The Problem with Being Christian in 2011…Islam and the Obama Left Hate You

The following was sent to me by friend, neighbor and fellow conservative, Arlene Taber:

 

“This is a statement that was read over the PA system at the football game a Roane County High School Kingston, Tennessee, by school Principal, Jody McLeod. 

“It has always been the custom at Roane County High School football games, to say a prayer and play the National Anthem, to honor God and Country.” 

Due to a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, I am told that saying a Prayer is a violation of Federal Case Law. As I understand the law at this time, I can use this public facility to approve of sexual perversion and call it “an alternate life style,” and if someone is offended, that’s OK. 

I can use it to condone sexual promiscuity, by dispensing condoms and calling it, “safe sex.” If someone is offended, that’s OK. 

I can even use this public facility to present the merits of killing an unborn baby as a “viable! means of birth control.” If someone is offended, no problem… 

I can designate a school day as “Earth Day” and involve students in activities to worship religiously and praise the goddess “Mother Earth” and call it “ecology..” 

I can use literature, videos and presentations in the classroom that depicts people with strong, traditional Christian convictions as “simple minded” and “ignorant” and call it “enlightenment..” 

However, if anyone uses this facility to honor GOD and to ask HIM to Bless this event with safety and good sportsmanship, then Federal Case Law is violated. 

This appears to be inconsistent at best, and at worst, diabolical.   

 Apparently, we are to be tolerant of everything and anyone, except GOD and HIS Commandments. 

Nevertheless , as a school principal, I frequently ask staff and students to abide by rules with which they do not necessarily agree. For me to do otherwise would be inconsistent at best, and at worst, hypocritical… I suffer from that affliction enough unintentionally. I certainly do not need to add an intentional transgression. 

For this reason, I shall “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” and refrain from praying at this time. 

” However, if you feel inspired to honor, praise and thank GOD and ask HIM,in the name of JESUS, to Bless this event, please feel free to do so.. 

As far as I know, that’s not against the law—-yet.” 

One by one, the people in the stands bowed their heads, held hands with one another and began to pray. 

They prayed in the stands. They prayed in the team huddles. They prayed at the concession stand and they prayed in the Announcer’s Box! 

The only place they didn’t pray was in the Supreme Court of the United States of America- the Seat of “Justice” in the “one nation, under GOD.” 

Somehow, Kingston, Tennessee Remembered what so many have forgotten. We are given the Freedom OF Religion, not the Freedom FROM Religion. Praise GOD”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Very Good Beginning Folks! GOP Moves to Block Unlegislated EPA Greenhouse Gas Regulations!

“Republicans file bill to block EPA from greenhouse gas regulation” is the headline to the following Ed Morrissey article at HotAir:

“It didn’t take long for House Republicans to start working on one of their biggest goals in 2011.  Yesterday, the first full day of business for the Republican House, almost 50 Republicans and one Democrat added their names to a bill filed by Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) that would block the EPA from issuing any new regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions.  Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma may not be the last Democrat in Congress to align himself with this effort, either:

Dozens of Republicans used the opening day of the new Congress on Wednesday to introduce legislation that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, sponsored the bill. The measure’s 46 co-sponsors are all Republicans except for Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.). …

The bill would amend the Clean Air Act to declare that greenhouse gases are not subject to the law, according to a brief description in the Congressional Record.

If skeptics think that this move will be strictly symbolic due to the Democratic majority in the Senate, don’t necessarily rush to that conclusion.  Earlier this week, Jay Rockefeller announced his intention to reintroduce a two-year moratorium on EPA enforcement of the CAA in regard to greenhouse gas emissions:

Firing the first salvo in what is expected to be a top energy issue in the new Congress, Sen. John Rockefeller said Wednesday that he’s raring to go in his controversial bid to handcuff the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate regulations for two years.

The West Virginia Democrat told POLITICO that he’ll soon introduce the same piece of legislation he tried unsuccessfully to get a vote on throughout 2010. Rockefeller said he’d wanted to drop the bill at the start of the 112th Congress but was stymied by plans to spend the day debating changes to the Senate rules.”

Click here for the full HotAir article:

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/01/07/republicans-file-bill-to-block-epa-from-greenhouse-gas-regulation/

Comment:  It may be that Republicans this time may mean business……the American peoples’ business!

Christopher Hitchens Is Still At It…..This Time He Writes “Blair” as in “Tony”

I haven’t read his article yet, but I know I’ll pick up some goodies.  I am a Tony Blair fan, too.

His article at Vanity Fair is titled:  “The Blair Hitch Project.”

“Since leaving 10 Downing Street, Tony Blair has faced continuing public condemnation for leading the U.K. into Iraq, converted to Catholicism, and plunged into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Debating Blair in Toronto, the author finds the former prime minister battered but unapologetic.

Say “Toronto” or “Ontario” and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency. But this part of Canada also has its quixotic and romantic dimension. It was to here that the Tory loyalists fled the American Revolution. In the village of Deptford, Ontario, on the banks of the local river Thames, the great Canadian novelist Robertson Davies cast and situated a trilogy variously composed of the elements of magic and exile. One of his chief characters, Percy “Boy” Staunton, gives up much of his life and energy to the cause of the Prince of Wales, a once dashing and promising young blade who shatters and demoralizes his admirers by falling under the thrall of a designing woman and abdicating the throne without a fight.

As I was led past a phalanx of guards to be admitted to Tony Blair’s hotel suite overlooking Toronto and Lake Ontario, I was mentally running through our previous meetings. The first had been in the room of the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons shortly after he had been elected to head the Labour Party and to re-brand—or should I say re-baptize?—it as “New Labour.” Then I had seen him in the private office of the prime minister in Downing Street, just before he became eligible to celebrate an entire decade in the job, almost eclipsing Margaret Thatcher and setting an indoor record for any Labour politician. Most recently he had slipped downstairs to say hello while he was on a private visit to the British Embassy residence in Washington. The surroundings were still grand, but by then he had abdicated and was being forced to watch his disliked and inferior successor throw away an election he knew in his heart he himself could have won.

Now he was traveling with a very small but devoted staff, and looking like a Prince Charming in exile. The high-wattage grin was still there, but framed in a lined face with cropped and graying hair that still gave the ephemeral impression of youth. We were due to have a public debate: the first he had agreed to since he had left office. Blair had made an appearance before the Chilcot committee, which is still investigating Britain’s participation in the invasion of Iraq, looking tight-lipped and conceding nothing. The taunts against him had swollen from run-of-the-mill abuse (“Bush’s poodle,” “Liar,” or sometimes “Bliar”) to full-out hatred. “War criminal!” “Murderer.” The first two public launches of his new memoir, A Journey, had been disrupted or canceled. At a bookstore signing in Dublin he had been pelted with shoes and other objects by a mixed mob of anti-war types, stiffened with some gaunt lads from the periphery of “the Real I.R.A.” A later event at the Tate Modern, in London, had to be called off. “It just wouldn’t have been fair to everyone else to go ahead,” he says with a rather lame shrug. Perhaps he was relying on the legendary politeness of Torontonians, and on the apparently more neutral subject of our dispute, which was religion. He now operates under the somehow touching name of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which can sound rather like a body set up to express faith in Tony Blair. His principal day job is to serve as mediator for the “Quartet” of powers that supervise the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” This means regular efforts to reconcile Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Holy Land. Cheer up, I want to tell him. At least it’s a job for life.

Meanwhile, he has not lost his talent for swift parliamentary footwork. The proposition for debate states clearly that religion is “a force for good.” The onus here is always on those who are advocating the motion. Yet somehow, without quite understanding it, I find that I have agreed to speak first and to surrender the traditional advantage of giving the reply. I feel as if I have gone into a revolving door in front of someone and come out behind him: even as if one of Robertson Davies’s suburban conjurors had pulled a fast one. During our public exchange I trail my coat on the Roman question, criticizing Cardinal Newman, whose beatification Blair had advocated, and ridiculing the Pope’s position on family planning and aids. He doesn’t rise to the defense of what he is bound to regard as the One True Church. Can it be true, then, that he did what both Clinton and George W. Bush had done before him, and ended up in the pews of his wife’s church? Cherie Blair—who has told us more than we need to know about the times she did and didn’t take her highly heretical birth-control kit for fertile weekends with the Queen at Balmoral—is a devout if eclectic Catholic. Her half-sister Lauren announced a few weeks ago that she had converted to Islam after a visit to a mosque in Iran, for whose state-run “Press TV” she works as a journalist. She described the moment of revelation, in terms that would have delighted Karl Marx, as a “shot of spiritual morphine,” and claims not to have had a drink or any pork products ever since. In spite of her brother-in-law’s many pretzel-shaped attempts to accommodate himself to the followers of the Prophet, she took the opportunity to describe him as a foe of Islam. Blair, who relates in his memoirs a period when he became too fond of the cocktail and nightcap hours, yet who exhausts himself daily on “outreach” to Muslims, has no alternative but to put on his sadly misunderstood face once again.

And he really does possess one of the most mobile and expressive faces I have ever seen. I asked him in private what it was like to be hated: not hated a bit but hated really quite a lot. The receptive grin stayed in place, even if very slightly contracted, as if he wanted to go on giving the impression of seeing all points of view. Did he feel he had had to unfairly absorb some of the spittle directed at George Bush? He didn’t seem to want to take shelter in this refuge. Now, those who fail to register emotion under pressure are often apparently good officer material, but that very stoicism can also conceal—as with officers who don’t suffer from battle fatigue or post-traumatic stress—a psychopathic calm that sends the whole platoon into a ditch full of barbed wire and sheds no tears.

Blair on the platform was an almost complete contrast. He virtually pantomimed reaction: smiling readily if a joke was at his expense, wincing here and there, spreading his palms resignedly once or twice. Yet this body candor, too, can have its iffy aspect, like Clinton biting his fat lip in fake empathy. I couldn’t quite make up my mind until after the debate was over. He and I had been chatting in his greenroom, and I excused myself to go to my own (for a shot of morphine, I think, to boost the weak scotch I’d been given). Returning rather quickly, I found Blair whispering with one of his aides. As I paused at the door, they both looked up rather shyly. I offered to withdraw, but they said no: they had just been saying to each other how grateful they were that I had said some words that evening in defense of his decision to remove Saddam Hussein. I have spent my life growing a carapace to shield myself from the appeal of politicians, and nine out of ten of my closest friends now regard Blair as the classic example of the trickster exposed, the hollow man calcified by cynicism and media manipulation. I, too, can remember gagging at his uncritical courtship of Rupert Murdoch and his annexation of the Princess Diana obsequies (even if the latter did make him the first Labour prime minister to give instructions to the royal family). But having caught him in this micro-moment of being vulnerable without exactly being wounded, I find that I simply can’t lend myself to the glib consensus. There is a moral pulse to be detected here, and it’s quite a strong one.

When Tony Blair took office, Slobodan Milošević was cleansing and raping the republics of the former Yugoslavia. Mullah Omar was lending Osama bin Laden the hinterland of a failed and rogue state. Charles Taylor of Liberia was leading a hand-lopping militia of enslaved children across the frontier of Sierra Leone, threatening a blood-diamond version of Rwanda in West Africa. And the wealth and people of Iraq were the abused private property of Saddam Hussein and his crime family. Today, all of these Caligula figures are at least out of power, and at the best either dead or on trial. How can anybody with a sense of history not grant Blair some portion of credit for this? And how can anybody with a tincture of moral sense go into a paroxysm and yell that it is he who is the war criminal? It is as if all the civilians murdered by al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be charged to his account. This is the chaotic mentality of Julian Assange and his groupies.

Scripture warns gloomily that prophets are not honored in their own countries, and given the record of many prophets, that’s very probably a good thing. Blair could also join the club of wandering ex-statesmen, including at different times Mikhail Gorbachev and Richard Nixon, who are given respect and recognition only when they visit other peoples’ countries. As we said good-bye, he was being taken straight to the airport, staying one jet-lag stage ahead of his demons, and heading back to Jerusalem—that birthplace of all our dreams and graveyard of all our hopes.”

Comment after reading Mr. Hitchen’s piece:   I see Christopher Hitchens still likes Tony Blair alot…..and so do I.

Florida Claims Illiteracy Among 4th Graders Has Been Lowered Due to “Accountability”.

Accountability Is Working in Florida’s Schools

In November, voters in 37 states elected governors, most of whom are new to office.  Job creation and economic growth will likely top the list of challenges these leaders will tackle first, and rightly so.  But let’s hope education reform is not far behind, says former Florida governor, Jeb Bush.

While preparing kids for college and careers starts on the first day of kindergarten, the first good indicator of their chances for success may come in fourth grade.  That is when students transition from learning to read to reading to learn.  A Manhattan Institute study found that students who cannot read and yet are promoted fall further behind over time.  Alarmingly, 33 percent of fourth-graders in America are functionally illiterate, according to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress.  Florida’s experience in reform during the last decade gives us the road map to avoid this slow-moving economic calamity, says Bush.

• In 1998, nearly half of Florida’s fourth-graders were functionally illiterate.
• Today, 72 percent of them can read.
• Florida’s Hispanic fourth-graders are reading as well as or better than the average student in 31 other states and the District of Columbia.

Accountability must have a hard edge, which means that the responsibilities of educators must be clearly defined, easily understood and uniformly enforced.

For example:

• For the last decade, Florida has graded schools on a scale of A to F, based solely on standardized test scores.
• This energized parents and the community to demand change from the adults running the system.
• In addition, Florida ended automatic, “social” promotion for third-grade students who could not read.

Source: Jeb Bush, “Accountability Is Working in Florida’s Schools,” Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2011.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703860104575508141083798802.html

For more on Education Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=27

The above information was published at National Center for Policy Analysis.

Gangsterism in the White House with “Obamacare: A Uniquely Vicious Form of Corruption”……..

………is the headline at PowerLine, to this article written by John Hinderaker:

“If you haven’t already seen it, don’t miss Karl Rove’s column in today’s Wall Street Journal. Rove explains the vicious strategy at the heart of Obamacare: pass terrible legislation, and then collect a toll by exempting your friends–those who pay you lots of money–from that legislation, while your enemies have to live with it. We have had various forms of corruption over the years, but I don’t believe we have had, within memory, anything quite this disgusting. The worst malefactor here, besides President Obama himself, is AARP:

The Obama administration’s behavior to date suggests that it will not hesitate to take care of its friends. The Senate Republican Policy Committee’s health policy analyst, Chris Jacobs, points out that the administration has already given an extravagant gift to the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), a key player in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The AARP provided a big chunk of the $121 million spent on ads supporting the bill’s passage, as well as $21 million on lobbying in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. HHS’s proposed regulations on Dec. 21 exempted the AARP’s lucrative “Medigap” plans from the rate review and other mandates and requirements. …

The AARP is also exempt from the new law’s $500,000 cap on executive compensation for insurance executives. (The nonprofit’s last CEO received over $1.5 million in compensation in his last full year, 2009.) It won’t pay any of the estimated $14 billion in new taxes on insurance companies, though according to its 2008 consolidated financial statement, it gets more money from its insurance offerings than it does from dues, grants and private contributions combined. Nor will it have to spend at least 85% of its Medigap premium dollars on medical claims, as Medicare Advantage plans must do; the AARP will be held to a far less restrictive 65%.

It’s not hard to connect the dots. The Obama administration is using waivers to reward friends. On the flip side, business executives will be discouraged from contributing to the president’s opponents or from taking any other steps that might upset the White House or its political appointees at HHS.

We’ve heard a lot about “crony capitalism” in recent years, but this is something worse–crony socialism. The Obama administration is running, in effect, a protection racket–nice business you have here, too bad if something should happen to it. We’re passing legislation that may destroy your business, but don’t worry–if you pay us our protection money, we will give you a waiver. By American standards, this is corruption of a uniquely vicious sort.”

Karl Rove’s article in the Wall Street Journal:   “Obamacare Rewards Friends, Punishes Enemies”

A primary task for the new Republican House majority is to undo as many of the pernicious effects of ObamaCare that it can. One of these effects is the spectacle of employers going hat-in-hand to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for waivers from some of the law’s more onerous provisions.

In September, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius began granting waivers to companies that provided workers “mini-med” coverage—low-cost plans with low annual limits on what the insurance will pay out. This followed announcements by some employers that they would have to drop these plans because they did not meet the new health law’s requirement that 85% of premium income be spent on medical expenses.

By early December, HHS had granted 222 such waivers to provide mini-med policies for companies including AMF Bowling and Universal Forest Product, as well as 43 union organizations. According to the department’s website, the waivers cover 1,507,418 employees, of which more than a third (525,898) are union members. Yet unionized workers make up only 7% of the private work force. Whatever is going on here, a disproportionately high number of waivers are being granted to administration allies.

Related Videos

 

• Opinion Journal: ObamaCare’s Victims
• Opinion Journal: ObamaCare 2011
• Opinion Journal: ObamaCare Preview

Then, on Dec. 21, Ms. Sebelius announced that insurance companies seeking rate increases of 10% or more in the individual or small group market must publicly justify the hikes under standards set by her department.

Insurance regulation has traditionally been a state responsibility, and 43 states must already approve proposed insurance-rate increases. ObamaCare does not authorize HHS to deny rate increases, but the agency said that if a state “lacks the resources or authority” to conduct the kind of review the agency wants, it will conduct its own.

This proposed regulation will erode the states’ dominant role in insurance regulation, centralizing more power in Washington. The HHS announcement also mentioned that it will set different thresholds of what constitutes an “unreasonable” increase for every state by 2012.

The Obama administration’s behavior to date suggests that it will not hesitate to take care of its friends. The Senate Republican Policy Committee’s health policy analyst, Chris Jacobs, points out that the administration has already given an extravagant gift to the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), a key player in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The AARP provided a big chunk of the $121 million spent on ads supporting the bill’s passage, as well as $21 million on lobbying in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. HHS’s proposed regulations on Dec. 21 exempted the AARP’s lucrative “Medigap” plans from the rate review and other mandates and requirements.

The AARP and other Medigap providers can require a waiting period before seniors with pre-existing conditions have to be covered. Insurers covering those under 65 cannot.

The AARP is also exempt from the new law’s $500,000 cap on executive compensation for insurance executives. (The nonprofit’s last CEO received over $1.5 million in compensation in his last full year, 2009.) It won’t pay any of the estimated $14 billion in new taxes on insurance companies, though according to its 2008 consolidated financial statement, it gets more money from its insurance offerings than it does from dues, grants and private contributions combined. Nor will it have to spend at least 85% of its Medigap premium dollars on medical claims, as Medicare Advantage plans must do; the AARP will be held to a far less restrictive 65%.

It’s not hard to connect the dots. The Obama administration is using waivers to reward friends. On the flip side, business executives will be discouraged from contributing to the president’s opponents or from taking any other steps that might upset the White House or its political appointees at HHS.

This is not what people had in mind when candidate Obama promised in his acceptance speech in August 2008 to undo “the cynicism we all have about government.”

In a speech at the University of Iowa last March, the president heralded health-care reform as “a new set of rules that treats everybody honestly and treats everybody fairly.” Determining whether that is true will be another task for House Republicans. They have an obligation to look into this matter, and Mr. Obama can hardly object. It was former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, whom the president frequently quotes, who wrote in 1913 that sunlight “is the best of disinfectants.”

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Although Nearly Always Devious with “News”, NBC Discovers a “Good”….A ‘Tramp with a Golden Voice’

NBC , while nearly always remarkably devious with the news, at last  has discovered a good…..a man on the ropes for years, lost, but has been found…….and after 20 years has found his Mother as well as his voice.

I have pulled this video from Allahpundit’s piece and video of this man as he for the first time in two decade faces his Mother.

Allahpundit at HotAir writes:

” I know, I know — it’s overkill at this point. But I’ve got to ride this traffic pony for as long as I can. Three hours after I posted the “Today Show” clips, our internal traffic meter tells me it’s still the most popular post on the site. If it’s Ted Williams you want, it’s Ted Williams you shall have. Look at it this way: It’s either this or another 2012 post.

A touching moment here, especially when you realize that they haven’t seen each other in 20 years. If only there weren’t … photographers conspicuously present.”

For the video please click here….and if you cannot be touched by something special, you must be a closeted Marxist and Obama fan:

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/01/06/video-the-man-with-the-golden-voice-opens-the-today-show/

Comment:  May I also recommend HotAir as a regularly reliable site for good up-to-date videos to review.  I especially enjoy their usual personal touch added to commentary, as expressed above with the reference to    Ted Williams.

I wonder if anyone remembers the name, Ted Williams, besides me.   He was a slow-footed, cantankerous baseball outfielder with the Boston RedSox throughout the 1940s and  1950s.   A Lefthanded, he had the most beautiful swing of the bat among any of the major league ball players….ever!  He had a batting average to match.  (As I remember, he hit .406 for the 1941 season and .388  about 15 years later.

During the peak of his athletic life he left baseball to serve  his country in the Army Air Corps during World War II as a fighter pilot.   In the early 1950s he returned  to duty to serve further as a pilot in the Korean War.   My memory tells me he had a rough homelife as a young teen and joined up with the RedSox when he was 19.

He was a power hitter despite the Green Monster he had to overcome  in left field.

Further note…..he batted without steroids.

Meet Florida Representative Lt. Colonel Allen West….A Man for Our Time!!!

Dennis Prager values clarity…..Dennis Prager values honesty…….Dennis Prager values knowledge, common sense, appreciates   exceptional intellect and is aware that month after month, year after year  conservative America  is experiencing  such an overwhelming gathering  of intellects and folks in the nation with common sense,  that the only group   left  for  Democrats are the Marxists.

Friend, neighbor and fellow Republican, Arlene Taber has sent me an outstanding video  interview of Lt. Colonel Allen West, a freshman Representative out of Florida.

In truth I discovered this guy, this masterpiece of human thought, speech, and dignity, several months ago and ran a blog piece about him praying that he might win his district…..On election night I saw him perform beautifully while accepting his victory.

There is our man to run for national office.   What is it you could possibly not understand about clarity of position and purpose from the words of Lt. Col. Allen West.   He has a story to tell America from his experiences in Iraq.   He did his duty and was canned for doing so.

Meet a Man For Our Time;   Click here:    http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/11/allen-west-on-how-to-defeat-radical.html

Democrat Leftwing Ridicules the Constitution

One of the great divides between conservatives and the Democrat Party, especially its Marxist wings, is the role of the Constitution in American jurisprudence and therefore American life in what is legal and orderly versus what is illegal and disorderly.   The division is not new.   Most modern anarchies are active on the Left   There is always George Soros money around to undermine American democracy to be shared by  more than one closet of  Leftists.

It was a terrific idea coming out of the Tea Party to feature the  Constitution this opening session to remind even the dullest and twittiest of Democrats on Capitol Hill  that this living document is the foundation of  American Law.

Our Marxists in Washington and elsewhere were annoyed and not only pouted, grumbled and  sniped at Republicans, but  ridiculed the document itself.    

Here is some readings from Salon suggesting  the document advances racism.  The article was written by Michael Lind at Salon:

“Tea Party constitutionalism blends several American traditions. One is the tradition of hostility to the federal government chiefly associated with the South, which adopted states’ rights ideology in order to resist federal interference first in Southern slavery and then in Southern racial segregation. Now that the Republican Party, founded as a northern party opposed to the extension of slavery, is disproportionately a party of white Southern reactionaries, dominated by the political heirs of the Confederates and the segregationist Dixiecrats, the denunciation of many exercises of federal authority as illegitimate would have been predictable, even if the president were not a black Yankee from Abraham Lincoln’s Illinois.

But there is more to the constitutional theories of the modern GOP than neo-Confederate ideology. Beginning with the adoption of the federal Constitution, some Americans have sought to promote reverence for this particular Constitution, while others have emphasized the power of the Constitution-making people. Thomas Jefferson thought that laws and constitutions should be updated frequently, while his friend and ally James Madison thought that constitutions and laws should be changed only infrequently in the interest of stability. John Adams thought that the founders of constitutions should be revered, as in ancient Greece and Rome.”

On the same page of Salon we find:   

“No, they(Republicans)  didn’t refuse to extradite some fugitive slaves. They just acted like duly elected Representatives without being sworn in!

The new Republican majority already committed a major boehner on the second day of the new Congress. Representatives Pete Sessions of Texas and Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania were busy attending a fundraiser when all their colleagues were actually sworn in as members of Congress. So, whoops, they’re not members yet. No biggies, right? Wrong! Because then they both showed up to work and cast some votes, in direct violation of our Constitution, which they then participated in the official reading of, on the floor of the House.

Sessions even chaired the Rules Committee while he wasn’t a member, because in 2011, all jokes will officially write themselves.

James Robbins of  the Washington Times writes:       “The Constitution was read at the opening of the new session of the House of Representatives yesterday. What was most remarkable about this was the almost hysterical opposition from congressional Democrats and left-wing commentators. In what should have been a united celebration of the nation’s foundation document in a period of partisan rancor, liberals instead reinforced the view that they are profoundly uncomfortable with the essential truths underlying American freedom.”

Comment:  As you will note from your readings,  the lefties here must be very, very young.   Generally, it is true that much of the noise and voting power of  Marxist Democrat Left does come from the young and unthinking .   It often,  even very frequently occurs  in New York and California  that such young and unthinking thinking reaches many beyond teenage…..Charles Schumer, Rep. Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, Maxine Waters come to mind.

From  an AP report…..”Before the reading began, Democrats questioned the GOP decision not to read sections of the 222-year-old governing document that were later amended, such as the Article I, Section 2 clause that classified slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of congressional apportionment and taxation.

“It’s a consequence of who we are,” Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, said in reference to the three-fifth’s clause and its deletion from the reading.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash, while saying the reading was “special for all of us,” asked whether it was “not intended to create some statement of congressional intent.”    (My God, I would hope so…..that Congress might remember what it’s duties and responsibilities ARE, not were!)     

Democrats Jesse Jackson, Jr. from Illinois doesn’t apparently yet know the difference in English meaning between READING A HISTORY OF THE CONSITUTION  from  READING THE CONSTITUTION.

Many Democrats these days come in very small brain packages but are loud of mouth.    Make your own judgements as the evidence mounts.   Here is  Jerrold Nadler, Democrat-Marxist Representative  from New York:

       “They are reading it like a sacred text,” He called the “ritualistic reading” on the floor “total nonsense” and “propaganda” intended to claim the document for Republicans. “You read the Torah, you read the Bible, you build a worship service around it,” said Nadler, who argued that the Founders were not “demigods” and that the document’s need for amendments to abolish slavery and other injustices showed it was “highly imperfect.”

(Apparently unbeknownst to these neoMarxists the writers of the Constitution were fully aware the document was not perfect.    Everyone but  Marxist-Democrats know nothing in life is perfect.  That is why our nation’s founders outlined a well thought out avenue for changing the Constitution…. ….ignored by nearly all Democrats, Marxist or not.)

Muslim Terrorist Intimidation After the Cartoons

Stratfor Report:

A Recent Plot

 

On Dec. 29, 2010, authorities in Denmark and Sweden arrested five men they say were involved in planning an armed assault on the offices of Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen. Jyllands-Posten is the newspaper that first published the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005. According to the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (known by its Danish acronym PET), three of the arrested men, a 29-year-old Swedish citizen born in Lebanon, a 44-year-old Tunisian and a 30-year-old Swedish citizen, lived in Sweden and had traveled to Denmark to participate in the plot. The other two individuals arrested were a 37-year-old Swedish citizen born in Tunisia who was detained in a Stockholm suburb and a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker who was arrested in a Copenhagen suburb. The Iraqi has been released from Danish custody.

According to the PET, one of the three men who had traveled to Copenhagen, 29-year-old Swedish citizen Munir Awad, had been arrested in Somalia in 2007 and in Pakistan in 2009 on suspicion of participating in terrorist activity. When arrested in Pakistan, Awad was allegedly traveling in the company of Mehdi Ghezali, a Swedish citizen who had been released in 2004 after being held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. Given Awad’s background, it is almost certain that he had been placed under intensive surveillance by Swedish authorities and it is likely this surveillance resulted in the unraveling of the plot.

In addition to Awad’s background, there are several other indicators that this latest plot against Jyllands-Posten was serious. First, the attack plan was reasonable, practical and achievable. The plotters sought to attack a specific target, the Jyllands-Posten offices, with an armed assault. They were not seeking to execute some sort of grandiose, fanciful attack using skills and weapons they did not possess, or to conduct attacks against targets that were too difficult to strike using their chosen method of attack. They appear to have been aware of their own capabilities and limitations and planned their attack accordingly.

This stands in stark contrast to plots like the one also thwarted in December in the Netherlands, where a group of Somalis allegedly plotted to shoot down a Dutch military helicopter but lacked even a rudimentary weapon with which to mount such an attack, much less a surface-to-air missile, the weapon of choice for anyone really wanting to bring down a helicopter. In another recently thwarted plot in the United Kingdom, the planners considered hitting pretty much every conceivable target in London, including the U.S. Embassy, Parliament, the London Stock Exchange and a host of religious and political leaders. The Copenhagen plotters were far more focused.

The PET said the group arrested in Denmark had obtained a pistol and a submachine gun equipped with a sound suppressor for use in its assault on the newspaper offices. Reportedly, the plotters were also found to possess flexible handcuffs, an indication that they may have been seeking to take hostages and create a theatrical terrorist operation to play to the world media.

In addition to conducting their preoperational surveillance, planning their operation and obtaining weapons, the plotters had also brought in a team of operatives from Sweden to assist them in implementing their plan. This indicates that the operation was likely in the later stages of the terrorist attack cycle and was close to being executed. Even though it appears that Swedish and Danish authorities had the plotters under close scrutiny, had the attack been launched against unsuspecting security at the Jyllands-Posten offices, it would have had a fairly good chance of creating considerable carnage and terror.

History of Plots

 

The cartoons received very little notice after their initial release by Jyllands-Posten in September 2005. It was not until early 2006 that a group of Muslim clerics traveling through the Middle East brought attention to the issue in a deliberate effort to stir up emotions. Those efforts were successful in fomenting a violent, if somewhat belated, reaction. In early February 2006, Danish and Norwegian embassies and consulates were attacked in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia. In Damascus, rioters set fire to the Danish and Norwegian missions, and in Beirut the Danish Embassy was burned. At least nine people died when protesters tried to storm an Italian Consulate in Libya while protesting the cartoons.

The furor diminished to a low boil but did not go away. In addition to calls by Muslims to boycott Danish goods, a Swedish newspaper published yet another cartoon of Mohammed, once again stoking the fires. In September 2007, Omar al-Baghdadi, then leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, offered a $100,000 reward for killing Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who drew the August 2007 cartoon in which the Prophet Mohammed was portrayed as a dog. In a March 2008 audiotape, a speaker purporting to be al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatened to conduct attacks in Europe because of the drawings. According to bin Laden, drawing cartoons of the Prophet was even more provocative than killing Muslim civilians.

On June 2, 2008, the Danish Embassy in Islamabad was attacked in a suicide vehicle bombing. Before the attack, the Danes had drawn down their embassy staff in Islamabad and, recognizing that their embassy was not very secure, had ordered the Danish staff remaining in Islamabad to work out of hotels. This move undoubtedly saved lives, as the bombing killed only a handful of people, mostly Pakistani Muslims.

But militants were clearly trying to take their retribution for the cartoons to Denmark itself. Following the October 2009 arrest of U.S. citizen David Headley, American officials learned that Headley, who had conducted preoperational surveillance for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, had also been dispatched to conduct surveillance in Denmark.

According to a complaint filed in federal court, the U.S. government determined that the Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad e-Islami (HUJI) had ordered Headley to travel from Chicago to Copenhagen on two occasions to plan attacks against Jyllands-Posten and cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in what HUJI called “Operation Mickey Mouse.” Westergaard is a Jyllands-Posten cartoonist who drew one of the original batch of 12 Mohammed cartoons in 2005. In Westergaard’s cartoon, the Prophet’s turban was depicted as a bomb, which caused the drawing to elicit a stronger reaction than the other cartoons. In January 2009, Headley conducted surveillance of the Jyllands-Posten offices in Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark. He then traveled to Pakistan, where he met with his HUJI handlers to brief them on the findings of his surveillance and to formulate an attack plan. Headley traveled back to Copenhagen in August 2009 to conduct additional surveillance (presumably to address issues that arose during the operational planning session in Pakistan). During this second trip, Headley made some 13 additional videos and took many photos of the potential targets and the areas around them. It is suspected that some of the observations, photographs and video recordings may have been used in planning some of the subsequent attacks against Jyllands-Posten and Westergaard.

Plots pertaining to the cartoon controversy in 2010 include:

• On Jan. 1, a Somali man reportedly associated with the Somali jihadist group al Shabaab broke into Westergaard’s home armed with an axe and knife and allegedly tried to kill him. Westergaard retreated to a safe room and the assailant was shot and wounded by police.
• On March 9, seven people were arrested in Ireland in connection with an alleged plot to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks. The group was apparently implicated with American Colleen LaRose (aka Jihad Jane) and included a second American woman, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez.
• On May 11, Lars Vilks was assaulted as he tried to give a presentation at Uppsala University in Sweden. On May 14, Vilks’ home was the target of a failed arson attack.
• On Sept. 10, a Chechen man was injured when a letter bomb he was assembling detonated prematurely inside a Copenhagen hotel bathroom. The letter bomb, which featured a main charge comprised of triacetone triperoxide and contained small steel pellets, was intended for Jyllands-Posten.
• On Dec. 11, an Iraqi-born Swedish citizen detonated a poorly constructed explosive device in his car and then detonated a suicide vest, killing himself. The man had sent a warning email expressing anger over the Lars Vilks cartoon as well as the presence of Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan.

 

Cartoonists Remain in the Crosshairs

 

In July 2010, AQAP released the first edition of its English-language magazine Inspire. One of the articles in that issue was written by the American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who wrote, “If you have the right to slander the Messenger of Allah, we have the right to defend him. If it is part of your freedom of speech to defame Muhammad it is part of our religion to fight you.” He added: “Assassinations, bombings, and acts of arson are all legitimate forms of revenge against a system that relishes the sacrilege of Islam in the name of freedom.” Al-Awlaki also referred to a 2008 lecture he gave regarding the cartoon issue titled “The Dust Will Never Settle Down” and noted that, “Today, two years later, the dust still hasn’t settled down. In fact the dust cloud is only getting bigger.”

The first edition of Inspire also featured a “hit list” that includes the names of people like Westergaard and Vilks who were involved in the cartoon controversy as well as other targets such as Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who produced the controversial film Fitna in 2008; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the screenplay for the movie Submission (filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the director of Submission, was murdered by a jihadist in November 2004); and Salman Rushdie, author of the book The Satanic Verses.

The van Gogh murder demonstrated that such targets were vulnerable to attack — and not just by highly skilled transnational operatives. They were also potential victims of grassroots jihadists using readily available weapons in relatively simple attacks. The January 2010 attack against Kurt Westergaard using an axe and knife underscored this point. In light of the events of 2010, al-Awlaki’s boasts ring true. The dust kicked up over the cartoon issue has not settled — and there is no indication it will any time soon.

Read more: The Mohammed Cartoon Dust Has Not Settled | STRATFOR

Canada’s Cutting Corporate Taxes to Half of Obama’s 35%…..Americans Lose Again!

Canada’s Competitive Edge

It was not long ago that Americans viewed Canada as a poorer neighbor with only one competitive advantage — in hockey.  No more: On January 1, Ottawa cut the nation’s corporate tax rate to 16.5 percent from 18 percent, compared to the U.S. federal rate of 35 percent, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Canada started cutting corporate taxes in the 1990s under the Liberal government of Paul Martin and has since enjoyed a virtuous cycle of investment, job creation and growth.  The trend has continued under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has pledged to take the rate to 15 percent by 2012.  Even Canada’s Socialist-run provinces have followed suit by lightening the tax burden on business.  This is part of a global trend, as noted by a European Commission report.

• The European Commission report last year noted that Europe’s average corporate tax rate has dropped below 25 percent.
• By contrast, the U.S. rate is close to 40 percent if you add state corporate taxes to the federal levy.

Relative levels of taxation matter because companies and investors send capital where it can achieve the highest returns.  U.S. companies often pay a lower effective tax rate thanks to loopholes, but the variability leads to economic inefficiency and investment distortions.  Low marginal rates have helped the likes of Hong Kong (16.5 percent), Singapore (17 percent) and Ireland (12.5 percent) attract capital, while the high U.S. rate keeps hundreds of billions of dollars from coming to America from offshore, says the Journal.

Source: “Canada’s Competitive Edge,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2011.

(The above report was printed at National Center for Policy Analysis.)