56 EST Israel appears to be rejecting the latest efforts by Hamas and Egypt to impose a cease-fire after several days of intense fighting. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says Israel has no appealing options right now but may be choosing the least objectionable course for the moment. He says a cease-fire now solves almost nothing. "If Israel actually does stop it's response before it eliminates those missiles and arrives at some kind of mechanism to keep replacements from coming into the Gaza Strip, we're either going to see this past week repeated or Israel will face a real threat from Iran (through Hamas) being able to hit Israel from its own backyard," said Bolton. But while Bolton fears a cessation of hostilities now would not accomplish much in dismantling the threat posed by Hamas, proceeding with a ground campaign carries obvious risks of its own. "Although Israel's air force was successful in destroying a fair number of the rocket launching sites and maybe some of the storage facilities and the like, they're clearly concerned that they were unable to find all of the sources of rockets both short range and long range," said Bolton. "That's why they're contemplating going in on the ground. That is something that will cost them politically. It could be substantial casualties for the Israeli ground forces. They'll get publicity about innocent Palestinians being killed, and they still might not be able to get all the rockets. On the other hand, if they leave Hamas in possession of the longer range missiles that can hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Iran and Hamas have really moved to a new strategic plateau that leaves Israel more vulnerable the next time around." A new wrinkle in this latest conflict is the role of Egypt. Bolton says former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hated Hamas just about as much as Israel does, but new President Mohammed Morsi is far more sympathetic. But while Morsi may feel solidarity with Hamas, Bolton says other realities greatly limit Egypt's options. "Number one, I think the Egyptian military still thinks pretty much the same way Mubarak did, so they've got disagreement within the government of Egypt over that," he said. "And Egypt is in very desperate straits financially. They've just signed a new deal with the International Monetary Fund. They desperately need more debt relief. If the U.S. and Europeans were to cut them off from the financial aid spigot, they'd be in real trouble." Bolton says the long-term prognosis of a Muslim Brotherhood-brokered cease-fire is a terrible prospect for Israel. He adds that a more radical and financially stable Egypt could provide major headaches for the Israelis in the years ahead, so it makes even less sense for Israel to postpone military action now that will be inevitable down the road. The former ambassador also offered some frank analysis of the Obama administration's policy on the conflict. Bolton says there is a significant difference between the public statements and the private arm twisting. "President Obama has given rhetorical support for Israel, said that Israel obviously has a right to self-defense," said Bolton. "Behind the scenes, my understanding is the president's putting unbelievable pressure on Israel not to go in on the ground. If he succeeds, and that may be the message that Hillary Clinton is carrying, a cease-fire here doesn't resolve anything. It merely postpones another clash." Bolton isn't sure what the Israeli government will decide. He believes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows a cease-fire only delays the obvious. He also says a ground campaign would be very thorough. "If they decide to go in on the ground, I think it will be a very sustained operation," said Bolton. " I think as you and I are talking, this is very much in the balance in the security cabinet of Prime Minister Netanyahu." |
| Digging for the Truth on Benghazi |
| Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:59:00 EST Lawmakers have just scratched the surface in their investigation of the terrorist attacks on our consulate in Benghazi, but Congress has made progress on getting to the bottom of the biggest mysteries - why the State Department denied requests for more security at the consulate and what information the White House initially received from intelligence sources. California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and is chairman of its Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. He says the Democrats have an explanation for the lack of security that simply doesn't hold water. The Democratic contention is that Republican budget cuts in security spending is responsible for the consulate being vulnerable to attack. Rohrabacher says the State Department official responsible for turning down the request for more security in Benghazi told his committee that theory was wrong. "I personally asked her, 'Was budget consideration any part of your decision not to have a higher level of security?'" said Rohrabacher. "And she answered, 'No, there was no consideration of budget.' So the Democrats trying to politicize this and get away with it doesn't work." Rep. Rohrabacher says the official believed local militias could adequately enhance consulate security, a conclusion that was obviously wrong. But the congressman sees another troubling reason as to why the administration rejected calls for security upgrade. "The administration has been trying to downplay the threat of radical Islam for the last few years. The president can't even get those words out of his mouth, radical Islamic terrorists," said Rohrabacher. "They've been excusing every one of these actions as something else other than radical Islamic terrorism. You have a mindset in the administration of minimizing the danger, and perhaps that had something to do with her decision as to having a lower level of security than was necessary." As for the administration's explanation of the attack to the American people, Rohrabacher says United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice blatantly misled the American people by claiming several days after the attack that an internet video was responsible for inciting the attacks. "You got the ambassador to the United Nations out there saying something that is factually not true six days after it was clear to the CIA...that it was a terrorist group and not a movie rage that resulted in the deaths of our diplomatic personnel," said Rohrabacher. While Rohrabacher finds Rice's conduct unacceptable, he aims far more blame at President Obama. "It was also the president himself who kept, over and over again, talking about this movie rage and how we need to be more sensitive," he said. "Meaning blaming us, blaming the United States, blaming us for having freedom of speech so somebody could make a film, that somebody else was upset about." Nonetheless, Rohrabacher is among some 100 House members to sign a letter to President Obama strongly urging him not to nominate Rice as the next Secretary of State. "Rice was a good soldier. She was going along. What we don't need are good soldiers who will go along if the American people are being lied to," he said. The congressman is also deeply troubled by the conduct of former CIA Director David Petraeus, in that Petraeus has now offered two very different stories about his assessment of the Benghazi attacks. "What's going on with Petraeus is mighty peculiar and there's a lot of questions there," said Rohrabacher. "This man changed his testimony between the first time he testified and the second time. During the middle there, he was kicked out of the CIA and we found out that people were keeping a secret dossier on his private life. There's a lot of bad implications to that we need to tie down and investigate." |
| UN, Obama Target Gun Rights |
| Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:26:42 EST The day after President Obama was re-elected, his administration acted to jumpstart a United Nations treaty that critics say takes direct aim at second amendment freedoms here in the U.S. Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly is pushing House legislation to demand the president reject any efforts at the United Nations or anywhere else to infringe on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. The House doesn't have any real jurisdiction on the issue as the Senate gives the final word on treaties, but Kelly says raising public awareness is critical. "Our ability to keep and bear arms is constantly under attack," said Kelly. "Our second amendment is constantly under attack by an administration that uses this wordsmithing and this constant massaging and spinning." Kelly is referring to what he sees as a regular Obama administration habit of insisting legislation and regulations are not going to do what critics fear, but an actual reading of administration policy shows the exact opposite. At issue is the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. It's stated purpose is to crack down on the proliferation of weapons, but critics like Kelly see it as a means of targeting U.S. gun rights and stopping us from arming our allies. Supporters of the treaty say Americans won't be impacted at all by the treaty because nothing coming from the UN can trump the U.S. Constitution. Kelly says that provides him no comfort. "I just look at the last four years," said Kelly. "Anybody that's buying that, I've got a great piece of land for them in some swamp somewhere. I have lost faith and trust in this administration." The specter of being blocked by a UN treaty from aiding and arming friends like Taiwan and Israel is horrifying to Kelly. He says that creates all sorts of problems because nations won't be able to count on us - a problem he sees in abundance even before the final vote on the treaty now scheduled for March. "Whenever you start to lose your ability to protect yourself , whenever you lose your ability to trade arms with your friends, with your allies, then they begin to lose faith in you," said Kelly. "It breaks down a very delicate relationship that is very strained right now. We've sent so many mixed messages to the world as to who we are and where we're going to be." Kelly urges citizen action now - even before the UN vote - by aggressively lobbying the White House to back away from this treaty and putting pressure on senators to reject the plan if it ever gets there. "This is critical for us as a nation," he said. "I don't want anybody tramping on our second amendment rights." |
| Rolling Kidney Stones |
| Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:57:36 EST Even after 50 years of performing, the Rolling Stones are still not done. They are heading out on another new tour. The Capitol Steps believe this longevity is impressive but that it also requires some Stones classics to be slightly rewritten. Our guest is Steps Co-Founder Elaina Newport. |
| Sen. Paul and the Fiscal Cliff |
| Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:39:57 EST Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says tax hikes will stifle growth but tax and entitlement reforms and major spending cuts could go a long way to putting our fiscal house back in order. Sen. Paul says both parties need to give up some "sacred cows" to make progress on reform. In the short term, however, he fears the Republicans will give in on raising taxes on wealthy Americans and small businesses to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. "The disconcerting thing is you're now hearing Republicans who are saying, and even conservatives saying, 'Well, if taxes are going to go up two trillion at the end of the year if we do nothing, anything less than two trillion is really a tax increase. It's a tax reduction,'" said Paul. "We had someone at one of our caucus meetings just the other day say, 'Why don't we raise $750 billion in taxes but we'll call it a tax cut because if we do nothing and all the tax cuts expire, taxes go up by two trillion.' Now only in Washington can you come up with math that says, 'We're going to raise taxes by a trillion dollars over what they are now but we're going to call it a trillion dollar tax cut.'" In addition to the fuzzy math, Paul says the exchange shows that Republicans are already acting like the tax cuts the Obama administration wants are all but a done deal. "My fear is the dam is cracking and that many people, once they accept the idea that any kind of tax increase short of the tax increase that will occur when the Bush-era rates expire is not really a tax increase - that sort of convoluted logic is going to lead us to a really bad outcome. The people who will suffer for this are the people trying to find work. It's the people who are unemployed or underemployed, kids getting out of college. You want more money in the hands of those who create jobs. You do not want more money in the hands of your politicians. It will be wasted, squandered and counterproductive if you send it to Washington." Sen. Paul is a staunch opponent of raising marginal tax rates on anyone. "I don't think it's good for the economy to squeeze more revenue out of it and send it to Washington," he said. " I think the best way to stimulate the economy is to leave more money in Kentucky, Ohio, Florida. Leave more money with the people who earned it. They will spend it more wisely." The senator says this debate boils down to simple economic truths. "(Milton) Friedman often said that nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as they spend their own, or as frugally," said Paul. "The private economy is the productive economy. That's where jobs come from. Government jobs are paid for when the private economy is growing. The private economy is stagnant, so the last thing you'd want to do is squeeze more money out of the private economy. What you want to do is leave more money in. So it's precisely the opposite of what we should do right now." Instead of tax increases, Sen. Paul believes much of the fiscal dysfunction in Washington can be addressed through intelligent spending cuts and tax reform. When it comes to spending, Paul says both sides have to be ready to give a little. "I think the compromise is both Republicans and Democrats giving up on some of their sacred cows and admitting that spending could be reduced across the board," said Paul. "That also means looking at entitlements. Entitlements are two-thirds of the budget and they're squeezing out all other spending. You have to reform entitlements or you can't balance the budget and you can't live within your means. So we do need to look at ways to save Social Security and Medicare. That means there will be changes." If entitlements are the "sacred cows" of Democrats, Sen. Paul points to defense spending as an area where the GOP needs to give some ground. "There is a certain bit of irony in that many of the folks that are running around caterwauling, their heads are exploding because the military spending might go down. They all voted for it," said Paul. "I didn't even vote for the military sequester, but the people who did vote for the military sequester are now the loudest ones saying we can't cut the military." Sen. Paul reiterated he is not a supporter of the sequester but he contends the scheduled cuts would not be as devastating as some in his party allege. "It's $600 billion in cuts to proposed increases in spending," said Paul. "If you look at spending in the military over the ten years, even with the sequester, military spending will be higher in ten years than it is now. I won't argue that there's not a pretty significant and steep cut in the first year. But would I would argue is that military spending has doubled in the last 10 years. Our military spending is greater than all of our NATO allies combined. Our military spending is greater than all of the next 14 in line combined. So really we are spending quite a bit." Sen. Paul takes a pretty aggressive path towards balancing the budget. His recent plan calls for the books to balance within five years, compared to a 28-40 year span in the House budget authored by Paul Ryan. But as for the current standoff, Sen. Paul is not optimistic things will end in a way that benefits the country. In fact, he thinks it will be resolved the way most things are as a major deadline approaches - through a massive bill. "I fully predict that some big, huge package, stuffed full with everything you can imagine that's coming to the end," he said. "It's not just this. There's probably ten other items. I believe they'll all be stuffed into a very unsightly package and that it'll pass." |
| 'Declaration of War' |
| Thu, 15 Nov 2012 11:39:34 EST Hamas rockets aimed at Tel Aviv is tantamount to a declaration of war from the terrorist group and Israel will do whatever is necessary to protect its people and remove the threat, according to retired Israeli Brigadier General Elihu Ben-Onn. On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Forces targeted and killed Ahmed Jabari, the militant leader of Hamas. In response, Hamas is launching even more rockets - this time into the suburbs of Tel Aviv. "Absolutely this is a declaration of war by those bloody Muslim radical terrorists, Hamas, Palestinian terrorists. That's a new situation in the Middle East," said Gen. Ben-Onn. The threat of rockets fired from Gaza reaching the Tel Aviv area is only a recent one. Gen. Ben-Onn says Hamas has expanded its range thanks to weapons from another threat to Israel. "We know that those terrorists in the last two, three years got some ammunition and missiles and rockets from Iran," he said, noting that some components are coming through Lebanon and Sudan and give Hamas the possibility to enhance and enlarge the range of the missiles. Gen. Ben-Onn says when Israel left Gaza voluntarily in 2005, militant rockets had a range of only five kilometers. In the subsequent seven years, Hamas has acquired rockets and missiles that increased the range to 10 miles and now they can reach targets 30 miles away. Ben-Onn supported the controversial decision by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to unilaterally leave Gaza seven years ago as a gesture toward peace. The general now says that didn't move the peace process forward. It only exposed the true intentions of the Palestinians. "The conclusion is very clear," said Ben-Onn. "If you give territory to terrorists, like other criminals, you cannot trust them. Hamas keeps saying Israel has no right to live in this area, 'we do not recognize your existence. You should leave the state of Israel.'" Gen. Ben-Onn says there is a distinct difference between the rhetoric and levels of radicalism between Palestinians in Gaza led by Hamas and those in the West Bank represented by Fatah. Another wildcard in this clash between Israel and Hamas is the role of the new Egyptian government ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Gen. Ben-Onn says the relationship between Israel and Egypt has definitely changed, but he's convinced Egypt won't do anything radical in this conflict because of it's reliance on American military aid and other foreign aid. |
| Escape from North Korea |
| Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:54:50 EST North Korea routinely ranks at the top of lists of the world's nations in terms of most repression, least open to the rest of the world and greatest persecutor of Christians. Any disobedience to the communist regime is dealt with very harshly, yet the dire conditions motivate many there to attempt an escape. Former Wall Street Journal Deputy Editorial Page Editor Melanie Kirkpatrick has studied the stories of those with the courage to lave for a better life. Her new book on the subject is "Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad." Kirkpatrick says being caught trying to escape results in horrific imprisonment for the the offender and usually all of his immediate family. Nonetheless, many try to get out of the country - either by paying off guards at the Chinese border or sneaking across on their own. But once they're in China the challenges really begin. "China's policy is to track down North Koreans, arrest them and send them back to North Korea," said Kirkpatrick. "So once they reach relative safety in China, then that's when the underground railroad kicks in and they need help to help them make their way across China and eventually to South Korea." So knowing what to do and where to go after getting into China is critical. Kirkpatrick says most escapees are desperately looking for one thing. "The first thing a North Korean learns when he gets to China is to find a Christian," she said. "Many of the people I interviewed told me that the advice they were given was to look for a building with a cross on it, that is a church. If a North Korean is lucky enough to hook up with a local Chinese Christian, that person is likely to help him. Christians are really the only people in China who are willing to help the North Koreans." Once that contact is made, the North Korean can be introduced to one of two networks that will help them get to South Korea - human traffickers who will take them to South Korea for a hefty fee or a network of South Korean and American Christians who are in China for the sole purpose of helping North Koreans escape their brutal homeland. In the Christian network, Kirkpatrick says people are shuttled from one safe house to another, until the North Koreans can find a South Korean consular office in Southeast Asia and apply for asylum. Women want to escape North Korea just as much as the men do and some of them have opportunities to go to China as arranged brides for Chinese men who can't find wives as a result of China's one-child policy. The women are not told this, however. Instead they are promised good jobs or the chance to visit distant relatives. Only when they arrive at the Chinese man's house are the North Korean women informed this is their new husband. "This is very, very sad. The woman is so desperate that she will agree to a 'marriage' with a Chinese man," said Kirkpatrick. "Sometimes these marriages work out and the women are happy to be there. They don't want to risk leaving China on the underground railroad." But Kirkpatrick says those are the rare exceptions. Normally, this new arrangement is just the start of another nightmare. "Many other times, there are terrible situations," she said. "The women may have children in both countries, North Korea and China...Once these women reach safety in South Korea, one of the first things they do is start saving their money to try to get their children out of China or North Korea. It's very, very sad." There's another surprising group looking to escape the clutches of the communist regime in North Korea - the South Koreans still being held as prisoners 60 years after the end of the Korean War. "The South Korean government estimates that there are around 500 South Koreans who are still being held captive from the Korean War," said Kirkpatrick. "These men of course are now very elderly...I uncovered a secret network that since the late 90s has been helping get these old soldiers out of North Korea, to China and then on to safety back home in South Korea where they are of course treated like returning heroes. There about a hundred of them, so far, who have made their way back to South Korea." |
| Petraeus 'Sold Out' at CIA |
| Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:53:01 EST David Petraeus may have resigned last week as a result of personal failings, but his biggest mistakes were to back up a false Obama administration narrative on Benghazi and place himself in a position to be compromised. That's the conclusion of Wayne Simmons, who spent 27 years as part of an Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Group for the CIA. He is also the author of the new political thriller, "The Natanz Directive". "He sold out," said Simmons of the decision by Petraeus to publicly conclude a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Islamic YouTube video was responsible for the deadly attacks against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of four Americans. "I have met multiple, multiple times with Gen. Petraeus at the Pentagon," he said. "One of my biggest disappointments and certainly of my colleagues, our disappoint is because we absolutely are convinced that he sold out. And when I say 'sold out', he sold out to the administration (and) got himself tangled into this web." Simmons is convinced there is a whole lot more to come on this story. "I promise you there are going to be many more very powerful people embarrassed about what's getting ready to come out. This doesn't just happen with one guy," he said. Over the past few days, Petraeus associated have labored to state his affair with Paula Broadwell occurred after he left the U.S. Army and after he was confirmed as CIA Director. Simmons says the timing is irrelevant to him. He says Petraeus never should have let himself become compromised by this. "Everyone makes mistakes, but you cannot put yourself in a position to make this kind of monumental error and mistake and not have the same monumental repercussions come back that not only harm him (and) harm his family which is bad enough, but will absolutely put the national security interests of the United States at risk," said Simmons. He believes the intelligence operatives of our allies and enemies certainly knew about the Petraeus affair. Petraeus was almost universally respected as a military commander and strategist, but Simmons says the general was not the right fit at the CIA. "There are no tears being shed today for his resignation," said Simmons. "He's not an intelligence professional. He is a military professional." Simmons says the next director should definitely be an intelligence professional but he anticipates Obama nominating someone "out of left field". But the chaos over Benghazi and now this Petraeus scandal suggests to Simmons a stunning lack of national leadership. "This is absolutely indicative of what has been going on for four years around the world, in the military, in the intelligence community, in the State Department," said Simmons. "We are in shambles. And that is because of the lack of leadership coming out of the White House." |
| Super PACs |
| Fri, 9 Nov 2012 14:44:47 EST Tuesday's elections not only decided critical races around the country, but it also means the blizzard of political ads mercifully came to a stop. The Capitol Steps reflect upon the media onslaught in Super PACs. Our guest is Steps star Elaina Newport. |
| 'Beginning of the Death of America' |
| Fri, 9 Nov 2012 08:42:52 EST Tuesday's elections resulted in the re-election of President Obama, but they also brought the enshrinement of gay marriage in three states and the defeat of a traditional marriage amendment in a fourth. Voters in Maryland, Maine and Washington gave thumbs up to legalizing same-sex marriage and the people of Minnesota rejected a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have defined marriage in the Gopher State only as the union of one man and one woman. The results end a string of more than 30 states which approved traditional marriage amendments or voted down efforts to legalize gay marriage. Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver is one of the most prominent legal defenders of traditional marriage. He says the news from Tuesday is far more than a bad night for cultural conservatives. "An amazing thing, a disturbing thing happened on Tuesday. This was not just an election. This could be the beginning of the death of America," said Staver. "God has called us to be faithful and we have to be faithful. Everything that America believes, all of our values will be challenged over the next four years. We can't allow the America that we've inherited to simply go up in flames." Staver says he's fully aware that assessment may seem like an overreaction, but he insists the fears are well-founded. "Now somebody says that's a pretty radical statement. It's absolutely true," he said. "I'm not an alarmist. I'm a very optimistic individual, but we've got our work cut out for us and we've got to make sure that we really pray, that we really act and that on our watch this America that we love, the shining city on a hill continues to be so after another four years." Staver says the threats to this nation will come from countless directions. "What will take place over the next few years will be significant threats to our biblical and moral values, particularly marriage, abortion (and) religious liberty, not to even mention the economy, our national security, the defense of Israel, the Middle East, the rise of radical Islam," said Staver. "We are going to be on a very bumpy roller coaster over the next four years. We have to just simply remain faithful. We've got a country to save." As for where the marriage debate is headed, Staver says it is "significant" that traditional marriage forces came up short in all four states on Tuesday. He says the reason for that can be traced in part to the contest at the top of the ballot. "Over the last four years, this president, Obama, has tried to undermine the marriage laws. And in doing so, he has energized the same-sex agenda," said Staver, referring to Obama's Justice Department refusing to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and publicly stating his support for gay marriage. The definition of marriage will soon be before the U.S. Supreme Court, and which way the current court might rule is anyone's guess. Staver says the legal precedent is on the side of traditional marriage since 41 states have statutes or amendments defining the institution. "That says something about the culture and the public policy that the states have adopted," said Staver. "Plus we have the long history of tradition with regards to our constitutional jurisprudence that has never recognized same-sex marriage." But he admits a strong legal case does not necessarily guarantee victory. "On the other hand, you've got justices on the United States Supreme Court," he said. "We know irrespective of the law and the history, we got Roe v. Wade. They invented it out of thin cloth. And that's a problem." Staver expects a decision by June of 2013 on the definition of marriage stemming from legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act. There's another issue related to the court that could bring even more concern to cultural conservatives, and that's the composition of the court. Staver sees Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a likely retirement in the next four years but does not expect any of the five conservative or moderate justices to step down the bench. If one of them does leave, Staver says the impact will be immense. "If one of the other justices like Thomas or Scalia or Alito or Roberts or even Kennedy were to step down, then this president nominating a justice will literally change the direction of the court for the rest of our lifetime," said Staver. "So we've really got to pray for this Supreme Court. We have to be in serious prayer and repentance and be involved over the next four-plus years during this second term." Staver is bracing for major cultural battles in other areas as well, including the abortion provisions inside the Obama health laws that take effect next year. "In 2013, we will have a clash between religious freedom and this president's Obamacare policies," he said. "Will there be widespread disobedience by the Roman Catholic churches, by Protestant churches and by Protestant organizations and Christian businesses when they're forced to fund abortion? That's a line that many people just simply will not cross." Staver's concerns don't end there. He says political correctness, specifically the homosexual agenda, is invading every part of our government and will only intensify over the next four years. "At the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), he has appointed Chai Feldblum, who is someone who says that if the so-called lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) agenda collides with religious liberty, guess which one wins?" asked Staver. "The First Amendment free exercise of religion? No. The homosexual LGBT agenda. We're going to see those kind of things happen in the next four years." Staver says this not only will happen, it's been happening for four years. "We already know that he's hired, back in 2009, a czar essentially, to push the LGBT agenda in every one of the agencies," he said. "The FBI, the CIA, all the intelligence agencies...is being infiltrated with that kind of immorality, and that's just going to continue to escalate over the next four years." |
| Run on Principles, Fire Boehner |
| Thu, 8 Nov 2012 15:14:32 EST Mitt Romney should have embraced the Republican platform and the current Republican in leaders in Congress should step down from leadership as a result of their "massive failure", according to legendary conservative activist Richard Viguerie. Viguerie has been a fixture in the conservative movement for over 50 years, pioneered direct mail political advertising and is chairman of conservativehq.com. After great initial concern about Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee, Viguerie says the former Massachusetts governor did a good job of embracing conservative policies. But he says Romney needed to fully embrace the core values of the GOP. "Romney took good conservative positions. The problem is he did not follow through," said Viguerie. "Phyllis Schlafly says the Republican platform adopted in Tampa this past August was probably the most conservative platform ever. And I think that's probably true, but Romney did not run on the platform and the Republican Party did not run on the platform." Instead, Viguerie says Romney ran on his business record and his accomplishments in Massachusetts. Republicans are now doing a bit of reflection to figure what can be done better in future campaigns. Some conservatives insist their principles are fine but the marketing of conservatism needs some updating to appeal to a wider audience. Others say the GOP must take more moderate positions on issues ranging from gay marriage to amnesty to rape exceptions to the pro-life position. Viguerie says moving to the Left is never the right answer for conservatives. "The idea that conservatives need to abandon our principles and move left is nonsense," said Viguerie. "The way that we win elections and not just appeal to the base but to the American people is when we make the campaign about our issues, our views our values. Republicans never win national elections unless we nationalize the elections and present to the voters two dramatically different world views - a world view of a big, all-encompassing, powerful government versus a small government, individual responsibility, traditional values, lower taxes (and a) balanced budget." The current crop of Republican leaders in Congress has never impressed Viguerie, and he says Obama's re-election means the GOP needs new blood at the top. "What I would like to see from them is that they resign," he said, noting that in most governments party leaders step down in the wake of massive failures like Obama's re-election. "This president was just hanging on by his fingernails. Most people expected he would lose his re-election and he won a strong victory. The leadership of the party, including (Reince) Priebus at the Republican National Committee, Speaker Boehner and Leader Mitch McConnell and all the others, including John Cornyn of the Senate campaign committee, they all need to resign and bring some new leaders in there." However, Viguerie isn't holding his breath. "I don't expect that they will do this," he said, hoping for Tea Party challengers to the leaders in 2014. "They've been complicit in growing government - Boehner, Mitch McConnell and a lot of other Republican leaders. Today's Republican Party is not yesterday's Republican Party and they just can't continue to grow government and hold on to the levers of power they have at this time." |
| Allen Sprints to the Finish |
| Tue, 6 Nov 2012 14:19:56 EST With just hours left to vote in the battleground state of Virginia, former Senator George Allen is campaigning to the last moment in his effort to defeat former Gov. Tim Kaine and win back the seat he lost in 2006. Allen is urging all Virginians to head to the polls but suggests that common sense should convince people to pick him to serve in Washington. "I feel that anybody who pays taxes, works for a living or lost a job, anybody who drives a car or uses electricity or anybody who believes health care decisions ought to be made by doctors and patients rather than by a panel in Washington should be on our side," said Allen Tuesday afternoon while on the road to Richmond. "Virginians are going to make a decision about the future of our country. I'm hopeful and optimistic that they'll want our country ascending once again." Allen says there are several major issues on which he and Kaine differ strongly, including Allen's passion to lift restrictions on coal production and offshore energy exploration while Kaine has been less committed on that front. Allen says there are also huge differences on defense spending and taxes. In a defense-heavy state like Virginia, Allen says pushing a trillion dollars in cuts for national security spending is a terrible idea. "A big difference with my opponent are these devastating defense cuts," said Allen. " He continues to say that this sequestration deal is the right thing to do and there's over 200,000 defense-related jobs and technology jobs at risk in Virginia and obviously our military readiness is going to be harmed from it." The GOP nominee also blasts Kaine for pushing tax hikes on the wealthy to fight the nation's huge deficits. "Raising taxes will only make our economy weaker and there will be more job losses," said Allen. "What we need to do is have a balanced approach and one of the best ways to raise revenues is with a vibrant, strong economy." One of Kaine's most frequent campaign strategies is to portray himself as someone who reaches across the aisle and works well with others to get things done in the interest of all Virginians and all Americans. Kaine contends Allen's record is one of partisanship, but Allen says the facts prove otherwise. "I'm the only candidate who has actually produced results working with a Democratic majority in the state legislature when I was governor," said Allen, who served as the commonwealth's chief executive from 1994-1998. "We cut taxes, we froze college tuition, we abolished a lenient, dishonest parole system, put in 'truth in sentencing' and over 300,000 net new jobs were created. When Tim was governor, he spent his last year in the most partisan job in America as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, advocating so many of these initiatives that are hurting Virginia. In fact, Democrats and Republicans voted against his massive tax increases." Allen says Virginia lost 100,000 jobs while Kaine was governor between 2006-2010. Allen has run statewide three times in the past and this is his third senate race. He says he is seeing energy and enthusiasm like never before. "We do see much more enthusiasm on our side," he said. "People do recognize that our children and grandchildren aren't going to have the same opportunities that we had growing up if America continues down this dismal path with diminished opportunities." Polls in Virginia are open until 7 p.m. Eastern Time. |
| Who's Counting? |
| Tue, 6 Nov 2012 13:23:37 EST Polls were only open for a couple of hours when the first allegations of voter suppression and intimidation came in from Philadelphia. Whether or not those irregularities have an impact on today's elections is yet to be seen, but election experts already see many avenues for cheating in our current system. John Fund writes for National Review Online and is author of the new book, "Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk." He says America's system is an embarrassment. "We have the sloppiest election system of any industrialized democracy," said Fund. "The Pew Research Center, which is a non-partisan group, says one out of eight of our voter registrations are either invalid or contain major errors. That's a problem. They also say we have two million dead people on the voter rolls. Look, I believe the dead deserve honor and respect, but they don't deserve representation without respiration." Fund says another major headache is the four million people registered in more than one state. He says the argument that no one actually votes in more than one state is a terrible excuse. "A Democratic congressional candidate in Maryland, the nominee of her party, a couple of months ago it was found she had voted in both Florida and Maryland," he said. "She was very civically engaged and she had to resign her position. We have a lot of underbrush, and when you have underbrush you can have fires and I fear we could have a fraud fire." Several states have recently attempted to secure the vote by mandating photo identification to vote. The idea has been approved in some states and is wildly popular across the country, but the Obama administration has led a fight to block the new laws, claiming they suppress the vote and disenfranchise minorities and the poor. Fund says the obstruction from Washington goes even further. "In Florida there was an effort to get non-citizens off the rolls," he said. "We discovered (this) through the work of an NBC News affiliate in Ft. Myers, Florida. They went to their county jury records and they found that hundreds of people had claimed that they couldn't serve on a jury because they were not citizens. But they were registered to vote and in some cases actually voted. They went to the Obama Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security and said 'You have the best lists of foreigners living in the country both legally and illegally. Please give us the names so we can cross-reference it with our voter registration rolls.' The Justice Department refused and they spent ten months trying to get them. Finally, when they took them to court and they were sure to lose in court, the Obama administration finally turned over the records." In another case, Fund says the Bush administration was trying to clean up the voter rolls in a Missouri county where the number of registered voters exceeded the number of adults over 18 years of age. The Obama administration quickly dropped the case shortly after coming into office. For those who say voter fraud could happen but isn't a real concern because it doesn't happen, Fund says to look no further than the Project Veritas videos showing a young white man easily getting handed the ballot for Attorney General Eric Holder or others being handed ballots in the names of dead people. Shoplifting is the analogy Fund likes to use to warn about voter fraud. He says if you have no posted warnings about shoplifting and no video surveillance then you are encouraging shoplifting - and the same goes for voter fraud. And just as simple safeguards help deter shoplifters, the same goes for those looking to create mischief in the electoral system. |
| A Record of Destruction |
| Mon, 5 Nov 2012 15:43:59 EST President Obama's re-election campaign theme is "Forward" but Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe says Obama has purposefully spent the past four years destroying every institution that makes America great and making life miserable for American businesses of all kinds. Inhofe says people from his state constantly tell him they feel targeted by government regulations, and he used energy as a prime example. "They have this war on fossil fuels," said Inhofe. "He's doing everything to kill domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal. This is something that is just un-American." Inhofe says the track record is similar on defense. "In his first budget, he destroyed our only fifth generation fighter (the F-22), he destroyed our lift capacity (the C-17), he destroyed our future combat system, he destroyed our Poland operation to stop missiles from coming from Iran to the United States," he said. Obama is also guilty of openly ignoring federal laws - particularly when it could damage his electoral chances. "Not long ago I enumerated eight really massive regulations that would put America out of business," said Inhofe, noting that Obama has been silent on the impact of these regulations under after the election. "Legally, he was supposed to come out in terms of people, jobs and money of each regulation every six months. The due date was October 31. He just blatantly disrespected the law and did not do it." Inhofe noted that Obama violated the law by telling defense contractors not to give 60-day notices of layoffs to those in the defense industry who could very well be out of work if the major defense cuts proceed at scheduled. He says those notices should have gone out Nov. 2. The senator says businesses across the economy see the administration as a threat. "Every industry thinks they're being zeroed in on. If you're out productively employing people and making a living, he's against you," said Inhofe. Inhofe expects a clear victory for Mitt Romney on Tuesday, both in the Electoral College and in the popular vote. He also predicts a GOP majority in the Senate but is a bit more nervous about that. Inhofe says four huge energy-rich states have Democratic incumbents who ought to be fired for waging war on American energy through their votes, namely Pennsylvania's Bob Casey, Ohio's Sherrod Brown, Missouri's Claire McCaskill and Montana's Jon Tester. |
| Life In the Democratic Crosshairs |
| Fri, 2 Nov 2012 18:07:31 EST Democrats lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives and they are fiercely targeting GOP members in key swing districts. Michigan Rep. Dan Benishek won in 2010 after Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak retired rather than face the voters after providing the final boost for the Obama health care package. Benishek claimed the seat with a double-digit win over longtime Democratic state lawmaker Gary McDowell. But McDowell is back and he's got several well-funded special interests helping him out. Benishek is still confident of victory. "We're going to win," said Benishek. "It's a close race. There's a lot of outside groups getting involved. They want this seat back. They think they own it. I'm not a career politician. I'm a doctor and I'm just trying to do thisto make sure that our children have an opportunity for the same opportunities we had growing up. Benishek says the most pressing needs in Washington are to strip away burdensome regulation, bring certainty to the tax code and stop the rising cost of health care, which he says is only getting worse because of the Obama health care laws. He also says there is a world of difference between him and McDowell. "It's tough for businesses to flourish. Frankly, the number one issue to me is the economy and jobs," said Benishek. "Gary McDowell was part of the (former Gov. Jennifer) Granholm administration. He was in the state legislature. He voted for the Granholm stimulus. He voted for the Michigan business tax, which was a very onerous tax on business and drove companies into bankruptcy and out of the state. He doesn't really have a lot of ideas and his allies are just throwing a lot of negative campaign ads at me and we've had to respond. You know, it's been a brutal battle." Benishek and the new Republican House majority vowed to crack down on spending and repeal the Obama health plan. Neither has been accomplished, but Benishek says the GOP still has a strong record to run on will be in position to do big things if the election results turn out well for them. "We put a stop to Mr. Obama's agenda," he said. "In the first two years of the Obama administration, they passed a trillion dollar stimulus. They passed the health care law. Frankly, it allowed them to spend more the last two years. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to peel back the spending because we don't have the Senate of the White House. This is our opportunity to get those two houses and peel back some of the spending and ridiculous spending that this administration is putting forward." Benishek also blasts Obama for a lack of leadership, saying he's never been invited to meet with the president on anything and neither have most Republicans or even the vast majority of Democrats. The congressman also believes Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has a chance to carry Michigan. "Everywhere I go, people say the same thing that they think the president's policies have failed," said Benishek. "I haven't spoken to anyone that voted for Mr. McCain tha's going to vote for Mr. Obama but I know a lot of people that voted for Mr. Obama that say they're going to vote for Mr. Romney." |
| Mitt's Rap |
| Fri, 2 Nov 2012 17:22:39 EST Mitt Romney has a reputation for being a bit square, so the Capitol Steps try to show the more casual side of the GOP nominee. Our guest is Steps Co-Founder Elaina Newport. |
| 'Grasping at Anything' |
| Thu, 1 Nov 2012 16:52:18 EST Political figures from former Vice President Al Gore to Rep. Henry Waxman claim global warming is responsible for Hurricane Sandy and the havoc she wrought on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says his late endorsement of President Obama is largely because he believes Obama will do more to combat global warming and help avert storms like the one that just pounded his city. But while blaming man's impact on his environment may be the politically trendy explanation for the destructive storms from earlier this week, but climate expert Leighton Steward says the facts simply don't back up that argument. Steward is a geologist, climate adviser to former NASA astronauts and scientists critical of the agency for embracing the conventional wisdom on climate change and author of a book that breaks down the issues of global warming for the non-scientist. "I think they're grasping at anything that might be conceived as empirical evidence since they really have essentially none to back up their catastrophic forecasts," said Steward, who contends climate change activists are simply trying to instill fear in people. "You can scare a lot of people and scare a lot of money out of their pocket one way or another, and that's what they're doing. But the real evidence that you look at and what's happening with climate today and what has happened to climate over the years shows that carbon dioxide is not having that much of an effect on the climate." The alleged consensus of the scientific community is that human activity leads to greater emissions of carbon dioxide which leads to higher temperatures and more extreme climates. Steward says there's a major problem with that theory. "The earth has not warmed in 16 years," he said, noting that data comes from British scientists who are revered in the climate change movement. "All the while, (carbon dioxide) levels been rising, rapidly." So if climate change is not responsible for the devastating storm, what does Steward see as the culprit? He says Sandy was barely a Category 1 hurricane, but when she happened to collide with cold weather systems over the east coast, we got this disaster. Steward says evidence throughout history shows a general warming trend started in 1715, well before the industrial revolution. Steward also offers advice to the political and media personalities looking to turn this tragedy into a legislative victory. "Instead of our current administration wasting money trying to prevent Mother Nature from doing these natural occurring effects, they need to be thinking what they need to do when these impacts do hit us," said Steward, noting that tax dollars should be spent on burying power lines and raising seawalls. |
| Col. Perkins Shoots Back |
| Thu, 1 Nov 2012 15:56:18 EST Two-term Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly is under heavy fire for allegedly suggesting that time spent serving in local government better qualifies a person to serve in Congress than years of military service. The controversy stems from comments Connolly made at the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, where he touted his time serving in local government in Fairfax County, Virginia. "He's reacting to a comment that I made that you can't run for federal office on you local political record no matter how good that might be," said retired U.S. Army Col Chris Perkins, who is the Republican challenger to Connolly in this year's campaign. "It's less convenient to talk about your votes on Obamacare and your vote on sequestration - these big defense cuts." Connolly's comments at the Chamber of Commerce event were designed to defend his time in local government. But the congressman also took the opportunity to suggest his opponent has been invisible in his community. "I hope that (my) experience and that sweat equity that I've put in in elective life for the past 18 years - and before that for 15 years as a civic activist - will count for something," said Connolly at the event. "I hope you'll measure that against somebody who wore the uniform and honored his country and I honor him for that service. But in the 10 years since he retired, he hasn't shown up. He has no local credentials. In fact, more often than not, he hasn't voted." Perkins is not amused. "The more I realized how much this disenfranchises all veterans, it really got me annoyed," he said, noting the comments have fired up many voters in a district full of active duty personnel and veterans. Perkins notes that Connolly succeeded in getting a more favorable district when the lines were redrawn, but while the district skews more Democratic it also includes more people connected with the military. "What he did not factor in is that he brought in a number of veterans up in the Reston area and the Dumfries area down in the South. So, we have the highest density of veterans in the 11th district of Virginia. And they're mad." So what experience does Perkins bring to the race and potentially to Congress? "I moved here in 1991 when Uncle Sam sent me to Capitol Hill as a Congressional Fellow," he said. "So I've been here for the past 22 years." Perkins, a Green Beret and a longtime member of the Army's Special Forces, is also furious with Connolly for supporting major defense cuts that he says would greatly damage the economy in the district located just a few miles from the Pentagon and the nation's capital. "The biggest issue we're seeing right now is this sequestration issue," said Perkins. "The 11th district is number one hardest hit of all 435 districts if these defense cuts go forward. Certainly from a small business perspective and even the public sector employees who will be losing their jobs and the defense contractors, these defense cuts that Congressman Connolly has voted in favor of...is the number one issue and we've got to fix that. Chairman McKeon of the Armed Services Committee is going to do what he can to get me a slot on that committee so that I can help." Perkins says he would also be strong on reducing our deficit and debt, claiming he would only support an increase in the debt ceiling if real, specific cuts were spelled out. He says entitlements are the areas most ripe for cutting since they account for almost half of the federal spending. |
| 'This Election is About the Future' |
| Wed, 31 Oct 2012 15:09:15 EST The first female fighter pilot in combat is now immersed in a new battle - trying to win a tight Congressional race for the seat formerly held by Gabrielle Giffords. Martha McSally is a military pioneer. In addition to becoming the first female fighter pilot to see combat, she was also the first woman to command a fighter squadron. In addition, she also fought - and won - a battle against the Pentagon after the government initially ordered female service members to wear traditional Muslim dress when off base in Saudi Arabia. She was most recently serving in the national security industry in Europe when she decided to come home and run for office. "I care deeply about my country and our freedoms," said McSally. "I'm very concerned about the direction we're going, concerned about what's going on in Washington, D.C. I feel like we need leaders with moral courage and experience to sit down and solve the complex problems that are facing our nation right now. That's just not happening. They're failing. So I really felt this call to duty to step up and serve." McSally faces a tough challenge against incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Barber. Barber won a special election earlier this year to complete the term of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who resigned to focus on her recovery from horrific gunshot wounds. Barber is a former Giffords staffer, who is strongly endorsed by his former boss. McSally is sensitive to the emotions toward Rep. Giffords in the district but says those emotions willnot be a major factor in her race against Rep. Barber. "This election is about the future, who is the right person to represent the people of southern Arizona," said McSally. "We elect unique people. We're independent thinkers, and we've had a tradition. Whether it's Mo Udall, Jim Kolbe, Gabby Giffords, of electing people who are successful people who can think on their feet on their own right and represent the independent-minded people of southern Arizona. I complete that picture. Ron Barber is a staffer who completed her term. The choice is very clear." McSally is quick to point out that Barber's background proves he's not much of a leader. "He's been a lifelong bureaucrat," she says. "So you have a very clear contrast between a leader and a follower, a pioneer and a bureaucrat, a commander and a staffer." She says Barber's brief stint in Congress is more evidence that he's not much of a leader and simply does the will of Democratic leaders. "Eighty-nine percent of the time, he's just voting the line. He's a foot soldier. He's a follower, just doing what he's told" said McSally. She also accuses Barber of dragging out tired talking points that don't even apply to this campaign. "In an editorial board interview, while I'm sitting next to him, he said, 'The Republican Party is essentially a bunch of white guys with big money.' And I'm sitting next to him as a middle class woman who's a retired military officer. And I'm like, 'Ron, the talking point doesn't stick. This is just not helpful right now. You're throwing out the divisive rhetoric that is what's wrong with Washington, D.C.' He literally became a politician overnight." McSally says many issues prompted her to run, from a weak economy to mounting debt to international challenges. She would not offer many specifics on her economic positions, refusing to say whether she would oppose future increases in the debt ceiling. Instead, she says all of these issues require leadership and the determination to "knuckle down" to solve problems. She did get more specific on immigration reform, which is always a front-burner issues in southern Arizona. Once again, McSally touts her experience as a major asset compared to Rep. Barber. "It's a public safety issue. It's a national security issue," she said. "I've been serving for 26 years in the military all over the world. I understand these transnational threats and how we need to combat them. I understand how we need to use a combination of barriers and fences and manpower and sensors and airborne assets in order to actually have intelligence-driven operations to secure our border. I can provide that oversight to the Department of Homeland Security based on my experience and my leadership, and Ron Barber needs a staffer to prepare him on those issues because he doesn't have that experience." |
| Santorum Sees GOP Surge |
| Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:58:04 EST Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum believes Mitt Romney has the momentum heading into next week's elections and he's also defending embattled GOP Senate hopefuls Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin as they take heat for comments on rape and abortion. Santorum says there's no doubt Romney has the momentum in the race for the White House. "If I was playing poker and I had two hands to choose from, I think I'd take Gov. Romney's hand right now," said Santorum. "Key states that looked to be very squarely in the Obama camp are now very much in play like Pennsylvania, Minnesota for example, Wisconsin, all of those states are very much in play." Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania hasn't gone for the Republican nominee since 1988, but Santorum sees three factors that work in Romney's favor. He says the Obama "war" on energy and manufacturing is deeply unpopular in the state. Santorum says Romney is also doing better with voters in the Philadelphia suburbs, which is critical to victory. He also sees far less enthusiasm for Obama inside Philadelphia itself. Santorum was runner-up to Romney in the Republican primaries and at times the rhetoric between the two was very heated. However, he says he not only strongly prefers Romney over President Obama but is genuinely excited about the prospect of a Romney presidency. "We were concerned about the future of our country," Santorum said about his family's decision for him to seek the nomination this year. "We wanted to make sure that Barack Obama was not re-elected president. We felt we had to go out and do everything we felt we could do for our seven children and for future generations of Americans to make sure that we had a new president. Now we have an opportunity to have a new president and I'm very excited about that prospect. Gov. Romney's going to be light years better than Barack Obama on every front - everything from our national security to the handling of our economy and our fiscal problems to our culture. I'm excited about it. I think that a Romney presidency will be a marked improvement and a completely different direction than where President Obama is taking us." Santorum prides himself as being a strong conservative in all areas but is probably most closely associated with his culturally conservative views. He says it's a big mistake for the Republican establishment to think the party cannot appeal to independents and the base by holding strong convictions on traditional values. "Let's just look at Minnesota," said Santorum. "Who would've thought Minnesota would be anywhere close to being a toss-up state in this election. You know what happens to be going on in Minnesota that's making that the case? There's a marriage amendment on the ballot. Go back to 2004 when George Bush won Ohio. The reason he won Ohio? There was a marriage amendment on the ballot and it drove out a lot of turnout in areas where, frankly, Republicans need high turnout if they're going to win elections." Santorum says the media and party elites diminish the importance of values issues because they don't think they're important but he says regular Americans do place a high priority on those issues. He offers the same indictment of party officials and the mainstream media in their reaction to recent controversies over rape and abortion in two high-profile Senate campaigns. Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin is still struggling to make up ground after suggesting in August that women's bodies have natural mechanisms to prevent pregnancy in cases of "legitimate rape". Last week, Mourdock came under fire after a debate response in which he said children conceived during rape should have the right to life because God intended for that life to be created in that way. Santorum views those comments very differently. "Both of them, particularly in Todd Akin's case, was very inarticulate in the way he addressed it," said Santorum. "I've watched the Richard Mourdock comment repeatedly. I think any believer would understand exactly what he meant and what he said...which is that God doesn't make mistakes. God intends every human life that comes into being to have the opportunity for life. I think Todd Akin said a dumb thing. I think Richard Mourdock said what most believers believe. "We have a bunch of folks in the media who don't see the world that way, and are trying to make it into something that it's not. That to me was a real indication of how screwed up the media is that they focus three days of coverage on that while we are finding information about the president potentially knowing - it looks like he did know - what was going on in real time in Benghazi. He and the White House basically ordered our men in that embassy to to fend for themselves and not try to support them. That somehow is not a story, and someone stating a biblically-held world view as to God's intention for every life to have the opportunity to be born is somehow big new." While Santorum rejects Akin's statements on rape and pregnancy, he is still among the few high-profile Republicans actively assisting Akin's Senate bid. Both the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee refused to back Akin, even after he decided to stay in the race. "It's a double standard. The moral cultural issues are always the ones that the elites in our party tend to steer away from," said Santorum, noting that a candidate would never be pressured to resign for saying something strange about tax policy. "What Todd Akin said was stupid. He apologized for it, said he certainly misspoke in a way that certainly was offensive. But candidates, unfortunately, do that all the time. The question is did we apologize for it (and) did he make clear what his position is and the answer is yes on both fronts. It's time to move on and that's what I've done. Hopefully, the people of Missouri are good and decent people who understand that people make mistakes but know Todd Akin from 16 years in public life and know him to be a good and competent public servant and someone who has the strong ideas across the board on conservative principles will stand behind him, unlike the Republican establishment." Santorum is also the author of a new book, "American Patriots," in which he seeks to promote the American First principles that were the hallmark of his campaign. "The lack of understanding of who we are as a country is still shockingly low," he said. "What I wanted to do was write a book about who we are as Americans and that's what the overarching theme of the book is. But then I wanted to illustrate it with stories of ordinary people at the time of the Revolution who did in some cases ordinary things (and) in some cases extraordinary things but all combined to help us win our freedom." Santorum hopes the stories will motivate Americans to do ordinary and extraordinary things to protect our freedoms. |
| Senate Duel in the Desert |
| Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:41:28 EST Arizona is one of more than a dozen states where razor-close Senate races will determine the majority in the the next Congress. Six-term Rep. Jeff Flake is the Republican nominee against Democrat Richard Carmona in the contest to replace retiring GOP Sen. Jon Kyl. Flake says his record on spending, jobs and border security make him the better choice and he adds that Carmona's dishonesty is on full display in this contest. When it comes to the economy, Flake says he is the pro-growth candidate while Carmona is nothing more than a rubber stamp for Obamacare and Obama's proposed tax increases. "He has pretty much adopted the Obama agenda hook, line and sinker," said Flake of Carmona. "He said that he's OK with raising tax rates. Regulation that's coming down, he has no problem it seems with that. He hasn't spoken out against any of it." Flake is especially critical of Carmona's support for the Obama health plan, saying it's the biggest threat to jobs in the country. "He favored it when it passed. He favored it during this election. He said he will not repeal it," said Flake. "That is a huge job-killer. I talk to businessmen and businesswomen all the time. I talked to one last Friday (with) 44 employees. He's going to hire another four but not go beyond that because he can't hit the 50 threshold (when health penalties kick in for employers). You're finding that again and again and again." When it comes to spending, Flake says he'll put his record of fiscal discipline up against anyone. "We need more than ever somebody who is willing to stand up to whichever party is in power and say we've got to stop this overspending," said Flake. "And that's been my record in the House. I stood up, as it happened, against my own party for a number of years and I was punished for it. But ultimately we got rid of earmarks and that's a good thing. That's the kind of commitment we need in the Senate." Border security is a major issue in Arizona. Flake's position on immigration reform has evolved in recent years. He previously embraced a comprehensive solution that addressed border security at the same time as temporary worker programs. Flake now says that was the wrong approach. he says border security must be achieved before dealing with other issues. "The bottom line is nobody's going to trust the federal government to move ahead with the other elements, some of which we really need like a temporary worker plan, until we get better border security," said Flake. The big squabble in the campaign in the final stretch is over who the two Republican senators in the state want to win this race. Carmona, a former U.S. Surgeon General, has been airing ads showing Senator Kyl and Senator John McCain giving him glowing reviews. Flake says this is the height of dishonesty. "When Dr. Carmona was nominated for Surgeon General, they did what senators from the state of somebody who's nominated do," said Flake. "They testified on his behalf and said good things. What he's done is taken that footage, ten-year-old footage, and implies - in fact edits it carefully - so it sounds as if they're endorsing him for the Senate race. As you can imagine (Kyl and McCain) are quite upset about that as well they should be. They have endorsed me for this Senate race. They have not endorsed Dr. Carmona." Flake says a new TV ad featuring McCain and Kyl will soon be airing to set the record straight. |
| Don't Do What Europe Did |
| Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:35:41 EST The CEO of a major European bank says swelling the ranks of people dependent upon government may help to win elections but it sets nations on an irreversible decline into socialism. Lars Christiansen is CEO at Denmark-based Saxo bank, which has a strong presence in many areas of Europe. He says the hallmarks of socialism are evident throughout Europe and increasingly in the U.S.. "European socialism is a system whereby there's very generous entitlements, lot of social transfer payments (and) a tendency to victimize people so they go on social welfare instead of actually being active in the labor market," said Christensen. "The real risk is when too large a component of the total population are on social transfer systems they become self-sustaining and increase simply because a very large part of the voter base will have no interest in promoting free markets and liberty but will have much more direct interest in increasing the size of government and state and of the transfer payments that they benefit from." Christensen says he fears the U.S. is determined to go down the same path despite seeing what happens in the end. He says many U.S. politicians who have a "romanticized view" of the public services people think are free and the ever-growing number of entitlement programs. Hesays southern Europe is very far down this path, with Greece routinely teetering on the brink of insolvency and the likes of Spain and Italy heading closer to that chaos. But he says other areas of Europe are on the same road to failure. They just aren't as far down that road. "There's only about 35 percent of the population that works in the private sector, generating all the necessary wealth for the entire system," Christensen says of the people in his native Denmark. " As you can imagine in a system where 65 percent of the voters basically have an intrinsic interest in receiving more from the government. That's not a very healthy place to develop capitalist values and develop economic growth. It is not something to be envied. It is not something that is desirable. It's important that the U.S. don't go down that route." Denmark is nowhere near the debt crisis unfolding in Greece, but Christensen says that's due to a massive tax burden which reaches 49 percent of gross domestic product compared to 27 percent in the U.S. To pay for greater entitlement programs, income taxes are at 60 percent in Denmark, capital gains rates are at 42 percent, a 25 percent sales tax and paying ten dollars per gallon of gasoline. Christensen believes the upcoming elections will have a profound impact on the long term priorities of our nation, but he sees America with one major advantage that the other nations do not. "It's much more part of your nature to value freedom to value creativity to value toe American Dream. We don't have much of that in Europe," he said. |
| Return to Spenders |
| Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:56:33 EST Both the Obama and Romney campaigns are trying to convince voters they are the best choice and the other candidate is a risk people can't take. Obama likes to paint Romney as looking out for the wealthy, while Romney says another four years under Obama would look as bad as the past four years. In response to all this, the Capitol Steps bring back their 2009 favorite "Return to Spenders". |
| The Case for Another GOP House |
| Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:43:15 EST Republicans are trying to win back the White House and Senate this year but they are also making the case that voters should return them to the majority in the House of Representatives. Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House in 2009 and 2010. Voters did not give them strong reviews, greatly shrinking the Democratic edge in the Senate and handing the GOP a majority in the House with an historic 63-seat gain. Now the GOP is in the position of arguing for change while asking to stay on as the majority in the House. "The House voters gave us did its job," said National Republican Congressional Committee Deputy Chairman Greg Walden, the lone Republican congressman from Oregon. "We, each of the last two years, has passed a budget that puts America not only on the path to not only balancing the budget but paying off the debt." Walden says the House has also been very active in rolling back regulations that are harmful to small businesses and approved alternative spending cuts that would prevent huge reductions in military spending. All of those bills are awaiting Senate consideration that is unlikely to come if Democrats maintain the majority in the upper chamber. Walden says Republicans have ushered in responsibility after two years of Democrats spending recklessly and greatly expanding the size and role of government. "You do your job, you fix the problem, you move forward. That's what Speaker Boehner and the leadership in the House has tried to do, and even reached an agreement with the president that the president the next day walked away from" he said, referring to the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. "It's really frustrating on our part. We went there to govern. We're there to govern. We will govern effectively. But we're not just going to write blank checks to bankrupt the country. I mean that had to stop." Redrawn districts from the 2010 U.S. Census mean new boundaries and some states have added seats while others have lost them due to population shifts. Walden and the NRCC are predicting a GOP gain of 5-7 seats this cycle, which would bring the Republicans close to the huge majority Democrats enjoyed in the previous Congress. The biggest worries for the NRCC include redrawn districts in left-leaning states like Illinois, where freshmen Reps. Joe Walsh and Robert Dold are facing difficult re-election prospects. California could also be trouble as districts were radically redrawn and many longtime GOP members decided to retire. Walden says that change cuts both ways, and incumbent Democrats are now facing tough challenges there as well. Republicans are hoping additional seats in Texas and Florida will provide pick-up opportunities. New boundaries in North Carolina also suggest strong Republican gains. The presidential race is receiving the vast majority of media attention, but Walden is confident his party will win the highest-profile races. Those contests include Mia Love's campaign against Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson in Utah and the re-election efforts of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Florida Rep. Allen West. |
| PC Military Ruins Stellar Career |
| Tue, 23 Oct 2012 16:41:25 EST Military brass already under fire for embracing for embracing President Obama's repeal of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' and lashing out at an anti-Islamic filmmaker is now facing more heat for targeting a highly decorated officer for teaching an approved class on radical Islam. Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley is a 1994 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and has received commendations for exemplary service over nearly 20 years of service. However, Dooley's career is now in shambles because he was fired from his teaching position at the Joint Forces Staff College at National Defense University and received a negative Officer Evaluation Report. His offense was to teach a course on radical Islam that was approved by military brass years earlier, but their attitude changed when Muslim organizations complained about the class. "It was a course that had been going on at the National Defense University since 2004," said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan. "His superiors knew what the course was all about. The first time they evaluated him...as an instructor there, they rated him outstanding, indicated that he should be moved as quickly as possible to a command position." Thompson says Dooley was the most popular professor at National Defense University and students specifically requested this class. He says Dooley was never alerted to any problems with the class on radical Islam until Muslim groups complained and his military superiors suddenly punished him with no warning. "All at once, out of the blue, because of an October 2011 letter that was sent to the Department of Defense by 57 Muslim organizations saying, 'We want all material purged of anything that is offensive to Muslims or Islam and that any of the instructors that used such training materials should be disciplined.'" Thompson says instead of defending the course or even launching a fair investigation, the very top of the military's chain of command simply caved to the outside pressure. "It's a result of that letter that Gen. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came down, reached in and looked at that course because he got information from an individual that wasn't even enrolled in that class," said Thompson, who points out that Dempsey then held a televised news conference to slam the course and Lt. Col. Dooley without Dooley ever being notified of anything. "[Dempsey] publicly excoriated Lt. Col. Dooley, who had no opportunity to defend himself at that point," said Thompson. Dempsey also "indicated that what Lt. Col. Dooley did was offensive...unprofessional and stopped the teaching of that course, ordered another review of all courses at the National Defense University" because of those same complaints from Muslims. Dooley is now engaged in the first stage of a two-pronged effort to exonerate himself and restore his career. Right now, he is appealing his negative Officer Evaluation Review in the military legal system, but Thompson says that effort is unlikely to succeed since Gen. Dempsey is publicly on the record supporting the negative review. So Thompson and Dooley are preparing a federal lawsuit to reverse the negative review based on Dooley's free speech rights and the academic freedom provided through the university. Thompson says complaints about teachers or courses at National Defense University are normally handled by the provost. In this case the provost was never involved since General Dempsey acted so quickly. As deplorable as Thompson considers the Army's treatment of Lt. Col. Dooley, he believes the actions of Dempsey and others demonstrate a deeper problem that threatens all Americans. "Political correctness is ruining the effectiveness of our war fighting machine," he said. "If we cannot accurately identify who the enemy is to our own troops we will will ultimately lose that war." Exhibit 1 in Thompson's argument are the 2009 Ft. Hood shootings, in which Maj. Nidal Hassan killed 13 people and wounded dozens of others while shouting praises to Allah. "We had at the time knowledge of this major, American-born, who had gone off the reservation," said Thompson. "None of the officers above him wanted to say anything because they were afraid they may be branded as an islamophobe. The FBI didn't want to investigate...because they would not be considered culturally sensitive. As a result, American soldiers died and several were wounded and that's the kind of political correctness that's going to destroy the war-fighting ability of our combat soldiers. That's what's so dangerous about that." |
| 'This Is Such A Failure' |
| Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:07:09 EST Mitt Romney came across as a credible commander-in-chief but missed some chances to effectively criticize President Obama's foreign policy record, according to South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson. A member of both the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, Wilson was stunned that Romney didn't shine the spotlight on the September terrorist attack at our consulate in Benghazi and the evolving response by the Obama administration. "I believe it was (a missed opportunity)," said Wilson, noting that Romney was trying to come across less antagonistic than President Obama and respect the more civil tone that Americans expect during discussions of foreign affairs. "But I believe it was very legitimate if he had raised it and pursued it to point out this cover-up, the failure to protect our ambassador and out three other personnel there." Wilson contends the mess in Benghazi reflects deeper problems with Obama's foreign policy. "The American people should be concerned because this is symbolic of what I've been saying all along. By reducing the size of our military, the president is giving encouragement to people who carry signs. The signs are in English and they say 'Death of America,' 'Death to Israel.'" One of President Obama's goals in the debate was to make the case that our relationship with Israel remains strong and that he is being tough in confronting Iranian nuclear ambitions. Wilson isn't buying it, noting that Obama never visited Israel over the past four years and has failed to condemn incendiary comments from Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that refer to Israel as a temporary civilization. Defense spending was also front and center in the debate as Romney vowed not to cut defense spending and blasted Obama for planning a trillion dollars worth of cuts to the military over the next decade as a result of mandatory cuts triggered when the super committee failed to cut spending. Obama said this sequestration was not something he endorsed and promised it would not happen. He also mocked Romney for wanting to beef up the number of ships in our Navy, saying that times are changing and our forces have cut back on bayonets and horses as well. Wilson was not amused, slamming Obama for his conduct and warning that sequestration would devastate the military. "It was really sad that the president was taking a cheap shot. It was beneath what a president should do," said Wilson. "The president is wrong. It is very important we have the number of ships," he added, noting the threats posed by piracy the danger facing international commerce if we fail to maintain a strong Navy around the world. "I'm very proud of the presidential standing of Gov. Romney. He came across for a strong national defense. We know this works. It's called peace through strength." Most of all, Wilson says Romney's demeanor during the debate demonstrates that he has the temperament and judgment to be commander-in-chief. "Governor Romney comes across as a person that you can place your faith and trust in. I know that he would want the best for our military personnel, military families, veterans. This is so crucial to the freedoms we have." Wilson also lauded Romney for discussing the economy during the foreign policy debate and explaining why he believes a strong economy is the first toward a strong American presence in the world. The congressman predicts a Romney win in two weeks based on economic, energy and national security issues. There won't be any drama in Wilson's re-election effort. He's running unopposed in South Carolina's second district. |
| 'Their Careers Are on the Line' |
| Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:26:24 EST Chaplains are being forced to put aside their religious beliefs to perform same-sex ceremonies on military bases and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe says that needs to stop. Inhofe is the second highest ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and admits some chaplains have opted out but only with the understanding that their refusal to follow orders will mean the end of their careers. The senator considers the Navy the most hostile to the religious freedom of the chaplains. Inhofe says further frustration flows from the inability of active duty military to publicly disagree with their orders. "You won't find many active chaplains who will tell you the truth about this because you know what will happen to them if we do," Said Inhofe. "But you get the retired chaplains, I don't know of one exception that isn't outraged by this and saying that government can't come along and dictate the moral principles that they have always had - both before their current career and up to the present time." So who is demanding that chaplains check their scriptural bearings at the chapel door? Inhofe says military brass and civilian leaders at the Pentagon may be enforcing these policies, but he says responsibility lies in just one place. "It's the president," said Inhofe. "I keep hearing Democrats say, ' Well, this isn't what the Pentagon wants.' The Pentagon answers to the Commander-in-Chief. The Commander-in-Chief if the President of the United States. So he's the one responsible." In response to this pressure on the chaplains, Inhofe and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker are introducing the Military Religious Freedom Protection Act. "It stipulates and states specifically that chaplains shall not be ordered or required to perform any ceremony that is contrary to the moral principles or religious beliefs of the chaplain's faith group," said Inhofe. "It further says that property under the jurisdiction of (the defense department) shall not be used to perform a marriage or involving anything other than the union of one man and one woman." Inhofe says he knows for a fact that military brass don't like the way the military culture is trending, but they don't speak out publicly because of the chain of command. Inhofe concedes that following orders is a vital part of what makes our armed forces work effectively but he also advocates an expansion of their speech rights. "What I'd prefer is for these generals and high ranking officials to say publicly what they really fee land have the courage to do that," said Inhofe. "Then go ahead and do what they're commanded to do." |
| 'If I Tax A Rich Man' |
| Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:34:43 EST President Obama made it clear once again in Tuesday's debate that his top economic goal if re-elected would be to raise taxes on wealthy Americans. The Capitol Steps combine the president and musical theater to explain where that extra money would go. |
| D'Souza's Downfall |
| Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:11:46 EST World magazine is standing by its story that renowned Christian author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza shared a hotel room at an evangelical conference with a woman other than his wife. Earlier this week, the magazine reported that D'Souza attended and addressed a Christian apologetics conference in South Carolina in late September. He arrived with a woman named Denise Joseph, and D'Souza informed several people that the two were engaged. That raised eyebrows for some at the conference since they were under the impression D'Souza was still married to Dixie, his wife of 20 years. The report also indicated that D'Souza and Joseph shared a hotel room at the conference. The story reverberated around the evangelical and political worlds. The greatest fallout appears to be D'Souza's decision to resign as president of The King's College in New York City. Now, D'Souza is issuing a six-point rebuttal, challenging certain facts and accusing World editor Marvin Olasky of running the story for other reasons. World News Group Vice President Warren Smith says he wasn't sure the events involving D'Souza warranted publication, but ultimately he decided this was a newsworthy item. "When I discovered that Dinesh was in fact still married to his first wife, Dixie, and was introducing this woman as his fiancee, that...probably took us over the edge and helped us understand that this was probably a newsworthy story," said Smith. "It was obvious to us because we cover the evangelical world extensively that this was a highly unusual and irregular situation and in our judgment that caused it to rise to the level of being newsworthy." In his rebuttal, D'Souza says he was unaware that being engaged to someone while still legally married to someone else would be frowned upon at the conference. "I sought out advice about whether it is legal to be engaged prior to being divorced and I was informed that it is," said D'Souza in his statement. "Denise and I were trying to do the right thing. I had no idea that it is considered wrong in Christian circles to be engaged prior to being divorced, even though in a state of separation and in divorce proceedings." D'Souza and his wife have been separated for two years but he did not officially start divorce proceedings until earlier this month. Smith isn't swayed by that argument, saying the vast majority of evangelicals would consider D'Souza's relationship status "unusual" or even "improper". D'Souza's biggest complaint about the story is the assertion that he and Joseph spent the night in the same hotel room, an assertion World first learned from conference organizer Alex McFarland and later confirmed by Tony Beam, another conference leader. "We are not and have not been having an affair," said D'Souza in his statement. "(Warren) Smith did not even ask me about this. Instead, Smith apparently deployed conference organizer Alex McFarland to call and raise the issue with me. I clearly told McFarland that Denise and I stayed in separate rooms. I'm not sure whether McFarland is lying or Smith is lying, but one of them made up the quote attributed to me that we stayed in the same room but 'nothing happened.' This is pure libel." Smith contends the facts speak for themselves. "Dr. Beam confirmed that he took Dinesh and Denise to the Comfort Suites Hotel in Spartanburg, South Carolina, around 11:00 at night and he picked them up the next morning very very early to catch a flight," said Smith. "Tony (Beam) admitted that it is totally possible that sometime after 11:00 and before about 4:30 or five in the morning, whenever he picked them up, that one of them could have gone to another hotel and spent the night and come back sometime during the night. You can decide for yourself if that's a plausible explanation." Smith says D'Souza could produce receipts from the second hotel to back up his claim. He says a second room at the Comfort Suites wasn't possible since the facility was booked solid. Beyond the debate over the details of the story, D'Souza alleges World magazine was executing a vendetta against him over hostility that has persisted for two years. "Marvin Olasky, the editor of World, is the former provost of King's College," said D'Souza in his written rebuttal. "Olasky was on the search committee when I interviewed to be president, and he vehemently opposed my candidacy. Olasky publicly admitted that he was resigning his position as a consequence of my appointment. The reporter who wrote this story, Warren Smith, also used to work as a consultant for King's until I decided not to renew his contract." Smith says past differences did not drive this report. "This story was not motivated in any way, shape or form by any prior relationships that either I or Marvin Olasky had with The King's College and motivate 100 percent by Dinesh D'Souza's public behavior and our determination that public behavior was newsworthy," said Smith. "The was the primary, and I would even say the only, consideration for us moving forward with this story." |
| Defense Cuts Better Than No Cuts |
| Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:23:52 EST Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan voted against the 2011 debt ceiling deal that ultimately led to big mandatory spending cuts for the military, but he says the huge resulting cuts in defense spending ought to go forward. "The only thing worse than defense cuts are no cuts at all," he said. "I thought this was a bad deal that was put together. I opposed it, fought it every step of the way. The super committee, which was supposed to solve things to come up with actual cuts. It completely failed like many of us thought it would. And now the only scheduled cuts that are to take place in sequester, there's talk of suspending those. If that happens, then the only thing taxpayers will have gotten out of the deal last summer is $2.4 trillion more in debt." Jordan, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, says he does not want to see cuts this big inflicted upon our national security efforts. But he says the cuts have to start somewhere. "We're going to have to deal with spending," said Jordan. "I don't want to cut defense in this haphazard way, but I will tell you it's better to cut than not to do anything at all." Jordan also invoked the dire warning on debt from former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen. "As Admiral Mullen has said, the biggest threat to national security is the national debt. We've got to deal with it." The congressman believes spending cuts must be the answer to our debt crisis because he sees tax increases as the worst possible approach to a sputtering economy. Jordan would be open to finding cuts in other programs to lighten the reductions in defense spending. Don't look for that to happen. House Republicans have already approved that legislation, but Senate Democrats haven't touched it. "It's what we should do," said Jordan. "After all, we're supposed to spend your tax dollars on national defense. I have certainly supported that and voted for it and it sits over there in the United States Senate like so many other good pieces of legislation with Harry Reid doing nothing with it. So I hope that the Senate will find Jesus and do the right thing and pass that, and substitute the defense cuts with cuts elsewhere in government which is what we should do." Jordan believes there will be real progress in tackling our debt and deficits if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are elected next month. He says Romney's selection of Ryan proves this will be a top issue in his administration. Jordan also says they would have no choice. "We have to," said Jordan. "The facts are the facts. If we don't address it pretty quickly, we're going to have a debt crisis and the greatest nation in history will be in a situation similar to the countries in Europe that we've been reading about for the past couple of years." Jordan is optimistic Romney and Ryan will win. He says Romney dominated Tuesday's debate, especially on economic issues, because President Obama has an indefensible record. "President Obama's real record is a record of failure," said Jordan, noting issues ranging from taxes to regulation. "You can go to every major policy area and this administration's doing it wrong." |
| Minnesota's Marriage Fight |
| Tue, 16 Oct 2012 15:48:33 EST Traditional marriage is undefeated at the ballot box in the U.S. but the issue is before the voters in four more states next month. Three states will be deciding whether to legalize same sex marriage, while Minnesota residents will be asked to approve a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as only the union of one man and one woman. Right now, polls show support for the amendment just barely outpacing opposition. Minnesota for Marriage Communications Director Chuck Darrell says he's confident his state will defend traditional marriage. "Most Minnesotans understand that marriage is between a man and a woman," he said. "It's not simply about the love of any two adults. Kids need a mom and a dad and not just any two people that are committed to each other will do. Marriage is rooted in natural law. It's who we are." Darrell says this isn't about denying homosexuals personal choices but about making sure they don't force those choices on everyone else. "They can love whoever they want, but they don't have the right to tell everybody in Minnesota that they're going to redefine marriage and force same sex marriage on Minnesotans." Religious freedom and parental authority are also endangered, according to Darrell. He says the evidence from Canada and states that have legalized gay marriage shows tolerance for disagreement evaporating and parents being told they don't have a say in what their kids are taught. "Once same sex marriage is legalized then that is what the schools are forced to teach," said Darrell. "What we're seeing in other states is if parents object to it, if they want to opt their kids out of the class they've been told no. One father who objected was actually taken out of school in handcuffs and spent the night in jail. In Canada what we're hearing is that parents are being told you have no right to know what we're teaching your kids about marriage or when we're going to teach it. School bureaucrats are actually beginning to describe themselves as co-parents which is certainly usurping parental authority." Darrell says free speech is also on the line in this debate. He says traditional marriage supporters already feel intimidated to stay quiet about their beliefs and legalizing same sex marriage will only intensify that political correctness. He says the Canadian government is already telling homeschooling families and religious schools what they can and cannot teach about human sexuality. |
| Par for the Course |
| Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:58:41 EST Louisiana Sen. David Vitter is unloading on the Obama administration for once again trying to limit domestic energy production. The latest episode in this debate centers around the 23.5 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The energy industry and political leaders in both parties worked to open as much of the reserve as possible to exploration but the Department of the Interior agreed to allow exploration on just 11.5 million acres. "Unfortunately, this is very much par for the course," said Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who has been very critical of Obama's reluctance to approve domestic energy production. "This fits into a much broader pattern, and that is to back off all of the enormous and exciting opportunities we have for domestic energy production." Vitter adds that the administration is doing the same thing with respect to the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), as the Obama plan calls for half the production in the OCS as the previous five-year plan. "We're actually the single-most energy rich country in the world bar none," he said. "The problem is we take well over 90 percent of those resources and put them off limits like we're doing here." The senator says leaving 50 percent of the resources off limits is bad enough, but even the 11.5 million acres that have been green lighted may never be tapped because of endless litigation from environmental groups. "This isn't the end of the road," said Vitter. "This isn't as if we're even beginning to produce energy on that portion of it tomorrow." Vitter says Obama is missing a golden opportunity on two critical fronts and Mitt Romney is embracing energy as the key to the American economic comeback. "We're not just talking about energy and energy independence and Lord knows that's important enough on its own," he said. "But it's jobs, it's great jobs, great American jobs, high paying jobs and jobs which can't be outsourced by definition. You can't develop domestic U.S. energy from China or India." Vitter says a third benefit is reducing our national deficit, nothing that federal revenues from the energy industry is the nation's greatest source of income after federal income taxes. The senator also updated his frustrating fight to expand energy exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico after the Obama administration drastically curtailed activity following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. Vitter says the amount of work being done in the gulf today is just a fraction of what was happening before the explosion. "Lots of big rigs have left," he said. "and when one of these giant rigs moves to Africa or South America or the Middle East it's not coming back in three months." |
| Biden's Bad Form |
| Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:23:59 EST Polls showed America split on who won the vice presidential debate, but Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot agrees with much of the country that Vice President Joe Biden conducted himself beneath the dignity of his office for his frequent smirks, grins, laughs and interruptions. "It was juvenile, really," said Chabot. "In fact less than that because I would expect most young people and teenagers would act more responsible and be more respectful than he act last night. It was very, I think, off-putting for an awful lot of people. It's kind of scary to think that this guy is just a heartbeat away from the presidency itself." Chabot also slammed Biden for what he calls a continuing effort by the Obama administration to keep the truth of 9-11 terrorist attacks against our Libyan consulate from the American people. "It looks like a huge cover-up. I don't think there's any other word that you can use about it," said Chabot, noting that the facts now prove the administration explanation of the attacks has been proven false. "I thought Biden was very ineffective and just not believable in his defense of the administration." Chabot also lauded Ryan and slammed Biden over their differences on abortion and specifically the new administration mandate that all employers pay all costs for contraceptives, including the so-called morning after abortion pill. Chabot says Biden's contention that Catholic entities are not seeing their religious liberties eroded is obviously false since Catholic bishops around the nation are suing the federal government over the issue. The congressman also believes the Romney-Ryan ticket will ultimately win his home state of Ohio. Chabot says the reason Obama stays ahead in Ohio is because the new GOP governor and legislature have pursued pro-growth policies that have encouraged expansion of existing businesses and attracted new ones. He says Ohio's jobless rate has plunged a full point below the national rate and Obama is falsely taking credit for the drop. Chabot is also optimistic about his own race. He was defeated in 2008 after several terms in the House but won back the seat in 2010. |
| Just Can't Hide that Biden Guy |
| Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:01:03 EST The 2012 vice presidential debate is in the books and the Capitol Steps are still trying to figure out what we saw from Joe Biden Thursday night. Fortunately for the Steps, they've had a few years to evaluate the many stumbles and bizarre behavior of the man next in line for the presidency. Here's their ode the the VP, "Just Can't Hide that Biden Guy". |
| 'Paul Can Handle It' |
| Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:34:37 EST Thursday night is the only vice presidential debate of the 2012 presidential campaign, and the newest face in the race will be ready. That's the assessment from Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry about his House colleague, close friend and 1998 freshman classmate Paul Ryan. Terry says he is looking forward to this debate because he's well aware of Ryan's command of the most important issue of the day. "Paul really knows his stuff," said Terry. "He is an expert at budgets and numbers and tax policy. There's no doubt that people are going to look for him to win this debate." Terry admits a couple to factors could play to Vice President Joe Biden's advantage, including a heavy focus on foreign affairs. "Foreign policy is not an area that Paul is really engaged in," he said. "He knows it well enough. He attends all the classified briefings that we get. I'm sure they've worked with him, but it's one of those areas where that does fall to Joe Biden's expertise." The congressman says another advantage for Biden could be the third person on the stage. ABC's Martha Raddatz is the moderator and many on the right have suggested Raddatz has a conflict of interest because she hosted President Obama at her first wedding back in 1991. Ryan says he's not concerned about that but Terry isn't so sure. "I got to tell you I'm a little worried that (the moderator) is a friend of Barack Obama's and she's the foreign correspondent. They seem like they're going to be loading up on the foreign policy questions." Biden's habit of putting his foot in his mouth provides some reassurance for Rep. Terry. "Joe Biden is kind of like attending a NASCAR race," said Terry. "You just kind of sit there and wait for the wreck." Biden has promised to be more aggressive in this debate than Obama was in last week's first presidential debate. Terry says Rep. Ryan will be just fine in that environment. "He is ready for that," said Terry. "That's the other talent that Paul brings to this. He's gone into the lion's den and argued for these economic positions. He's already taken every shot possible that Joe Biden can bring to the table." Terry says he is sensing a definite surge in enthusiasm in his "classic swing district" surrounding Omaha. President Obama narrowly carried Terry's district in 2008 and picked up an extra electoral vote as a result. Terry predicts that won't happen this time around. |
| Affirmative Action & The Supremes |
| Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:12:14 EST The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in the latest battle over racial preferences in the college admissions process. The case at hand centers on Abigail Fisher, who was denied admission to the University of Texas but claims her grades and extra-curricular activities were far superior to those of students chosen ahead of her. Why? Fisher says it's because she is white and was a victim of the university's preference toward minority students. School leaders do not deny using race as a criterion but will not say how much of a factor that is in their admission decisions. Last decade, the high court ruled that race could play a factor in law school admissions but could not be awarded a specific point value. That decision stemmed from a case at the University of Michigan. Horace Cooper is Co-Chair of the Project 21 Black Leadership Council. He is also a former constitutional law professor and served as general counsel to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. He says the University of Texas deliberately thumbed its nose at the earlier court decision. "The University of Texas decided, even though the case law showed for law schools you were given some leeway but for undergraduates you weren't given that same leeway, decided to try it anyway and it is that the Supreme Court is going to be taking a look at," said Cooper. He is not certain which way the court will decide this case following today's oral arguments. He expects the verdict to fall along the usual lines, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the deciding vote. Cooper expects a bit of a mushy decision. He predicts Kennedy will "tell Texas that they shouldn't have adopted this policy but I still think he's going to allow for the concept of it to continue, at least in law schools," said Cooper. Mr. Cooper says the provisions put in place to prevent racial discrimination against blacks in the 1960s were absolutely necessary because qualified students were being denied access to higher education based on race. he says the same thing is now happening in the opposite direction. "This is social engineering," he said. "It's the same kind of social engineering that led to Jim Crow. Government thought it knew which racial groups should go to school and which racial groups should not. It was wrong then. It's wrong now." |
| Double Voting? No Problem! |
| Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:32:52 EST New Project Veritas videos show Obama campaign volunteers ready to assist in voter fraud by helping people cast ballots in multiple states. The bulk of the new video centers on the Organizing for America (OFA) office in Houston, as an undercover videographer tells regional field director Stephanie Caballero that wants to vote in both Texas and Florida. She claims she's all set to vote in Texas and is registered to vote in Florida but isn't sure how to get a Florida ballot. After some initial hesitation, Caballero not only laughs and calls the idea "cool" but she prints out a Florida absentee ballot request form and then advises the woman to play dumb if she gets caught voting in multiple states. "The director actually gave an out-of-state absentee ballot (request form) and actually encouraged her to lie, encouraged her to say she didn't know what she was doing when the director makes it pretty evident that she does know that it's illegal and she wants her not to get caught," said O'Keefe. "I think the expectation here is that she just says, 'No, you can't do that. I'm not going to help you with it,' not go ahead and encourage her to lie about it." Later the video shows men in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut approaching Obama campaign workers and specifically asking for multiple voter registration forms so they can vote in two different states. They meet no resistance. When others later claim to be Republicans simply wishing to register, the Obama campaign workers are very reluctant to part with "valuable" registration forms. "So that was an interesting distinction," said O'Keefe. "Say you want to commit fraid and you get all the forms you want, say that you just want to vote and the forms become valuable." He says this scenario played out in almost every encounter across the nation. O'Keefe has several more videos planned for release in the days to come. |
| 'Absolute Political Correctness' |
| Tue, 9 Oct 2012 14:17:13 EST California's new law banning any counseling that discourages acting on same-sex attractions is now facing an intense legal fight in federal court. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the ban last week, saying the idea of counseling people away from their homosexual inclinations ought to be relegated to the "dust bin of quackery". But Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver is gearing up for the impending legal battle. He says a Democratic state lawmaker proposed the bill after watching an MTV program that featured counseling that urged a person not to pursue their hormonal urges towards the same gender. Staver asserts the premise of the new law is unprecedented in it's assault on liberty. "This particular bill essentially says that no counseling at all to reduce or eliminate or even not to act on your same-sex attractions is not permissible effective January 1," said Staver. "The only kind of counseling that can be done is counseling that affirms or says it's okay to act on or continue to participate in your same-sex attractions. It's the first time in history that the government has come into counselors and said, 'You can counsel on this subject matter but you can only express this viewpoint.'" Staver notes that the law not only ties the hands of counselors but also patients who sincerely want this type of therapy and to be rid of unwanted homosexual attractions. He used one of his clients in this case as an example of why he believes the state is way off base. Staver says this young client "has had unwanted same-sex attractions, has had anxiety, self-esteem issue and identity issues and relationships with the family but now has gone into counseling" with noticeable results. "The family relationship is well on the way to being repaired," said Staver. "The anxiety level has ultimately been addressed and this person is appreciative of this counseling and wants to resolve his value system so that he does not act on same sex attractions that he has experienced. That is his right as a client. That is the right of a counselor to provide that type of counseling or refer to counseling that would help him. Under this new law, neither the clients nor the counselors can provide or receive that kind of counseling." Without a court injunction against the law, Staver says counselors will face a Catch-22. "If this law were to go into effect, the counselors the counselors that we represent and many, many others will face disciplinary matters no matter what," said Staver. "If they counsel someone that they're currently counseling or someone who seeks counseling they'll violate the law that goes into effect. If they don't counsel them, they don't refer them, they don't provide them alternative information, guess what? They violate the ethical codes." Staver firmly believes this is the latest alarming step along a very slippery cultural slope. "It's absolute political correctness and immoral behavior and immoral and just bankrupt thinking that has led to this," said Staver. "They are legislating a specific kind of morality and that morality is only that homosexuality is good and that same sex attractions are nothing to ultimately be resisted. Even if you don't want them, even if you don't want to act on them, so what? Too bad. You've got to be counseled to act on them anyway. That's just absurd. If anything is quackery it's the quackery of the California legislature and the governor that ultimately has the audacity and the hubris to think that they can interfere between a client and the counselor's relationship." Staver says he expects the injunction hearing to take place sometime in November because there needs to be a decision before the law takes effect in January. The legal action challenges an impending state law but Liberty Counsel is mounting this challenge in federal court. "It raises federal constitutional issues with regards to the right to the freedom of speech. We also mention the California state constitution, which gives frankly a broader protection of free speech rights than even does the federal one." |
| I Just Don't Know What We're Doing |
| Mon, 8 Oct 2012 16:24:49 EST Scores of U.S. troops have been killed by supposed allies within the Afghan military and police forces. These green-on-blue murders prompted the Pentagon to suspend joint patrols. Retired U.S. Marine Bing West has been embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan on many occasions and just returned from going on a series of patrols. He says there really isn't more that can be done to screen the Afghans going on these patrols so our current strategy seems pretty pointless. "I just don't know what we're doing anymore," said West. "If your degree of trust has gone away, I don't know what you're accomplishing when people tell me that we're partnering. If you think your partner may kill you, there's something wrong with this as a strategy." West says it's time to close up shop and let the Afghans fend for themselves. "We have come to the end of what we can do with our conventional troops in the field, said West. "We should quietly accelerate bringing them home. We should basically say to the Afghan leaders at every level, 'Look, we've had it with you as a country. We do not trust you. We believe many of you continue to be corrupt. And if you end up swinging from telephone poles, it's because you screwed up.'" West says troops are confused about the strategy in Afghanistan and there is a very real dread that the U.S. is just running out the clock until the withdrawal takes place in 2014. "President Obama should never, never have come out and said, 'Well I'm gonna send some troops in there but we're all leaving by 2014,'" said West. "Everyone knows the clock is ticking down and that changes what everybody does." West says Obama exited Iraq in a very bad way and we're seeing a repeat in Afghanistan. "I think President Obama did a great disservice to our country by leaving so abruptly from Iraq and causing chaos when he left that way and now saying he's going to do the same thing in Afghanistan," Said West. "I do believe that we have to leave but we don't need to trumpet it from the top of the roof." West suggests the morale of the troops is suffering as a result of the lack of direction from their leaders. He says he was asked to address the troops following his embed mission. Here's what he told them. "You have done your best for this country. You have volunteered and you have put your life on the line. And you can take enormous pride in what you did and for the rest of your life. When somebody says, 'Did you fight in Afghanistan?' you can say, 'Yes, I did.' And you've also had a heck of an adventure and you volunteered for it. That doesn't mean politically everything is always going to work out well. But we're used to life. We're used to things not working out exactly right. That doesn't mean that any of you cannot say, 'I did my job,' because you did do your job." |
| 'A Sacred Trust' |
| Mon, 8 Oct 2012 14:05:32 EST Two months ago, Missouri Rep. Todd Akin was riding high. He had just won a very competitive U.S. Senate primary and was comfortably ahead of embattled Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. About two weeks later, all of that changed when Akin took heavy fire for saying that women's bodies have a natural mechanism for preventing pregnancy in the case of "legitimate rape". That triggered a swing in the polls and prompted scores of Republicans to call for his withdrawal from the race. Ultimately, Akin decided to stay in the race. And despite the pressure, he says the decision was an easy one. "Many people in politics make the mistake of saying 'Can we win?' or 'How do we win?' instead of 'What's the right thing to do?' said Akin. My sense of this was it was really pretty straightforward. There had been eight people who'd been involved in the primary for about 16 months. When it was all done, Republicans in the state of Missouri selected who they wanted to run against Claire McCaskill. It turned out that it was me. " Akin says winning that primary carries a very special responsibility, regardless of controversy. "Now there's people that want me to step aside so they can appoint someone else, he said. "I don't really believe that it's even a moral thing for me to do. You've been given, in a sense, a sacred trust to try to take back the Senate for the Republicans. Akin says his initial instincts were confirmed a few days later when national Republican leaders asked him to drop out of the race, the same people who gave the cold shoulder to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in his Senate race against Charlie Crist in 2010 and who also tried to knock off Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul that same year. "I'm not going to play their game," said Akin. The people of our state chose me because of the beliefs that I have and what I have to offer. I'm not going to allow a couple of party bosses to chase somebody out and name who they wanted to replace him." Akin says his withdrawal would have triggered chaos as different camps jockeyed for their preferred candidate to be the new nominee - without the blessing of Republican voters in the state. He also asserts that he made the right decision, regardless of the outcome in November. Right now the race appears to be very tight. Akin cited two polls showing him ahead between one and three percentage points. Two other polls show Sen. McCaskill up five to six points. Akin insists that the uproar over his comments is not distracting him or the voters of Missouri. He acknowledges the media and Sen. McCaskill are attempting to keep the focus on his abortion comments but he says it's a tactic that won't work. "Claire McCaskill is going to try to make the race about all kinds of little things. It's a distraction to get away from how she voted. They want to make it about how (Akin) thinks or what he said or what somebody else thinks or what they said about what he thought that she thought that he said," mused Akin. "Anything but her voting record, which is just a disaster for the state of Missouri and a disaster for her politically." Akin says McCaskill has to answer being the deciding vote for the Obama health plan despite 71 percent of Missourians voting against it in a statewide referendum. Akin also slams McCaskill for voting for the stimulus plan, and in the process cutting programs for education and veterans while managing to insert a million dollars of taxpayer dollars for her family's business. Akin is not impressed by the drop in the national unemployment rate to 7.8 percent in September. "I don't know how anybody who really knows anything about business or our economy could be very impressed with where we are," said Akin. The congressman echoed the Romney campaign in pointing out the number does not calculate the millions of workers who have dropped out of the labor market because they can't find work. "There are policies that we have put in place and that Obama has built up over the last four years that are highly destructive to job creation," said Akin, citing the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world and an onslaught of federal regulations that have small business owners terrified. Akin believes he will win the senate race in four weeks for one overwhelming reason. " We have a senator who has gone to Washington, D.C. and scooped up a whole lot of Washington and brought it back to Missouri and dumped it all on us," said Akin. "You've got Obamacare, the stimulus and all the bailouts and all these other things. It seems to me that the exact opposite should be the job of a senator from Missouri. Let's take the common sense from Missouri and take it back to help the people in Washington." |
| The REAL First Debate |
| Fri, 5 Oct 2012 16:18:02 EST The political world is abuzz in the wake of Wednesday's first presidential debate, but most Americans are not aware of the first encounter between the two candidates a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, the Capitol Steps were there. |
| The Obamacare Fight Continues |
| Fri, 5 Oct 2012 14:47:51 EST The Supreme Court's decision to uphold the individual mandate within the Obama health care laws seemed to be the last word in a fierce legal fight. Think again. On Monday, the Supreme Court ordered the Justice Department to respond to a suit filed by Liberty Counsel on behalf of Liberty University. The school contends both the individual and employer mandates are unconstitutional on the grounds that they infringe upon the freedom of religious expression. The case was filed in March of 2010 on the very same day President Obama signed the bill into law. It's been stalled because a federal appeals court ruled that the suit could not proceed because no one had been penalized or taxed yet through the mandates. The recent Supreme Court decision essentially struck down that ruling. Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver says no court has ever ruled on the constitutionality of the employer mandate or the religious freedom concerns. Abortion funding is at the heart of the contention that the mandates violate the right to religious expression - something Staver says he saw right away but others didn't notice until the new government rules on mandatory contraception coverage. The Obama administration insists there is no taxpayer funding of abortion in the laws but Staver pinpoints why he believes that position is patently false. "It funds it in two ways," said Staver. "First all, for the individual, for the first time in history, it requires each individual to pay a particular fee and that goes directly into an abortion fund and that fund funds abortion. This fee doesn't go into a general fund, some of which funds other surgeries or medical treatment, some of which might fund abortion. No, this goes into a specific fund that funds abortion. (It's the) very first time in history you can trace the dollar to the actual abortion." Staver says that provision forces individuals and business leaders to subsidize something they vehemently oppose. "It requires religious employers, and other employers but certainly religious employers to also fund abortion as well," he said. And for Liberty University, a Christian university, and for others that's simply a line we can't cross. That is a direct collision with the free exercise of religion." Staver says an ultimate victory in this case could devastate Obamacare - especially if the individual mandate goes down. "It could ultimately make a big hole in the bottom of the Obamacare boat or completely torpedo it and sink it altogether." |
| Why Romney Won the Debate |
| Thu, 4 Oct 2012 16:44:09 EST Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says Mitt Romney won the debate because he had command of the facts and President Obama simply cannot defend his record. "In fairness to the president, it's easier to debate if you have got a strong record behind you and he just didn't have a whole to defend," said Gohmert. The congressman also said Romney proved he understood the energy industry by pointing out the plans Obama claims will clamp down on Big Oil will actually do very little to hurt the biggest firms but will crush scores of independent oil and gas producers. Gohnert is also not buying Obama's repeated accusations that Romney is far too vague on how he would address tax reform, repealing Obamacare and more. "Consider the source," says Gohmert. This "comes from a president who ran around the country spending millions and millions and millions of taxpayer dollars, flying around telling people to pass my bill right here, right now, right today. He didn't even have a bill." Some conservatives were a bit alarmed at the number of times Romney vowed not to cut certain government programs, including education. Gohmert says he hopes to convince Romney that federal cuts in education are OK and states can handle the job that they do best. |
| Momentum Changer |
| Thu, 4 Oct 2012 16:09:17 EST Mitt Romney dominated the first presidential debate and the change in momentum could be a huge boost to Republican congressional candidates, according to the man tasked with preserving and increasing the GOP majority in the House of Representatives. Texas Rep. Pete Sessions is chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He says Mitt Romney delivered a message in the debate that Americans have been waiting to hear. "We finally had someone stand up and say 'Mr. President, these things you've been saying simply are not true,'" said Sessions. "Not just about him as a candidate and not just about the tax code and not just about what Republicans stand for but really to say that the American people need someone who will lead to the very best." Sessions says the strong performance came at the perfect time for Republicans, who had been on their heels recently. "It really matters to members of Congress and those who are running as Republican candidates because we've had a down couple of weeks where momentum has not been going our way," he said. "The wind has shifted just like in a big football game when somebody comes out and scores big the rest of the team plays better. I think it's going to be an awesome next month as we go towards the election." As for the big picture on the House races, Sessions is standing by his August prediction of a 5-7 seat pickup for Republicans. However, he admits some tough decisions had to be made to pull funding away from races looking bad but he says Democrats are doing the same. Sessions dismisses criticisms from Obama that Romney's is far too vague on the details of plans ranging from tax reform to replacing Obamacare. He says if they emerge victorious in November, Republicans are committed to having a solid replacement plan in place when they launch the effort to repeal Obamacare. Republicans are also actively playing defense in the 2012 campaign since they've controlled the House for the past two years. Sessions is more than willing to compare the record of GOP leadership against the Democrats who came before and the ones still running the Senate. He says the House GOP has actually produced and passed a budget while the Senate hasn't done so in three years. Sessions also touts the Republicans for their transparency, noting that Speaker John Boehner and his team give members ample time to study legislation before votes while Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants frequently brought bills to the floor with no time for review. |
| Mugged |
| Wed, 3 Oct 2012 14:17:22 EST Syndicated columnist Ann Coulter says Democrats are guilty of waging racial demagoguery for nearly 50 years and have devastated the black community in the process. In her new book, "Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama," Coulter accuses Democrats of leading the fight for segregation and Jim Crow laws and then suddenly jumping in front of the civil rights parade when their previous approach was no longer politically beneficial. She says the shift led to many destructive trends, including white liberals excusing the criminal behavior of blacks and the media jumping to conclusions in their coverage of stories along racial lines. Coulter says this "coddling" by the liberal establishment was accepted by the general population until America watched "a mostly black jury acquit an obviously guilty black celebrity" in O.J. Simpson. At that point Coulter says "white America just said, 'That's it. The white guilt bank is shut down.'" She says that attitude persisted, despite the best efforts of liberals, until the rise of Barack Obama 12 years later. "Obama's candidacy brought us right back to the racial demagoguery of the '70s and '80s that was so detrimental to our country, to our cities to black neighborhoods in particular and to black advancement," said Coulter. And she says that "demagoguery" leads to accusations of racism against anyone with the temerity to criticize Obama. "If you're against Obamacare, if you're against the stimulus bill, if you don't support voting for Obama, you are a racist," said Coulter. "And liberals love, love, love calling other people racists. Everyone in America is racist except white liberals who are the truest friends a black person has ever had." Coulter also asserts that big government programs such as Lyndon Johnson's Great Society bear the lion's share of the blame for the swift implosion of the black family. She says black Americans were vulnerable to this because after a history of slavery and Jim Crow, many blacks were "by and large people starting at the bottom rung of society who have the farthest to advance. Instead of going through the hard knocks education of the Irish immigrants or Italian immigrants, liberals rush in to help and their help was to destroy the black family." Coulter didn't stop there. "The Great Society programs were more of a disaster for the black family, at least, than slavery. You had a strong tradition of marriage in the black family and what ruined it? Liberals helping, liberals helping, liberals ministering to black people - not because they care about black people. They care about government workers and solid Democratic voters." |
| A Criminal Lack of Transparency |
| Tue, 2 Oct 2012 15:01:11 EST In 2008, President Obama excoriated the Bush administration for its lack of transparency, and he vowed to lead the most open administration in U.S. history. Not only has that not materialized, but the Obama White House is among the most secretive in history and routinely breaks federal laws to keep damaging information from coming to light. Christopher Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute specializing in energy and environmental issues, although he studies other issues as well. He has filed scores of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to procure documents from the past three administrations. Horner says the Obama administration has routinely tried to squelch his requests by forwarding it to the wrong agencies, claiming he would have to pay huge fees for the documents to be processed or just flatly ignored. Several times, Horner has been forced to sue the government in order for the requests to be honored. As frustrating as that bureaucratic maze can be, Horner says the administration is also guilty of intentionally breaking the law. In his new book, "The Liberal War on Transparency," Horner details how multiple officials including former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina, conducted business on private email accounts so those communications would never end up on the public record. Messina, who is now manager of the Obama re-election effort, used a personal email account to negotiate with the drug industry and bring them on board the push to pass the Obama health plan in exchange for $4 billion in incentives. Horner says those emails were deleted despite federal law demanding that all government business be preserved and done through official means of communication. He says this is just the tip of the iceberg. "I've got an affidavit, which I reveal in the book for the first time, from an official in the government acknowledging that they've got essentially a cyber bonfire going on at all times in the administration," said Horner, who says the "bonfire" is tasked with "destroying records, using nongovernmental computers to access governmental servers. They've got this system rigged whereby that destroys all traces of the record on the government system and because they're using a private computer very deliberately there's no government computer you can then find the trace of the record on. If they did what they were supposed to do, you would leave these electronic footprints everywhere. It's a very organized government-wide systemic effort to avoid leaving any trails. The problem is that's against the law." |
| A 'Bump in the Road' to What? |
| Mon, 1 Oct 2012 16:02:57 EST Arabs for Israel Founder Nonie Darwish says President Obama's Middle East policy is a failure and it's been proven by the events of the past three weeks. Darwish says it's unthinkable that our consulate in Benghazi did not have enough security and that the Obama administration took 10 days to admit Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed in a terrorist attack. Obama called the murders a 'bump in the road' and Darwish wants to know, "A road to what?" She slams what she considers Obama's habit of apologizing to Muslims and is unclear on what we could possibly be apologizing for. She says Obama's United Nations speech scared her - especially his statement that "the future does not belong to those who slander of the prophet of Islam". Darwish says no religion should be above criticism and Obama's language reminds her of the repression inside her native Egypt. She also says the lack of media scrutiny for Obama policies reminds her of how the governments often control the media in the Middle East. Finally, Darwish says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a "brave man" in his defiance towards the Iranian nuclear program but she questions whether Israel can successfully stop the program without any help from the United States. She says it may already be too late to prevent a nuclear Iran. |
| Truth is #1 Enemy of Islam |
| Mon, 1 Oct 2012 15:49:20 EST Islamic countries indoctrinate children with hatred towards Israel and teach them Israel has no historic claim to the land or the city of Jerusalem. That's the basis for endless rage in the Arab Street against the Israelis, according to Nonie Darwish, founder of Arabs for Israel. Darwish shares her story of being born into a Muslim family in Egypt and being raised to hate Israel. She explains how coming to America and converting to Christianity opened her eyes to the truth about the Middle East and nation of Israel. Darwish says she wants to see Arabs and Israelis living side by side in peace but that cannot happen as long as "the number one enemy of Islam is the truth". Darwish says Muslims have failed to deal with reality for the past 1400 years and have irrationally loathed the Jewish people since they rejected Mohammed in the seventh century. |
| Time for a Democratic Exodus |
| Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:25:48 EST Democrats have been moving further and further away from the Judeo-Christian values that built our nation, and formally embracing gay marriage should be the step that triggers a mass exodus from the Democratic Party. That's the argument from Bishop E.W. Jackson, a longtime minister and a former candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia. Jackson was raised as a Democrat but left the party over cultural issues in 1980. At the time he considered it a personal decision and did not feel compelled to urge others to follow his example. In the intervening 32 years, however, Jackson says the Democrats have placed themselves increasingly at odds with scripture and a formal endorsement of gay marriage in the 2012 platform was the point of no return. Jackson says while there are many issues of concern in this campaign, Americans need to separate themselves from a party that "seems to have clearly committed itself to evil". The bishop is also appalled that Democrats and other supporters of the homosexual movement frequently compare it to the civil rights crusade for blacks in the 1950s and 1960s. He says race is a physiological characteristic and sexual orientation is a behavior that has been deemed sinful by God. "To equate, therefore, being black with sinful, wrong behavior is an insult to the black community," said Jackson. "I've talked with a lot of black folks across this country, all of whom sense and feel that insult but they just haven't had a platform to say anything about it." When reminded that Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have both endorsed gays serving openly in the military, Jackson makes clear that this is not a movement designed to enlist more Republicans but simply to send a message to the Democratic Party that its moral and cultural drift is unacceptable. He contends the stated moral principles of the GOP are far preferable to the Democrats but GOP candidates also have a tendency to veer away from those principles. |
| 'Greece' |
| Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:12:42 EST The turmoil over rampant debt in Greece and other nearly insolvent European nations is sparking new riots and tension over efforts to rein in excessive spending. Here in the U.S., the Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is warning that without greater fiscal discipline, our country is headed towards a Greek-like crisis. Always wanting to help, the Capitol Steps use the music of the hit musical "Grease" to educate us on the debt mess in Greece. |
| Pennsylvania Suddenly in Play |
| Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:40:21 EST For most of 2012, the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race was considered a yawner. Incumbent Democrat Bob Casey held a strong lead for months and was up by 20 points just a month ago. But four new polls are showing a much different story, as Republican challenger Tom Smith has now closed to as few as three points behind Casey. A businessman for 44 years, Smith says his biggest challenge was building name recognition and informing voters of the real Casey legacy. Smith refers to Casey as "Senator Zero" for his failure to pass one piece of legislation after nearly six years in office. But that doesn't mean Casey doesn't have a record to defend. Smith is pounding the senator over his support for raising the debt ceiling, dramatically increasing spending and providing the decisive vote for the Obama health care laws. The alleged Democratic "War on Coal" is high on the agenda for Smith as well. He says a resource-rich state like Pennsylvania could create countless jobs and be a major part of the nation becoming energy independent - if the federal government would just get out of the way. Smith further advocates shuttering the Department of Energy, contending it has utterly failed to achieve the purpose for which it was created more than 30 years ago. Smith expects his surge to continue in the race against Sen. Casey. While President Obama is expected to win the state, Smith points out that 2010 was a huge Republican year in the state and he expects 2012 to be more of the same. |
| 'A Free People's Suicide' |
| Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:27:42 EST Americans fought to win our freedom from Great Britain. We fought to preserve it in our Constitution. But now we're in danger of failing to sustain it as our nation drifts further away from what made us great. That's the thesis of the new book "A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future" by renowned spiritual and cultural author Os Guinness. Guinness contends America's greatness is underpinned by the three-legged stool of virtue, faith and freedom and all of those are eroding on this generation's watch. Guinness further asserts that the U.S. may only have five more years before our cultural decline is irreversible. He argues great leadership that clearly articulates what made America unique in world history must emerge and inspire our nation back to those principles. Sadly, Guinness does not see anyone poised to take on that role anytime soon, He further asserts that an instinctive cultural backlash against any notion of virtue or faith make the challenge even more difficult. Nonetheless, Guinness is optimistic that America can reverse course and restore our greatness. |
| Where's Our Free Speech? |
| Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:51:14 EST President Obama addressed the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. Obama paid tribute to murdered U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and continued to hail the Arab Spring, despite many of those same countries now aflame in deadly rioting. Two comments are drawing more attention than any others, however. After days of edging away from blaming most of the recent Mideast chaos on an obscure internet video critical to Mohammed, Obama again spent considerable time denouncing a video that he says spawned the outrage that led to scores of deaths, including those of American diplomats in Libya. The president later said the video was no justification for the violence and he defended America's right to free speech. But later in the address, Obama said "the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam". Mississippi Rep. Steve Palazzo is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He says Obama is coming "full circle" by once again denouncing the video at such great lengths. He also fired back on Obama's denunciation of any speech critical of Mohammed, saying that Americans are increasingly the ones being denied the right to free speech. He also slammed the administration for infringing upon the first amendment rights of our fighting men and women who are no longer allowed to share their faith. Palazzo also believes the venue for Obama's speech was appropriate. "I think it was definitely fitting that he did it at the UN", said Palazzo, "because like the UN, this administration has often relied on words that sounds good but they aren't backed up by any meaningful action or strength." Rep. Palazzo also scolds the president for planning to go forward with massive defense spending cuts at a precarious time in world events. Palazzo says responsible spending cuts and getting our economy going again will put our nation back on much better footing without gutting our military. |
| 'A Justice Department Gone Wild' |
| Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:14:11 EST On Wednesday, the inspector general for the Justice Department issued his report on Operation Fast & Furious. That's the gun walking operation that sent thousands of guns into the possession of Mexican drug cartels. Those guns were later shown to be used in the murders of hundreds of Mexicans and in the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The report placed blame with several different figures within the Justice Department, but frequently stated that critical information never made it to the desk of Attorney General. In June, Holder was held in contempt of Congress by the House of Representatives for failing to cooperate with the GOP-led investigation into Fast and Furious. Holder's defenders claim the report essentially clears him of wrongdoing, but his critics strongly disagree. Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold is a member of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, which conducted the Congressional investigation on this issue. Farenthold says Holder should have known what was happening during such a program and being unaware of the facts is not much of a defense. Farenthold also takes us inside two of his questions for the inspector general - namely whether the Obama administration was justified in invoking executive privilege to withhold documents from the House committee. Farenthold says if we're to believe neither Obama nor Holder even knew about Fast & Furious, then what communications could exist between them on this crisis? He also wants to know what political considerations are behind what the congressman sees as two years of stonewalling from the administration. Farenthold also updates the committee's work on Fast & Furious, noting that only one of three reports has been issued. The next report will deal with management of Fast & Furious by the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He says the final report will focus on the alleged cover-up by the administration. |
| The PC Military |
| Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:34:06 EST During the height of the war on terrorism, Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin found himself in big trouble with the mainstream media and the Bush administration for professing his Christian faith while in uniform and for sharing some blunt views on Islam. Since Boykin's retirement in 2007, cultural changes have come rapidly to the armed forces - most especially the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) in 2010. As a result of that law, gays and lesbians may now serve openly in the military. Boykin firmly believes this trend will hurt morale and diminish performance because these new dynamics will create trust issues among our troops - issues that could cost lives. He says the impact of repealing DADT probably won't be seen for about a decade but once apparent it will likely hurt recruiting in years to come. However, Boykin, is perhaps even more outraged at what he sees as an erosion of basic religious freedom in the military. Now the executive vice president at the Family Research Council, Boykin says the military is increasingly hostile to the freedom to worship. He cites a new directive from the U.S. Air Force forbidding commanders from using their position to express their faith. Boykin finds this particularly galling, asserting that the very people tasked with defending our First Amendment rights are being deprived of their own. |
| Muslim Brotherhood & Uncle Sam |
| Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:17:35 EST The Muslim Brotherhood is a radical Islamist organization that has successfully penetrated both political parties and the delicate areas of defense and national security. Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin is now executive vice president at the Family Research Council. He says people with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood are in vital positions within every significant area of the U.S. government. He specifically cites high security clearances for such people in the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. He says neither Republicans nor Democrats want to protest too loudly over concerns of being branded intolerant. Boykin says Republicans proved their weakness on the issue by roundly condemning Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann for sounding the alarm on this issue and specifically wondering about the Brotherhood ties of Huma Abedin, a top assistant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Gen. Boykin also slams the sequestration plan that has the military on course for an additional $500 billion in cuts over the next decade. He says that will weaken every branch of the service and claims a naive rationale is behind it all. Gen. Boykin says President Obama and other liberals have a vision where the U.S. takes a smaller role on the world stage so they think our military will not need to maintain it's current size and won't be pumping money into the Middle East. The general says that's nonsense, pointing out that as long as oil and Israel are in the Middle East we'll need to maintain a presence there. |
| Obama Likely to Release WTC Bomber |
| Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:16:51 EST On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the riots aimed against the U.S. embassy in Egypt were largely an effort to pressure the Obama administration to release Omar Abdel Rahman. Rahman is the blind sheikh who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for planning the 1993 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and sentenced to life in prison. He is idolized by the Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, who have demanded his release in meetings with U.S. officials. Andrew McCarthy was a member of the federal prosecution team that convicted Rahman and his followers. He says the new Egyptian leaders have been very open about demanding Rahman's release and the Obama administration seems to be receptive to the idea. McCarthy says Obama could very easily end the speculation by rejecting the idea publicly. Instead, McCarthy points out that the White House is inviting an Egyptian official named Hani Nour Eldin, who is an ardent follower of the blind sheikh. "If you or I were to give any assistance to this guy we'd be committing a serious federal felony of material support to terrorism," says McCarthy. "Yet the Obama adinistration not only issued him a visa, they actually invited him to the White House to consult on the future of Egypt with our top national security officials". McCarthy says he does not believe State Department assurances that no negotiations have taken place for the release of Rahman. Nonetheless, McCarthy expects Rahman to be released between Election Day and Inauguration Day regardless of whether Obama wins. |
| A Collaboration of Repression |
| Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:39:16 EST The Obama Justice Department and liberal groups are joining forces to marginalize Christian organizations in the political arena and falsely brand them as hate groups. That's the message from Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council. Last month, the FRC was targeted by a gunman who was upset with the group's biblical stands on marriage and the unborn. The man shot and injured a security guard but was apprehended before threatening anyone else. Blackwell and other FRC officials contend the shooter was motivated to take violent action after the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the FRC as an official hate group. Blackwell says it's ridiculous to say his organization is a hate group when traditional marriage has been backed in every state where the issue has been on the ballot, is the official position of the Republican party and was the stated position of President Obama until just a few months ago. He also contends that groups like this are getting assistance from the Obama administration because of their mutual efforts to change America from a God-fearing, freedom loving society to one where the state is the ultimate authority. Blackwell also reports that FRC security guard Leo Johnson is making progress in his recovery but has not returned to work. |
| Getting the Debate We Need |
| Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:15:24 EST This is the week of dueling recordings on the campaign trail. Mother Jones magazine revealed video from a Mitt Romney fundraiser in which he laments the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes and see themselves as victims dependent upon the government. Less than a day later, audio of Barack Obama from 1998 surfaced in which he claims to be an advocate of redistribution so everybody has a shot at a better life. Each side believes and hopes the comments from the opposing candidate are fatal statements. Whether they are or not, Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Keli Carender enthusiastically welcomes the debate. She says an endless stream of distractions have obscured the core question in this campaign...do Americans want the government to spread the wealth or do we want government to stay back and let American enterprise and ingenuity create even more wealth that benefits all of America? Carender isn't totally confident that Romney can make the case for smaller government with the passion that is required to convince voters to support the GOP ticket. She firmly believes Tea Party backers and conservatives are much more motivated and active in getting out the vote than liberals but she still won't predict a Republican victory. |
| DeMint Sizes Up Senate Races |
| Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:45:06 EST South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint says control of the U.S. Senate after November's elections is just as important as the race for the White House. DeMint blasts Senate Democrats for doing so little at a time of so many challenges. He says after 14 years in Congress, he's never seen fewer things accomplished by a chamber of Congress. DeMint also accuses the Democratic leadership of punting critical debates over looming tax increases to a lame duck Congress. DeMint is not worried about values voters staying home since the economy is dominating the headlines and the campaign messages. He contends those voters understand that misguided government programs are encouraging troubling patterns like rising out-of-wedlock births and that our national debt is a moral issue all by itself. As a leading Tea Party figure, DeMint is optimistic that Republicans can win a majority of Senate seats in November. He explains not only where the GOP can pick up seats currently held by Democrats but also how more conservative Republicans are likely to replace fellow party members who are retiring or were defeated in primaries. DeMint is clearly torn over the state of the Senate race in Missouri, where a golden GOP pick-up opportunity is looking much more unlikely. He calls embattled GOP nominee Todd Akin "a good man" but believes Akin should "consider getting out (of the race) for the good of the country". However, if Akin decides to stay in the campaign against Sen. Claire McCaskill, DeMint hopes Republicans will rally behind him. Finally, DeMint predicts Mitt Romney will defeat President Obama. Why? DeMint says he "can't imagine that there are 51 percent of Americans who can look at what this president has done and choose to re-elect him". |
| 'Total, Utter Hypocrisy' |
| Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:28:59 EST South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson is unloading on the media and still scratching his head about who exactly we're helping in Libya. A member of both the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, Wilson says this week's murders of four diplomatic personnel bring a moment of truth to our presence there. He asserts that if the new Libyan leaders genuinely help us find those responsible for the killings then our relationship should continue. If not, he says our presence and money should stop. Rep. Wilson has a special frustration for the mainstream media based on their treatment of Mitt Romney on Wednesday. The congressman says the endless questions about the tone and timing of Romney's initial statement prove reporters are not interested in covering the big stories but in re-electing President Obama. |
| Election Year Spending |
| Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:20:46 EST On Thursday, the Republican House leadership succeeded in passing legislation to continue funding the government at current levels for the next six months. Michigan Rep. Dan Benishek says he would like to see less spending but there cannot be a government shutdown right before the elections. Benishek says the path to real reductions in government spending will come with Republican wins in November that give the GOP control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Rep. Benishek also details the 'No More Solyndras Act', which is aimed at ending massive taxpayer-funded loans to "cronies" of President Obama. Solyndra and several other green energy firms went bankrupt despite billions in taxpayer loans. |
| 'I'm Always Hoping for More' |
| Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:15:45 EST House Republican leaders have decided not to wage a major fight over federal spending by moving forward with a plan to extend current government spending levels for the next six months. If agreed to by Senate Democrats, the plan would avoid any specter of a government shutdown before election day and allow members of Congress more time to campaign back in their districts. South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson is cautiously approaching this latest decision by his own party's leadership. Wilson opposed last summer's debt ceiling extension and strongly prefers clear reductions in spending. Nonetheless, he will consider the continuing resolution as long as it is 'clean' and does not add any spending. |
| A Policy of Weakness Persists |
| Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:43:56 EST President Obama has projected a policy of weakness throughout the Middle East and there's every sign that weakness will continue given Obama's response to the attacks aimed at U.S diplomats in Libya and the embassy in Egypt. That's the conclusion of former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who is stunned that Obama didn't have a much stronger reaction to the murders of four Americans by saying such attacks are completely unacceptable and there will be major consequences if those countries cannot guarantee the security of our personnel. Instead, he says the apologies of the administration for an internet film critical of Mohammed that may not even exist send exactly the wrong message. Bolton is also incredulous that the U.S. media is far more interested in the mundane details of Mitt Romney's reaction to this crisis than in the crisis itself. |
| New Fight Over FISA |
| Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:50:20 EST A few years ago, Congress passed a series of amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The goal was to enhance efforts to spy on foreign terrorists as they plotted against our country on foreign soil - especially in light of immense technological advances since the original FISA was passed in 1978. Now those enhancements are up for renewal in Congress. California Rep. Dan Lungren serves on the Judiciary Committee and is a string supporter of renewing the provisions. He says the amendments to FISA have been critical in gathering and analyzing intelligence that protects our nation and smokes out our enemies. Lungren insists the laws do not infringe on the rights of Americans or anyone on American soil. He expects some resistance in Congress but believes the provisions will be renewed. Lungren adds that the recent attacks on Americans in Libya and Egypt demonstrate the need to retain the best possible intelligence tools. |
| Why We're Safer than on 9-11 |
| Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:57:43 EST In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, the flaws in our intelligence system were greatly scrutinized. Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra says our intelligence is far better and America much safer thanks to the renewed focus on human intelligence and not just a reliance on superior technology. Hoekstra also details the ongoing challenge of protecting our nation from radical threats within our borders. Hoekstra is also the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan against incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow. He discusses the intensifying fight over big looming cuts to defense and intelligence spending and what national security issues would have his attention if elected. |
| The Fight for Military Dollars |
| Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:08:56 EST Last year, the bipartisan debt ceiling agreement called for a so-called super committee to find trillions in spending cuts to help offset a hike in deficit spending in the present. The super committee went about its work, knowing that if it failed to reach a consensus, huge automatic spending cuts would be inflicted upon defense and Medicare spending in 2013. Of course, the committee failed, and now those massive cuts are looming. House Republicans are now trying to reverse the sequestration cuts to defense spending and apply the cuts to other domestic programs, including the food stamp program. Louisiana Rep. John Fleming is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He strongly opposed last summer's debt ceiling deal over the damage sequestration could do to the military and because he was not interested in giving the green light to huge annual deficits. He says Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans were naive to trust President Obama and the Democrats in agreeing to the super committee and in putting half a trillion dollars in defense spending on the line in addition to another $500 billion already cut from the national security budget over the next decade. Fleming says the cuts would reduce our Navy to capacity we had back in 1915. He says other branches would be at their weakest since before World War II. Fleming is also a doctor, and he explains how the Medicare cuts will impact doctors and other service providers. He says that preserves benefits for Medicare patients but that won't help much when providers refuse to see them because they aren't being reimbursed for the care they provide. |
| A Snake Oil Salesman for Welfare |
| Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:54:05 EST Earlier this summer, President Obama quietly signed an executive order waiving the work requirements from the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney quickly launched television ads slamming Obama for gutting a successful program. Obama, a number of "fact check" organizations and now President Clinton are slamming Romney for badly misleading the public on what the Obama administration did. So who is right? Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation wrote the work requirements for the 1996 legislation. He says Obama is blatantly breaking the law because the law explicitly states that no president could change the work requirements, since those were the heart and soul of the reforms. Last week, former President Clinton told the Democratic National Convention that the changes made by Obama came at the request of Republican governors and actually required more work. Rector takes dead aim at both contentions. First, he says no Republican governor asked for the waiver. It was actually a career welfare bureaucrat in Nevada. Rector also says the increased employment referenced by Clinton is a joke. He says the percentages involved would easily be achieved through cleaning up the welfare rolls. In the meantime, the other 98 percent of able-bodied adults on welfare would have no work requirements - just as it was before the reforms from 1996. Rector says Clinton's defense of Obama on welfare is the equivalent of a snake oil salesman for welfare and is nothing more than a sham. He also points out that Clinton vetoed welfare reform twice and was urged to veto it a third time but relented out of fear of losing to Bob Dole. And Rector notes that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party strenuously opposed welfare reform in the 1990s and have fought to reverse the work requirements ever since. |
| Cash for Codgers |
| Fri, 7 Sep 2012 14:35:46 EST Medicare is becoming a major issue in the 2012 campaign as Republicans accuse President Obama of raiding the entitlement program to pay for Obamacare. Democrats claim the changes have strengthened Medicare. Meanwhile, the Capitol Steps are examining another way to lower the cost of care late in life. |
| Who's the Real Radical on Abortion? |
| Thu, 6 Sep 2012 14:46:15 EST Much of the Democratic National Convention has focused on women and portraying Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as hostile to the health care choices of women. But the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List says President Obama is the real radical on abortion. The group is airing ads in multiple states showcasing a young woman who survived an attempted abortion. The woman also reminds viewers that Obama voted four times in the Illinois State Senate against rights for babies who survive abortions. Dannenfelser says that is as far out of the mainstream as one can be. She also tears into the Democratic platform, which calls for access to abortion throughout a pregnancy and advocates paying for them with taxpayer dollars. The descriptive language has also changed according to Dannenfelser, who points out that Democrats used to advocate for abortions that were "safe, legal and rare" but no longer use the word "rare". Of course, GOP nominee Mitt Romney was strongly pro-choice during his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign and 2002 gubernatorial bid. He later changed his position, and Dannenfelser says she believes it to be sincere. She also touches on the firestorm the erupted last month around Missouri U.S. Senate hopeful Todd Akin and his reference to "legitimate rape". Dannenfelser says those comments were unfortunate but the electorate is back focusing on the big picture now. SBA List has already been airing its ad about Obama's abortion record in the Show Me State. |
| The Real War on Women |
| Wed, 5 Sep 2012 16:01:38 EST Much of the first night at the Democratic National Convention was designed to paint Mitt Romney and other Republicans as anti-woman and President Obama as the advocate for progress among women. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is having none of it. He says he is appalled by Democrats saying we all belong to the government, rather than the government belonging to the people. When it comes to the war on women, the congressman says he's much more horrified by gender-selective abortions that kill baby girls in the womb than opposing a birth control mandate on all employers. Gohmert also marvels that Democrats are offering no plan to reduce the deficit despite our national debt climbing above $16 trillion. On foreign policy, Gohmert says Americans should be outraged that deaths and injuries among Americans in Afghanistan are far higher in three and a half years of Obama's leadership than under seven and a half years under George W. Bush. The mission itself is also a thorn in Gohmert's side, as he unloads on Obama for impractical rules of engagement and having no strategy other than getting out in 2014. |
| Israel Sets Attack Timetable |
| Tue, 4 Sep 2012 14:51:07 EST Israel sees Iranian nuclear weapons as an existential threat and plans are in place to carry out strikes to cripple the nuclear program by the middle of next month. Middle East expert Dr. Mike Evans says his discussions with top Israeli officials this week suggest there is a strong likelihood the attacks will take place between September 15th and October 15th. Evans estimates a 75 percent chance that strikes will be carried out in that 30-day window. Dr. Evans says high-ranking Israeli leaders also tell him they have a secret weapon they intend to deploy for any strikes, but they would not tell Evans what that weapon is. He believes the likely weapon is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which would cripple Iran's power grid. Evans says he's not surprised that the Obama administration is telling Israel and Iran that the U.S. will not back any Israeli attacks. He also reports that CIA Director David Petraeus and other American officials are strongly pressuring Israeli leaders to hold off on attacks before the U.S. elections. Evans explains what sort of ironclad promises from President Obama could convince Israel to stand down temporarily. |
| 'We Could Have Done Better' |
| Fri, 31 Aug 2012 15:02:46 EST North Carolina has a very different Congressional map following the 2010 census, and that is expected to mean good things for Republicans. One Democratic seat expected to swing the GOP's way is in the state's 11th Congressional district, where Mark Meadows is likely to be a part of the next Congress. Meadows addressed the Republican National Convention on Tuesday and railed against President Obama's record on the economy and religious freedom. Meadows says deficits have to be reined in and he says the 2011 agreement to raise the debt ceiling didn't even cut real spending. He also says the contraception mandate as part of the new health care law may be most offensive to the Catholic Church but he says the fight must go on because other denominations and faiths will be next. |
| Help Me Fake It to the Right |
| Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:55:32 EST Mitt Romney accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday night, which means the Capitol Steps are poking fun at him heading into the weekend. Washington's premier political parody troupe offers two Romney selections as they chronicle his changing positions on some issues and his rather large personal fortune. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport. |
| 'Smoking Ruin of Economic Failure' |
| Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:45:17 EST House Republicans will likely pick up an extra member in Arkansas' 4th Congressional District. Republican Tom Cotton is expected to score a solid win in the contest to replace retiring Democratic Rep, Mike Ross, thanks to a growing Republican electorate and new district boundaries. Cotton says several factors prompted him to run, especially his growing concern over jobs, debt and Obamacare. The lawyer-turned soldier-turned businessman calls the Obama record "a smoking ruin of economic failure". He admits that Republicans dropped the ball on fiscal discipline in the past decade but he believes Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will have a very different mindset that will be reflected by the GOP in Congress. Cotton also promises to be an active voice in repealing Obamacare and shoring up Medicare. He also rebuts assertions from his Democratic opponent that opposition to Obamacare is racist and insensitive to the poor. |
| GOP Predicts 5-7 Seat House Gain |
| Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:16:09 EST The presidential race is getting the vast majority of the attention in the 2012 campaign but the battle for the majority in Congress is also critical. Republicans won back control of the House in 2010 by winning 63 Democratic seats, and the man charged with keeping that majority predicts it will get even bigger. Texas Rep. Pete Sessions is chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He expects the GOP to add another five to seven seats when the dust settles in November. Sessions says favorable redistricting in states like North Carolina and Texas and open seats in Oklahoma and Arkansas will help his party. Conversely, Sessions worries that newly drawn districts in Illinois and California will make life difficult for Republicans. Sessions also admits a convincing win by either party at the presidential level will have an impact down the ballot. He also rejects the Democratic assertion that House Republicans are obstructing the Obama economic agenda, noting that Senate Democrats won't even back Obama's plans and nonpartisan economists believe the president's plan would grow the national debt yet again. He also vows House Republicans will have a much more responsible approach to spending than they did from 2001-2007. He says tough spending cuts will come because "the medicine is necessary to save the patient" and entitlements must be addressed. |
| Obama No Friend of Israel |
| Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:04:01 EST Israel has weeks and maybe months to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and it cannot count on U.S. support in trying to stop it. That's the assessment from Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon, who is also author of "Israel: The Will to Prevail". Danon says intelligence shows Iran must be stopped soon or the world will have to accept a nuclear Iran - a scenario he says Israel cannot even consider. He says the Obama administration seems to think more speeches, more United Nations meetings and more sanctions are going to make the threat go away. He says it is now up to Israel to prevent a nuclear Iran. Danon also wades into the debate over the Israeli-Palestinian standoff. He contends the two-state solution cannot work because there are not two good faith parties to negotiate. Instead, he lays out a three-state solution consisting of Israel, Jordan and Egypt. |
| Special Ops Unload on Obama |
| Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:15:39 EST The killing of Osama bin Laden is an accomplishment mentioned many times by President Obama and his administration. Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod once said the case for a second term could be summed up by saying, "General Motors is a live and Osama bin Laden is dead." But even though the Al Qaeda mastermind is gone, many veterans of U.S. Special Operations are furious over how the Obama administration handled the matter. A new, scathing internet video accuses Obama of arrogantly taking credit for the kill when he had little to do with it and for revealing operational details they believe compromise our forces, our location, our sources and more. Retired U.S. Navy Captain Larry Bailey was also a Navy SEAL and is co-founder of Special Operations Speaks. He says Obama's handling of that mission and other sensitive national security issues makes him unfit to be commander-in-chief. Bailey says Obama should have said almost nothing about the bin Laden mission except to say that bin Laden was dead. He contends the president's ego led to far too much information being made public - all to the benefit of our enemies. When Obama defenders accuse these special ops veterans of being the 2012 version of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Bailey says he wears that allegation as a "badge of honor". He says his group unequivocally endorses Mitt Romney and wants to see President Obama retired after just one term. |
| 'Don't Go Fakin' You're Smart' |
| Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:09:19 EST As the Capitol Steps put the finishing touches on their new ode to Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, the troupe thinks back to 2008 when little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin shook up the political world by joining the McCain ticket. Our guest is Steps veteran Mike Tilford. |
| I Will Not Vote for Debt Increases |
| Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:48:09 EST Indiana's second congressional district is regularly one of the most competitive in the nation. For the past eight years, Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly has held off his Republican challengers. But Donnelly is running for U.S. Senate and Republicans see their best chance to win the seat in years. Former state lawmaker Jackie Walorski is the GOP nominee. She says Indiana has proved that strong leadership can set the stage for strong economic growth by keeping taxes low and government regulations out of the way. Walorski says the same approach can work for our national economy. She vows never to vote in favor of a debt ceiling increase because she says efforts to slow or freeze debt never work because the inertia is too great. Walorski also wants a repeal of the Obama health plan to be the first bill introduced if Republicans gain power in November. That's because Walorski says Obamacare is the greatest job killer facing businesses and taxes in items like medical devices are needlessly destroying great companies and lucrative careers. Walorski says her Democratic opponent, Brendan Mullen, is nothing more than a plant by national Democrats to hold the seat. She also says Mullen is a staunch supporter of the Obama health plan. |
| The Muslim Brotherhood Threat |
| Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:06:45 EST Five members of the House of Representatives have come under bipartisan fire for requesting an investigation into government personnel who may have troubling ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The most high-profile name mentioned is Huma Abedin, a very close aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But as the call for a probe is roundly rejected, Act for America founder Brigitte Gabriel says such an investigation is badly needed. Gabriel details some of the reasons Abedin's position concerns her and she believes there are many others in the government worthy of further scrutiny. Gabriel says the problem is real and growing. She says political correctness and a lack of proper oversight led to the Ft. Hood massacre and she says evidence shows some 100 radicalized Muslims are in the military right now. Gabriel says the United States should not recognize any government led by the Muslim Brotherhood regardless of how it comes to power. |
| DeMint Defends Sovereignty |
| Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:26:21 EST In the past few weeks, two proposed United Nations treaties failed to advance. The small arms treaty failed at the UN while opponents of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) amassed enough votes to block it in the U.S. Senate. Now, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint says another UN treaty threatens American sovereignty. It's called the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Proponents, including many Republicans, claim it will help to expand rights and opportunities for disabled people in all nations, but DeMint isn't buying it. The senator says the U.S. is by far the most accommodating nation in the world for people with disabilities and he sees no need to sign this or most other UN treaties because it can only erode American sovereignty. DeMint says the language of the treaty suggests it will promote abortion and chip away at parental rights - particularly the rights of homeschooling parents. DeMint explains what he thinks supporters of the treaty are missing and hos he thinks a Senate vote on the treaty would go if it were held today. |
| We'll Hold Her Accountable |
| Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:16:17 EST Former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra easily won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate this week. He now faces two-term Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The senator holds a double-digit lead according to two different polls, but Hoekstra says when voters understand how Stabenow has been a loyal follower and supporter of President Obama's agenda - which Hoekstra says has been terrible for Michigan and the nation. The GOP nominee also takes aim at a common Obama narrative that his administration's bailout and restructuring saved the U.S. auto industry. Hoekstra says the Obama approach will reap temporary benefits because of all of the money spent but he insists a free market approach would have set up Detroit for much stronger growth in the long term. As for the state of his campaign, Hoekstra admits a Superbowl ad brought a lot of trouble for the campaign. The ad featured a girl in China thanking Debbie "Spend It Now" for making China rich off our debt and the recipient of U.S. jobs. Unions and other critics blasted the campaign on multiple fronts and Hoekstra slipped in the polls. Hoekstra says many lessons were learned in that experience and claims his campaign is stronger than ever for having endured it. |
| Roberts Takes Wrath from the Right |
| Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:12:47 EST In late June, the Obama health plan and the individual mandate survived Supreme Court scrutiny. It happened because Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's four liberal justices to keep the law alive. Now the Capitol Steps go inside what the GOP calls a betrayal by one of their own. |
| 'Fool Me Twice' |
| Thu, 9 Aug 2012 15:51:35 EST President Obama has been actively fundraising and campaigning for re-election, but other than claiming a superior tax plan, Obama has said very little about what he would pursue if given another four years in office. WND.com Senior Correspondent Aaron Klein tells us what we should be ready for if Obama wins again in November. In his new book, "Fool Me Twice: Obama's Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed," Klein and co-author Brenda J. Elliott detail the goals being pushed by the same progressive organizations that influenced Obama on his stimulus plan, health care plan and many other policies over the past four years. Klein tells us explains what "fairness" could mean over the next four years - the government deciding wages in the private sector by determining the value of a job, much more government spending and even higher tax rates to pay for it all. Klein also says the agenda will likely include a major push for a single-payer health care system - possibly without consultation with Congress. Green jobs will remain a high priority according to Klein, who says the Left wants to create a Green Bank and kill disagreement to the climate change movement through the return of the Fairness Doctrine. Klein also asserts that Obama wants to radically change the military - away from a force ready to defend the nation to one that supplements diplomatic efforts and combats global warming and poverty around the world. And Klein reveals how Obama's leniency toward illegal immigrants will take on new dimensions, including an effective ban on policing out own borders. He explains why he believes these plans are good indications of where Obama would take the U.S. and why Obama isn't saying much publicly about his intentions. |
| Stopping More Solyndras |
| Wed, 8 Aug 2012 15:35:08 EST Since regaining control of the House of Representatives in 2011, Republicans have closely probed the loss of $535 million in taxpayer dollars on the failed green energy firm known as Solyndra. Now the man who chaired most of the Congressional hearings tells us about the report released by Republicans. Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversights and Investigations. Stearns details how taxpayers were supposed to be first in line to get their money back but private investors got their money back while taxpayers got nothing. He also discusses what he sees as the problems with the Energy Department's loan program that Stearns says tried to pick winners and losers and failed miserably. moreover, Stearns says government should not be trying to artificially control the energy sector. The congressman contends that market forces should be allowed to dictate winners and losers and federal interference needs to be rooted out. As a result, Stearns is sponsoring the 'No More Solyndras Act'. It would codify that taxpayers are always the first to be reimbursed when a firm receiving taxpayer dollars goes bankrupt. But it would also the type of investments government makes and encourage a market-oriented approach to the energy sector and beyond. |
| 'White Girl Bleed A Lot' |
| Tue, 7 Aug 2012 15:41:08 EST One of the least reported and most alarming trends in recent years is the rise of flash mob racial violence that leaves battered victims and results in the media and political figures consistently downplaying the severity of the attacks. That's the focus of the new book, "White Girl Bleed A Lot," by acclaimed author Colin Flaherty, who was also speechwriter for the first black head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Flaherty explains why he decided to document this surge in mob violence and reacts to contentions from black leaders that this violence has always been part of the inner city and is only getting attention now because it is spilling into the wealthier parts of town. Flaherty tells us to what extent the media and city leaders across the country try to avoid or downplay the racial component. He says admitting the facts in these cases would force liberal activists and politicians to admit decades of racial policies have not been successful. Flaherty also explains why he focuses on mob violence by blacks as opposed to other races. |
| Showdown in the Show Me State |
| Mon, 6 Aug 2012 16:32:03 EST On Tuesday, Republicans in Missouri will choose their nominee to face Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. The tight, three-way race features six-term U.S. Rep Todd Akin, former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman and businessman John Brunner. Rep. Akin joins us to discuss the impact of his time in Congress, as he points to his record as evidence he is a true conservative while his opponents claim 12 years in Washington makes Akin part of the problem. Akin explains why he believes he will win the primary and why he decided not to engage in any negative campaigning. He also describes the fight for the conservative voters, as several Tea Party groups have endorsed Akin while Sarah Palin and others are backing Steelman. |
| Bloomberg's Latest Crusade |
| Mon, 6 Aug 2012 15:35:55 EST New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has targeted tobacco, salt and large sodas in his pursuit of a healthier population. Now the mayor is targeting a new alleged threat to public health - baby formula. Mayor Bloomberg has decided that breastfeeding is far preferable to formula, so unless new mothers have a medical reason they cannot breastfeed, he wants hospitals to hide the formula and send experts to explain to moms why they need to breastfeed. And dozens of hospitals in the Big Apple are already complying with Bloomberg's wishes. Cherlyn Harley Lebon of the Project 21 Black Leadership Council says Bloomberg is going way too far this time. She tells us that how to feed a newborn baby is a very personal choice that should be left to the mother. Lebon says this type of push will force women who have just delivered babies to justify their choice of food for their babies and have to negotiate with nurses to get their hands on some formula. She says this is just the latest example of Bloomberg's "nanny state" approach to his job. |
| Senate Sinks Law of the Sea Treaty |
| Mon, 6 Aug 2012 15:07:39 EST Adam Ulbricht of Radio America reports on the Republican opposition to the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty. Thirty four Republican Senators have pledged to oppose the treaty that could add new regulations to American businesses. Critics say the treaty is similar to other cap and trade, redistribution policies. Utah Senator Mike Lee and Jeremy Carl of the hoover Institute weigh in on the issue. |
| 'That's Just Not Acceptable' |
| Fri, 3 Aug 2012 13:58:03 EST On Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that a net 163,000 jobs were created in July. That number beat the meager expectations, but the report also says the official unemployment rate is up to 8.3 percent and 195,000 fewer people were working than there were the month before. If seems contradictory, some 150,000 people left the labor force and are not counted in the official unemployment number. Texas Rep. Kevin Brady is chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. He says the numbers are better than the really weak figures we saw in May and June but show no sign of significant growth. Brady also criticizes President Obama for having no new ideas to spur job growth and for bringing back his call for higher taxes on wealthier Americans. Brady says business owners cite federal spending, a weak economy and burdensome regulations as the real reasons they are not hiring. He also worries some that America may accept this sluggish economy as the "new normal", but Brady says the American people will not accept Obama's "You lose your job, I keep mine" job plan. |
| Connie Lawn on Jerusalem Flap |
| Thu, 2 Aug 2012 15:46:58 EST Last week, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney evaded a direct answer on which city the U.S. recognizes as the capital of Israel. Connie Lawn of IRN USA Radio News asked Carney whether it was Jerusalem or Tel Aviv and Carney simply replied that the policy had not changed. That led to a back-and-forth involving multiple reporters. Lawn tells us why she asked the question in the first place and what a real answer to the question would have revealed. She also explains why it was a politically sensitive issue and how she will pursue the matter since her question was never answered. She also offers some fascinating insights on the culture of the White House press room. |
| Obama, Ohio & Energy |
| Thu, 2 Aug 2012 15:08:46 EST On Wednesday, President Obama traveled to eastern Ohio to campaign in one of the most critical states of the 2012 race. But in the very same region where Obama asked for another four years in office, Rep. Bill Johnson says anti-coal regulations just resulted in scores of layoffs at a coal-fired power plant. Johnson tells us what regulations triggered this downsizing and why he believes we may soon be looking an an 800 percent increase in utility rates. Johnson also recounts his confrontation with Environmental Protection Agency representatives in his district. |
| Obamacare: Tax or Penalty? |
| Thu, 2 Aug 2012 13:45:51 EST Adam Ulbricht of Radio America sheds light on the debate over the taxing provision of the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court ruled that the provision is constitutional as a tax, but the Obama Administration contends that it is a penalty. The provision is at the heart of the individual mandate that requires every American to purchase health care insurance. Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Hans Von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation and Francesca Lo Basso of Health Care Now! provide insight on the issue. |
| Tax Hikes = 700,000 Lost Jobs |
| Wed, 1 Aug 2012 14:52:56 EST President Obama says it's time for wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes and last week the Democratically-controlled Senate agreed. But on Wednesday, the Republican-led House of Representatives began debate on a tax bill of its own. The GOP is pushing to extend existing tax rates on all income brackets and on capital gains, dividend and estate taxes as well as the Alternative Minimum Tax. Georgia Rep. Tom Price is a member of the House Budget Committee and the House GOP Leadership. he says the Senate bill was unconstitutional because all tax legislation must start in the House. He also says the tax hikes on the wealthy are a bad idea, especially in a struggling economy. Price says the majority of small businesses file in the top individual tax bracket and raising taxes could mean the nationwide loss of more than 700,000 jobs. Price also elaborates on where the fight goes from here, given sharp disagreements between the parties and a massive tax hike for everyone looming in January is a deal cannot be struck. |
| Hercules Wins Round 1 |
| Tue, 31 Jul 2012 16:04:20 EST Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced that employers would now be forced to cover all costs for contraception and even abortion-inducing drugs. After a torrent of protest, the administration made an exception for religious organizations. The outcry against the mandate extends far beyond faith-based groups. Hercules Industries of Denver, Colorado, filed suit against the government in April, contending the mandate conflicted with the deep Christian faith of the owners of the firm. The government fought back, claiming that since Hercules makes HVAC equipment and is not a faith-based organization that is cannot be exempted from the new rules. Therefore, Hercules Industries had to comply with the law or face onerous fines. Hercules sought an injunction in federal court and received one last week. Hercules Vice President Andy Newland tells us how this court fight began, what benefits are already offered to his employees and what the reaction has been to this court fight from his company and across the nation. Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Hercules Industries in court. He says the government mandate on contraception is blatantly unconstitutional and he expects the case to be watched very closely by the Catholic Church and other challengers to the mandate. |