Goodness gracious this is funny...

Washington Post: The Justice Department has allowed us to say AG Holder supports press freedom

Welcome to America, in case you didn't recognize it.

'In December 2010 the FBI came... then the FBI again... then the IRS... then the FBI again... then the IRS... then the FBI again... then the FBI again... then the IRS again... then the ATF... then OSHA... then the IRS again... then OSHA again...' "

Peggy Noonan has a superb and genuinely chilling synopsis of the consequences of resistance to the Obama-junta.

Excerpt:

... [Tea Party supporter Catherine Engelbrecht] ] requested tax-exempt status for a local conservative group and for one that registers voters and tries to get dead people off the rolls.

... [i]n December 2010 the FBI came to ask about a person who'd attended a King Street Patriots function. In January 2011 the FBI had more questions. The same month the IRS audited her business tax returns. In May 2011 the FBI called again for a general inquiry about King Street Patriots. In June 2011 Engelbrecht's personal tax returns were audited and the FBI called again. In October 2011 a round of questions on True the Vote. In November 2011 another call from the FBI. The next month, more questions from the FBI. In February 2012 a third round of IRS questions on True the Vote. In February 2012 a first round of questions on King Street Patriots. The same month the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms did an unscheduled audit of her business. (It had a license to make firearms but didn't make them.) In July 2012 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration did an unscheduled audit. In November 2012 more IRS questions on True the Vote. In March 2013, more questions. In April 2013 a second ATF audit.

Please read the whole thing. It's important to understand the seriousness of what is happening in our country.

Readers with a good memory will recall that Noonan was among the RINO's who got some leg-thrills from Obama in the early phases of his rise to power. I'm sure she regrets it now, but not as much as Ms. Engelbrecht and thousands of Americans stripped of Constitutional rights by this leftist junta regret it. 

Little Lenins

Peter Collier has a must-read essay on Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground.

Progressives with Bombs; the whitewashing of the Weather Underground

I was a teenager when a lot of this stuff was going on, and I remember the violence and the fear. These people were and are monsters. They failed (temporarily) where Lenin succeeded, and what they would bring to our country if they had succeeded would have been what Lenin brought to Russia.

Every one of them is a criminal, and every one of them should be in prison. The fact that they are not, despite their very public and self-confessed crimes (how many bombings do you have to confess to publicly before you are prosecuted?), leaves me dismayed, confused, and almost fearful.

They weren't prosecuted, and still enjoy astonishing prestige, because they won, in a partial but important way. Their spawn occupy the Oval Office, and run the Justice Department and the IRS. 

"Senator" Al Franken assaults conservative journalist

Dem Senator Al Franken doesn't like the question asked by conservative journalist Jason Matera, so he does what gangsters do. He roughs the journalist up.  Franken has a history of physical assault.

Franken was "elected" in a Minnesota Senate race decided by 312 votes. On election day, 1099 felons voted, obviously not of their own inspiration, with 177 of them actually later convicted of voter fraud and 66 awaiting trial as of last August.

Obviously, all of the felons voted Democrat (felons are one of the Dems most reliable constituencies), so Franken won his election by fraud.

Franken gave the Dems the 60th vote in the Senate, without which Obamacare would not have passed.

I repeat: the deciding vote on Obamacare was cast by a "senator" who was not actually elected by his constituents, but obtained his seat by documented voter fraud. 

Overt voter fraud that radically changes our nation's healthcare.  Presidential and State Department lies about Benghazi to mislead the public before an election. Justice Department intimidation of journalists who won't cooperate in the Obama pre-election media campaign. IRS intimidation and interference to cripple the President's political opponents in the run-up to an election.

I wouldn't have asked this question a few years ago-- it's a dangerous question-- but it's unavoidable now.

To what extent is our government, as currently constituted, legitimate?

How about "The Tenth Crusade"?

Oh.. what to call it.

Naming America's Nameless War

We shouldn't have stopped anyway, in the 14th century. The threat remains, and is growing exponentially, with invasion of Islam into nominally Christian civilization.

A central goal of our foreign policy should be the isolation and enfeeblement of Islam, which is a mortal threat to civilization. A central goal of our domestic policy should be to foster the re-growth of Christian civilization, which is our last best hope. 

Just wait until the first openly gay eagle scout applies to be a scoutmaster...

BOY SCOUTS APPROVE PLAN TO ACCEPT OPENLY GAY BOYS

Not quite. The Scouts effectively approved a plan to allow gays to serve at all levels, including in adult leadership.

How so?

This is how: the Boy Scouts will be unable to say no to a gay eagle scout who turns eighteen and applies to be a scoutmaster.

Imagine the New York Times lead story, showing the dejected young gay man, now eighteen, with all of his merit badges and awards on his sash, with the headline: "Now-- leave!".

The Scouts will not be able to argue coherently that a seventeen-year old gay scout is ok, but an eighteen year old gay scoutmaster is not. And they will be producing a steady stream of quite sympathetic upstanding young openly gay men who simply wish to continue to serve, who are being unceremoniously booted once they turn eighteen simply because of their sexual orientation.

Checkmate. There ain't no p.r. firm that can spin that.  

It pisses me off that commentators and the Scouts themselves aren't making this obvious point.

Obviously the Scouts understand this, and it makes me wonder if the substantial gay adult leadership already in scouting is already calling the shots.

The door is wide open to the gay agenda, and it ain't just gay boys. 

Actually, I think they've thought about it quite a bit.

Video – Schieffer wants Obama to “rethink his entire communications policy”

Lib journalist Schieffer finally notices that the toe he's been sucking doesn't taste so good... 

"Atheist-buts" need to understand atheism

Andrew Brown:

Last week I interviewed the philosopher Daniel Dennett about new atheism, (the interview will be up on this site soon). I haven't got the tape myself, so I can't swear to the verbatim accuracy of the quotes I remember, but at one stage I said something to the effect that new atheism seems to me to reproduce all the habits that made religion obnoxious, like heresy hunting. He asked what I meant, and I gave the example of "atheists but", a species of which he is particularly disdainful. They are the people who will say to him and his fellow zealots "I am an atheist, but I don't go along with your campaign." I'm one of them.

He accused me of a kind of intellectual snobbery – of believing that I am clever and brave and strong enough to understand that there is no God, but that this is a discovery too shattering for the common people who should be left in the comfort of their ignorance...

But that's not in fact my position at all. The reason that I don't go around trying to deconvert all my Christian friends is that they know the arguments against a belief in God so very much better than I do. I can entertain the possibility that Christianity is true. They have to take it seriously.

Brown understands at least this: Christians understand atheist arguments better than atheists do.

Christians understand a lot of things better than atheists do. You might expect that people who believe that wisdom is the source of existence would know more about stuff than people who believe that existence has no explanation.

But Brown, handicapped by his atheism, doesn't realize this: there is no "atheism-but", in the final analysis. Atheism is inherently intolerant and even totalitarian in power, and ultimately leaves no room for "but".

Challenge: name a free nation ruled by state atheism.

Raaacismmm....

Lib EJ Dione on The Obama Riddle:

Yet it's undeniable that racism lurks beneath so many of the preposterously false charges against him...

Actually racism is the reason he was elected.

What are his other qualifications, besides his epidermis? 

More please...

Huge anti-gay-marriage protest march in Paris

God bless'em.

We want our civilization back.  

The government pleads the Fifth

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air hits a nerve on IRS hack Lois Lerner's invocation of the Fifth Amendment in testimony before a Congressional committee investigating Obama-IRS-gate.

Shaw makes a few points about the incongruity of Lerner's testimony, including the fact that she testified that she was absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing, then refused to provide the committee with any information that might reflect on her innocence. He made good points.

I have a few additional points:

1) Lerner's refusal to testify really pisses me off. Really. She is a government employee-- all of her salary and benefits and perks and retirement are paid by me and you, and when we ask for the truth in what appears to be a significant violation of our rights, she asserts her rights and gets laryngitis. She is plainly obstructing justice.

2) She is obviously guilty as hell, and she knows who else is guilty as hell. This needs no elaboration.

3) Why are government employees allowed to invoke the Fifth Amendment when they are asked to testify under oath before an investigating committee? After all, she is being asked to testify to what she knows and did as a government official, not as a private citizen. She's not being asked about kicking her cat or growing pot in her backyard. The Bill of Rights protects the people from the government, not the other way around. By allowing her to invoke the Fifth Amendment, aren't we allowing her to turn our Constitutional rights upside down? Aren't we allowing an official of the government to evade accountability for violating our rights? Is that what the Bill of Rights has become-- a tool for the government to evade answering our questions?

4) "But", you say "you forget that despite the fact that she is a government official-- a very senior government official with power over millions of Americans-- she does not just leave her Constitutional rights at the door when she walks into the office. Government officials have rights too, even regarding matters entirely related to their official capacities and that concern the rights of other Americans over which they have authority."

5) "So", I reply, "if Ms. Lerner were a school teacher, and she wanted to exercise her First Amendment right to free exercise of religion by leading her students in voluntary prayer, she should have a right to do so. Teachers, no less than IRS honchos, don't check their Constitutional rights at the door at work."

If schoolteachers can't exercise their First Amendment rights in classrooms, why should IRS supervisors be able to exercise their Fifth Amendment rights in congressional inquiries?

Mark Steyn:

“Let’s be clear about this — [Lerner] is the government... she is not speaking as an individual. She is speaking as the government, the government. And she has still got her job. In effect, the United States government has just pleaded the fifth. That’s absolutely ridiculous.”

The Fifth Amendment protects the people from government, not government from the people.

They even conspire when they admit conspiring

From Legal Insurrection:

Nothing says “trust the IRS” quite like the IRS planting questions at Bar Association meetings

The fateful question came from a tax lawyer, in a room filled with dozens of them. It came at the end of a Friday morning panel, on the second day of the American Bar Association tax section’s big annual meeting at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington D.C. The moderator had announced that it would be the panel’s last question. 

“Lois, a few months ago there were some concerns about the IRS’s review of 501(c)(4) organizations, of applications from tea party organizations,” Celia Roady, a veteran tax lawyer, asked Lois Lerner, head of the IRS’ tax-exempt organizations division, a few minutes after Lerner finished giving prepared remarks. “I was just wondering if you could provide an update.” 

The name of the panel was “News From The IRS And Treasury.” But few, if any, of those present could have anticipated the kind of news Lerner would make with her response to Roady’s question. 

Lerner began by describing the increase in 501(c)(4) applications the IRS received between 2010 and 2012. IRS employees in Cincinnati, Lerner said, had reacted by centralizing the applications for efficiency and consistency, something the IRS did “whenever we see an uptick in a new kind of application or something we haven’t seen before.” But in this case, Lerner said, the centralization had not been carried out properly. 

“Instead of referring to the cases as advocacy cases, they actually used case names on this list,” Lerner said, according to a transcript of the meeting. “They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title. That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate — that’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review.”

Cornell law professor Bill Jacobson asks:

Why the sudden admission? Just coincidence, or an attempt by the IRS to get ahead of the pending release of the Inspector General Report? There was a strong suspicion that the question was planted based on the identity of the questioner. 

Now we know. At the hearings this morning, Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller admitted Lerner knew about the question in advance, and that it was planned by the IRS.

They conspire to violate the rights of thousands of Americans, with the obvious intent to sway the outcome of the 2012 election by abusing Obama's opponents, and then they conspire to admit to the conspiracy in a way that optimizes their damage control.

They even conspire to admit conspiring.

Gosnell and the Tsarnaevs got a pass from the government. The Tea Party-- not so much.

Victor Davis Hanson points out the obvious.

A lot of criminals got a pass from government, which was obsessed with suppressing Obama's political enemies. 

The Obama Administration never liked the Vatican anyway...

Pope Francis takes aim at the Mafia

"Is nature unnatural?"

Decades of confounding experiments have physicists considering a startling possibility: The universe might not make sense.

What the author means by "not making sense" is the existence of fine-tuning, not explained by over-arching theory.

She asserts that this supports the multiverse hypothesis. If fine tuning is apparent, there must be an enormous number of universes, so randomness can permit our existence.

There is of course another explanation for fine tuning, which doesn't presuppose an infinity of universes.

But that's not "scientific", unlike an infinity of undetectable universes. 

Will no one rid me of these turbulent speakers?

Dem Senator and anti-Tea party IRS censor Dick Durbin wonders:

Does First Amendment apply to bloggers, Twitter?

 This "speech" and "press" stuff is so annoying to the government.

When the IRS works for a political party, not for the people.

The IRS targeted my organization

Excerpt:

If the government can threaten our rights based upon what we think, what we speak or what we write, then we no longer have a government of the people, by the people or for the people.

Remember:

 "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Who consented to this? 

A two-child policy-- against Muslims

Wes Smith quotes a NYT story:

The local authorities in the western state of Rakhine in Myanmar have imposed a two-child limit for Muslim Rohingya families, a policy that does not apply to Buddhists in the area and comes amid accusations of ethnic cleansing during earlier sectarian violence. Officials said Saturday that the new measure would be applied to two Rakhine townships that border Bangladesh and that have the highest Muslim populations in the state. 

The unusual order makes Myanmar perhaps the only country in the world to impose such a restriction on a religious group, and it is likely to fuel further criticism that Muslims are being discriminated against in the Buddhist-majority country.

An atrocity. Every human being has a right to have a family, unregulated by the government. Islam certainly does pose a serious threat to many cultures, but totalitarian crimes like government restricting family size are inexcusable and are worse than anything Islam ever did.

Muslims in Myanmar, like all human beings everywhere, have a God-given right to a family, without government interference.

"IRS commits political sabotage"

How did tax returns of a group opposed to gay marriage get leaked to political opponents?

When the government sabotages its political opponents, people naturally raise questions about the legitimacy of the government.

Jerry Coyne: I told them to stop talking. Why are they still talking?

Professor Coyne: I don't understand why they are still talking.

(Dissociated Press parody) Dr. Jerry Allen Coyne, professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, noted atheist, author, fruit fly geneticist, and eponym of a nearly extinct Ecuadorian toad, is dissatisfied.

People are still talking, after he told them not to.

A month ago, Dr. Coyne wrote threatening letters to Ball State University about a course offered at Ball State in the department of astronomy. The university offered a course called The Boundaries of Science, which examines the philosophical and theological implications of cosmology, physics and biology.

Dr. Coyne wrote the chairman of the department:

... As as scientist, I find this deeply disturbing. It’s not only religion served under the guise of science, but appears to violate the First Amendement of the Constitution. You are a public university and therefore cannot teach religion in a science class, as this class appears to do... the course seems engineered not to challenge students, but to propagandize them into thinking that religion is completely compatible with science, and, perhaps, to think there is merit in creationism and intelligent design. As an evolutionary biologist, I find this very distasteful.

The chairman's reply was unsatisfactory to Dr. Coyne.

Coyne:

This will now go to the lawyers.

The lawyers-- from the Freedom from Religion Foundation-- sent Ball State a threatening letter:

As a public university, BSU is subject to the strictures of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which separates state and church... We request that Ball State thoroughly investigate all of [the professor's] classes and his teaching/preaching methods and if your investigation bears out these allegations, to [sic] remove [the professor] from the class at issue... May we hear from you at your earliest convenience as to what steps Ball state is taking to correct the violation of the Constitution...  

We at Dissociated Press wanted to know more about the controversy, so we sat down with Dr. Coyne for an interview.

(DP) Why are you upset with Ball State University?

I told them not to talk about religion and science. 

What did they do?

They're still talking about it. After I told them not to. 

The course is an elective, taken voluntarily by adults who choose it. Doesn't the First Amendment guarantee free speech, especially in the public sphere?

I think that, unfortunately, the Founding Fathers made a transcription error in the First Amendment. They meant to say "speech-free" instead of "free speech". It was before Darwin, so people made a lot of mistakes.

Why would the Founding Fathers want the public square to be speech-free?

It was a founding principle of the men who wrote the Bill of Rights-- Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln-- that you're not supposed to say things that experts don't like.  

Um... well... among other things, you're not really an expert on the things you object to in the course. You're not a philosopher, or a theologian, and you're not a Constitutional scholar.

The unconstitutional learning at Bell State effects me as a student, a professor, a citizen and a biologist.

You're not a student nor an alumnus of Ball State, nor a member of the faculty of Ball State, nor a citizen of Indiana. And the course is in astronomy, not biology.

I'm an atheist.

So?

Atheists always tell people to shut up. 

Well... uh.. what is it exactly about the course that offends you?

The students and the professors discuss the philosophical and theological implications of science. 

What's wrong with that?

You can't discuss philosophy and theology in a science class. It's unconstitutional.

What part of the Constitution bans that?

The Separation of Church and State part.

That's not in the Constitution.

It's right after the "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." part.

That's the Declaration of Independence, which says nothing about "separation of church and state". In fact, it attributes our rights to God.

And the Constitution says nothing about separation of church and state. "Separation of church and state" was not mentioned even once in the Congressional record from June 7 to September 25 1789 during the Founders' official debate on the First Amendment.

That's unconstitutional. 

After a short break, the interview continued.

Next question, Dr. Coyne. You have asserted that the offending course didn't present a balanced view of the origin of the universe. What would constitute a balanced view?

The atheist view.

What is the atheist view on origins?

Everything just happened. 

Why did everything just happen?

No cause. It just did. 

How did species happen?

Evolutionary theory. The Neo-Darwinian synthesis. Random heritable variation and natural selection, punctuated equilibrium, kin selection, and neutral drift.

Sounds complicated. If everything just happened, why didn't species just happen?

Everything just happened except species. 

Dr. Coyne, what other objectionable viewpoints have you gleaned from the course syllabus?

It looks as though they are going to discuss free will.

What's wrong with that?

There is no free will. Neuroscience has proven it. 

But, Dr. Coyne, how could you hold the Ball State professors legally accountable for teaching a course when they weren't free to do otherwise?

Coyne shifted in his chair.

Did I ever tell you that they named a nearly extinct Ecuadorian toad after me?

Thank you.

The American cemetery at Normandy.

May God bless and keep them. 

Ross Douthat: "Is there a future for Christianity"?

Ross Douthat has a superb essay titled "Is there a future for Christianity? The shape of things to come."

Excerpt:

The story of Christianity has always featured unexpected resurrections. Eras of corruption give way to eras of reform; sinners and cynics cede the floor to a rush of idealists and saints; political and intellectual challenges emerge and then are gradually surmounted. 

There is no single form of Christian civilization, in the same sense that there is no stereotypical Christian life; across two millennia, the faith has found ways to make itself at home in the Roman court and the medieval monastery, the Renaissance city and the American suburb alike. 

In The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton describes what he calls the "five deaths of the faith" - the moments in Western history when Christianity seemed doomed to either perish entirely or else fade to the margins of a post-Christian civilization. 

It would have been natural for the faith to decline and fall with the Roman Empire, or to disappear gradually after the armies of Islam conquered its ancient heartland in the Near East and North Africa was conquered by the armies of Islam. It would have been predictable if Christianity had dissolved along with feudalism when the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, or if it had vanished with the anciens regimes of Europe amid the turmoil of the age of revolutions. And it would have been completely understandable if the faith had gradually waned away during the long nineteenth century, when it was dismissed by Marx, challenged by Darwin, denounced by Nietzsche, and explained away by Freud. 

But in each of these cases, an age of crisis was swiftly followed by an era of renewal, in which forces threatening the faith either receded or were discredited and Christianity itself revived. Time and again, Chesterton noted, "the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs." But each time, "it was the dog that died."

Douthat suggests that the future of Christianity lies more in the sanctity of its adherents than in the seminars of its theologians or the political prescriptions of its lobbyists:

[A] renewed Christianity should be oriented toward sanctity and beauty. In every crisis in the Christian past, it has been saints and artists - from Saint Francis down to John Wesley, Dante to Dostoevsky - who resurrected the faith from one of its many deaths. The example of a single extraordinary woman, Mother Teresa, did more for Christian witness in the twentieth century than every theology department and political action committee put together. 

The critic Alan Jacobs points out that remains of highbrow Christian culture in the United States is sustained, to a remarkable extent, by literary works rather than by institutions - by Wise Blood and Walker Percy, Auden's verse and The Chronicles of Narnia, Thomas Merton's memoirs and "The Four Quartets." As Joseph Ratzinger put it, shortly before becoming Benedict XVI: 

"The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb."...

The future of American religion depends on believers who can demonstrate, in word and deed alike, that the possibilities of the Christian life are not exhausted by TV preachers and self-help gurus, utopians and demagogues. It depends on public examples of holiness, and public demonstrations of what the imitation of Christ can mean for a fallen world. We are waiting, not for another political saviour or television personality but for a Dominic or a Francis, an Ignatius or a Wesley, a Wilberforce or a Newman, a Bonhoeffer or a Solzhenitsyn. 

Only sanctity can justify Christianity's existence; only sanctity can make the case for faith; only sanctity, or the hope thereof, can ultimately redeem the world.

There is much more in Douthat's essay. Please read the whole thing.

I agree with much of what he says. But I found three things oddly missing,

First, Douthat scolds liberals and conservatives alike, but bizarrely he makes only brief tangential mention of the central moral issue that divides our nation: abortion. Abortion is not merely one more political squabble among others on the Christian balance scale. There is no "Christian" perspective supportive of abortion, and liberals who align themselves with a Democratic Party whose platform endorses killing children in the womb are engaging in extraordinarily grave sin.

There is no issue parallel to abortion among conservatives. No Tea Party doctrine, even in the most liberal interpretation, deviates from Christian morality like abortion does.

Taxation policy and federal deficits are prudential judgements. Abortion is mortal sin.

Second, Douthat makes no reference to the manifest active hostility of the Democratic Party to Christianity. The contraception mandate is an organized (and rather clever) effort to force Christians from the public square, and the drive to establish gay "marriage" seems a prelude to assaulting Christians who by conscience cannot participate in nor condone gay nuptials with hate crime and discrimination prosecutions.

Republicans have consistently supported public participation and constitutional rights of Christians. The Democrats at their recent national convention booed God. The Christian position is not midway between the parties, for goodness sake.

Why would Douthat, in an otherwise thoughtful essay on morality and Christian politics, omit abortion and the active Democrat hostility to Christianity? I guess he needs to keep his job at the New York Times.

Third, Douthat makes no mention of the fact that sanctity is not really a code of ethics or the mere imitation of poverty or charity or chastity.

Sanctity is a personal encounter-- a relationship-- with Jesus Christ. It is in this relationship, which we call faith but by which we mean much more than passive trust, that we and our brothers and sisters are saved. In my view, it is the relationship with Christ that manifests itself to others as sanctity. I see it in our Christian ancestors-- St. Francis and Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer and Solzhenitsyn and John Paul II.

And I see it, with real clarity, in Pope Francis, who is calling each of us again to sanctity-- to know Christ personally, and to allow Him to work through us.

It is Christ-in-us, which is actual sanctity, that is the past, present, and future of Christianity. 

Press corps gets even more passionate about Obama Administration

From the Onion:

Obama Fed Grapes While Urging Press Conference To Enjoy Orgy

Dem. Rep. Conyers: 'Who knew that Farrakhan was an anti-Semite?"

From CBS Detroit:

DETROIT (WWJ/AP) – A Michigan congressman has apologized after attending Louis Farrakhan’s appearance at a Detroit church during which the Nation of Islam leader made anti-Jewish remarks. 

U.S. Rep. John Conyers joined Detroit City Council member JoAnn Watson and others at Fellowship Chapel for Farrakhan’s Friday speech. 

The Chicago-based minister denounced “Satanic Jews” and the “synagogue of Satan” that he said controls major U.S. institutions and said President Barack Obama has “surrounded himself with Satan … members of the Jewish community.” 

In a statement out Thursday, Conyers said, “Farrakhan made unacceptable racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic statements” that Conyers condemns “in the strongest possible terms.” 

Conyers’s statement comes one day after the Jewish advocacy group the Anti-Defamation League criticized the Detroit Democrat for failing to counter Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism.

Farrakhan-groupie Conyers is the ranking member-- the most senior f*cking Democrat-- on the House Judiciary Committee (!) He confirms Supreme Court justices.

Imagine if a prominent conservative Republican congressman attended a sermon given by a Neo-Nazi-- a very close parallel to Farrakhan, who has expressed admiration for Hitler. The Republican congressman's career would be over. Instantly. Apology not accepted. And appropriately. It would be headline news for weeks, and the Republican Party would be implicated incessantly. Scores of prominent Republicans would be asked to denounce the former Republican (Republican... Republican...  Republican... ) congressman's act. The congressman would have difficulty even going out in public without being heckled.

Democrats have different rules. The Left is uncommonly candid lately.

Inequality of power, sexual attraction, and camping out.

Male-on-male rapes increase in American military

          Boy Scouts approve plan to accept openly gay members


Insanity (noun): 1) doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

A congressman tells the truth to an alphabet-agency thug

Congressman Mike Kelly shreds resigning IRS hack Steven Miller. And gets an ovation from the spectators.

More... we need more. We need to hold these criminals accountable, and not just with words. There need to be felony prosecutions.

It's a federal crime for a government official to conspire to deny Constitutional rights-- such as the right to free speech, participation in the democratic process, and equal protection of the law-- to any citizen:

Title 18, U.S.C., Section 242:


Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law 

This statute makes it a crime for any person acting under color of law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to willfully deprive or cause to be deprived from any person those rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the U.S... 

Acts under "color of any law" include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within the bounds or limits of their lawful authority, but also acts done without and beyond the bounds of their lawful authority... 

I'm sure that are many other laws criminalizing IRS harassment and threats against citizens based on viewpoint discrimination for political purposes. 

The American people are sovereign in our beloved land, not these arrogant lefty government hacks. These alphabet-agency fascists need to understand that they are in a nation of laws, and they have violated the law massively.

We the People need to take this country-- our country-- back.

From "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to "Don't Bend Over"

Military suffers wave of 'gay' sex assaults

”... somewhat similar to prison rape.”

Obama Administration finally finds a part of the Constitution it likes

It looks like Obamahack Lois Lerner, the current head of the tax-exempt office at the IRS, will take the Fifth Amendment in testimony before Congress today.

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday afternoon that Lois Lerner, who heads up the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt division, plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a hearing Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs. 

The Fifth Amendment provides that U.S. citizens may not be compelled to offer testimony if telling the truth would incriminate them. 

Lerner's defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III, wrote to the committee on Tuesday that his client would refuse to answer questions related to what she knew about the extra levels of scrutiny applied to conservative nonprofit organizations that applied for tax-exempt status beginning in 2010.

Six years after Chris Matthews, the Obama Administration is finally doing something that sends a tingle up my leg.

Think of the arrogance: this Obama apparatchik harassed conservatives (and it seems, Jews and Christians) and violated the Constitutional rights of countless people, and now when she is asked merely to tell the truth under oath, she invokes her own Constitutional rights and won't say a word.

Expect a cascade of Obama administration officials invoking the Constitutional protections they have been working so hard to deny to others.

Just a crime syndicate.   

Sometimes you just want to slam your head against the wall.

From Al Gore:

Yesterday, for the first time in human history, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the primary global warming pollutant, hit 400 parts per million in our planet's atmosphere. This number is a reminder that for the last 150 years -- and especially over the last several decades -- we have been recklessly polluting the protective sheath of atmosphere that surrounds the Earth and protects the conditions that have fostered the flourishing of our civilization. We are altering the composition of our atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. Indeed, every single day we pour an additional 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the sky as if it were an open sewer. As the distinguished climate scientist Jim Hansen has calculated, the accumulated manmade global warming pollution in the atmosphere now traps enough extra heat energy each day to equal the energy that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-scale atomic bombs exploding every single day. It's a big planet -- but that is a LOT of energy. And it is having a destructive effect. 

Now, more than ever before, we are reaping the consequences of our recklessness. From Superstorm Sandy, which crippled New York City and large areas of New Jersey, to a drought that parched more than half of our nation; from a flood that inundated large swaths of Australia to rising seas affecting millions around the world, the reality of the climate crisis is upon us.

Yikes! Consider the implications of our new CO2 threshold, along with this from James Delingpole:

There has been no global warming since 1998.

Why pray tell would the observation that CO2 has risen to a record high, during a 15 year period in which there has been no global warming whatsoever, be interpreted as evidence supporting global warming alarmism?

If one were to imagine a scenario maximally supportive of global warming skepticism, it would be that CO2 reached record highs at the same time as temperature didn't change.

Sometimes you just want to slam your head against the wall.

A government that lies but never deceives

Richard Fernandez has a very deep insight into the political and cultural sea-change taking place under Obama.

Excerpt:

The Lying King

"Was the White House involved in the IRS’s targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was. 

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an “independent” agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies. 

But that’s not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action. 

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. “He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?” asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot..."

Listen to the “dog whistle,... don’t listen to the fancy, eloquent speeches. That’s just for show. The real goodies are inside the wrapper...

The Obama administration may be the first since World War Two to attempt a new and innovative policy best described as “trust me to lie to you.” If you were astute, then you wouldn’t believe us. If you were sophisticated you would make the default assumption that the... policy was for public consumption, since only rubes and simpletons could have possibly believed that the Obama administration was telling the truth...

[But] trust exists for very good reason, even among gangsters. In ordinary commerce its value is obvious. Many products rely on trust: the security of our communications and data storage; the integrity of accounting; the impartiality of the public institutions. Whether we are using Office 360, email, or Google Drive, a medical storage device that stores our sugar levels and blood pressure numbers or files an income tax return, the presumption is that the information we generate is reasonably private. Once that expectation is destroyed, once we are certain that a political hack whose principal qualification is snooping has been appointed to head Obamacare, then an economic cost is inevitably incurred. 

Lying isn’t free. 

One of the reasons that the United States has remained the last refuge for money fleeing instability abroad is that those investors trust its institutions. They believed — reasonably until now — that in America the rule of law reigned supreme. They thought — until the administration cast the question into serious doubt — that America was not the banana republic that the possessors of those fortunes sought to flee. That’s why the money comes to America and not, let us say, to the Congo. 

Similarly... the word of an American president was trusted enough in the past to make the actual use of arms unnecessary. All that was necessary was for the United States to send a signal and that message would have the effect of armies. 

But what happens when an administration makes dishonesty and untrustworthiness a feature? What occurs when the president conditions us to subliminally think — perhaps in spite of ourselves — that in God we Trust but of Obama we can expect nothing but lies? What then? 

Well, we’re about to find out.

Please read the whole thing. It's brilliant. Fernandez describes Obama's salient trait: he lies reliably. He lies like he breathes, but you never need to guess what he's doing or what he thinks-- in Benghazi, he spun it anyway he had to to win the election. In the IRS scandal, of course the White House organized and endorsed the thuggery. In the AP phone scandal, of course the Administration used it to intimidate reporters who interfered with pre-election messaging. On Sebilus' slimy pressure on health care regulatees to fund Obamacare implementation-- that's just how gangsters do things. On gay marriage, of course Obama was always for it-- he lied for a while that he was against it, but nobody actually believed that, and nobody was surprised when he came out for it. Yawn.

Obama lies reliably. You know exactly what he's up to (filthy hard-left politics), and you know that he's always lying about it, but on one level it doesn't matter that he lies, because everyone-- on the left and in the middle and on the right-- knows exactly what he's doing. He is perhaps the most dishonest, and most predictable, president in modern times.

How will our new normal-- a government that lies but never deceives-- change us?

The change could be more radical than we imagine. Lying-without-deceit is a hallmark of totalitarian government. 'People's Democratic Republic of...' . It fosters not only cynicism, which can be good (why trust the government anyway?), but it sows the seed of an amoral polity. It unlinks principle and acts.

Look at Russia. Read the rights guaranteed in the Soviet Constitution. All lies, and no deceit. Every Russian knew what it said, and every Russian knew what it meant. Every Russian knew they were ruled by sanctimonious gangsters. Even after the goons are tossed out, the rot lingers. In the long run, it changes people's souls. Look at Russia now.

Rule by lying-without-deceiving creates a polity akin to the government itself: their only principles are their interests.

IRS: 'Tell us what you pray about'

From Yahoo News:

IRS asked anti-abortion group about content of public prayers

While applying with the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status in 2009, an Iowa-based anti-abortion group was asked to provide information about its members' prayer meetings, documents sent by an IRS official to the organization reveal. 

On June 22, 2009, the Coalition for Life of Iowa received a letter from the IRS office in Cincinnati, Ohio, that oversees tax exemptions requesting details about how often members pray and whether their prayers are "considered educational."

The Left's interpretation of the First Amendment: you can't pray in school because it violates the non-constitutional "separation of church and state".

But if you peacefully assemble for the redress of grievances and you pray privately, the IRS demands: 'tell us what you pray about'.   

Gosnell gets life

Kermit Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder and will serve life in prison.

His atrocities will reverberate. Gosnell is poison to the pro-abortion movement, and they will spin it, as they are already doing. I don't think they'll get anywhere with the spin, but they'll do as much damage control as they can.

I'd love to see congressional hearings on the abortion industry. We on the pro-life side need to make sure that as many people as possible understand that Gosnell is no out-lier. What Gosnell did is what abortion is.

I'm glad he didn't get death. He deserves death, and much worse. But we all deserve worse than we get.

There's already been too much killing. 

America's leading gun salesman gives conservatives a step-up

From John Dickerson:

The Obama administration is making the case for conservatism better than Mitt Romney ever did.

"I didn't realize apologies were sufficient in IRS-related issues"

Jon Stewart on IRS-gate:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

Wes Pruden understands the implications:

Obama finds his legacy

Suspect's D.C. neighbors shocked by gruesome revelations

"He always seemed to be so full of hope and change",
neighbors and former friends say. 

(Dissociated Press) As new revelations of felonies and unconstitutional abuse of power seem to emerge hourly, neighbors of Barry Sotelo express disbelief that their hero and former friend could be associated with shocking high crimes and misdemeanors.

Sotelo, 51, has been publicly charged with lying to 300 million Americans about overseas murders and then violating the Constitution by arresting a hapless scapegoat to protect his lie, illegally obtaining the phone records of journalists who tried to do their jobs and who refused to cover up terrorism in the run-up to an election, and systematically using the IRS to harass and silence his political opponents, all to secure his re-appointment to a job for which, it seems now, he was unfit to have in the first place.

Neighbors in the posh D.C. neighborhood gathered around Sotelo's home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to express their grief and shock. 

"Just yesterday he waved at me" said Juanita Jones, 36, who lived ten blocks from Sotelo and who often saw him on television. "He was always smiling, and he seemed so friendly. We never imagined that he could subvert the Constitution and abuse power at such a level."

"Maybe we should have paid attention to his background" said Brenda Williams, Jones' neighbor and a former admirer of Sotelo. "We knew that he was from Chicago, and learned his trade from the worst political crooks in the nation. I mean, you're more likely to go to prison if you're elected governor in Illinois than if you commit murder in Illinois. Maybe we should have realized that if Sotelo never said or did anything about the corruption of his buddies, we never should have believed that he was gonna clean things up here."

David Brooks, a Sotelo fan and New York Times columnist who lived for a while under the suspect's chair, expressed shock. "His pants had such sharp creases", Brooks moaned. "I thought he was going to be really good at his job. He was so well tailored." Brooks noted that he had been to Tea Party rallies. "Not a single tea-bagger had an Armani suit, or even Berluti shoes. It was all discount shirts and spandex." Brooks looked wistfully at the Executive Mansion. "America's about Gucci and Brooks Brothers, not overalls and workboots. The Tea Partiers were so... Walmart. How could they have been right about Barry? How could we have been wrong?"

"He gave us so much, at first" sobbed Glenda Jiminez, fumbling with her scuffed Obamaphone. "He promised us new apps, and that we wouldn't have to pay our bills anymore. But I still don't have a job, and now my health insurance costs a lot more than it used to" she moaned.

Some neighbors were barely able to speak. "I've never seen anyone kill a fly like that." mumbled CNBC reporter John Harwood, the suspect's closest neighbor who, along with other journalists, live in Sotelo's pocket. "It was 'the most persistent fly I ever saw'. Sotelo was like a superhero, the One, a ninja predator drone all rolled into one. How could a man who can kill a fly like that be an unscrupulous political gangster?"

As this reporter interviewed shocked neighbors, Sotelo left his house in a caravan of limos and cars with flashing lights, on his way to a fundraiser in Hollywood, California.

"There he goes" said Mac Warner, an unemployed steelworker and former supporter of the suspect. "He's gonna to ask for money from the few people in the country who are just like him."

"How are the folks in Hollywood just like him?", this reporter asked.

Warner sighed. "They all go on television, smile a lot and look good and talk real nice, and pretend to be something they ain't."

Obama stirs up the bordello

Things are heating up.

GOVT OBTAINS WIDE AP PHONE RECORDS IN PROBE 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. 

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of calls. 

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters. 

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies. 

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know," Pruitt said.

Why on earth would Obama's thugs snoop on their strumpets in the palace stenography pool?

Well, some of the snooping seems to be connected to a May 7, 2012 AP story:

The May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of the CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bomb plot occurred around the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, killing of Osama bin Laden. 

The plot was significant both because of its seriousness and also because the White House previously had told the public it had "no credible information that terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, are plotting attacks in the U.S. to coincide with the (May 2) anniversary of bin Laden's death." 

The AP delayed reporting the story at the request of government officials who said it would jeopardize national security. Once government officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP disclosed the plot because officials said it no longer endangered national security. The Obama administration, however, continued to request that the story be held until the administration could make an official announcement. 

The May 7 story was written by reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman with contributions from reporters Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Alan Fram. They and their editor, Ted Bridis, were among the journalists whose April-May 2012 phone records were seized by the government. 

Echoes of Benghazi. Obama talking points leading to November 2012 were that al-Qaida was no more. Bin Laden was dead. Americans were safe. The One had triumphed. The Obama Administration had an election to win, and the talking points had to be pristine. They couldn't have the palace stenographers reporting anything that might jeopardize Ohio or Florida.

An election to protect. Benghazi. IRS intimidation of conservatives. Hacked phone records of AP stenographers who won't perform the right tricks.

Note to Obama: be careful about doing dirty things to the folks who buy electrons by the barrel. The palace stenographers may giggle in bed, but they're territorial, and as every Chicago pol knows, there's nothing worse than a whorehouse full of angry trollops.

'What are you doing giving birth to a girl? Push her off the roof of the building, kill her! Why are you keeping her?'"

Sumnima Udas at CNN:

Challenges of being a woman in India. About half a million female fetuses are aborted every year because of the preference for boys

Jhajjar, India (CNN) -- One-month-old baby girl Khushi, which means "happiness" in Hindi, would not have been alive had her mother, Sumanjeet, given in to pressure from some relatives and neighbors. 

"They would cry and yell, 'What are you doing giving birth to a girl? Push her off the roof of the building, kill her! Why are you keeping her?'" the 25-year-old mother says. 

Sumanjeet says people kept telling her to get an ultrasound check and abort all four of her daughters. They told her she wouldn't have enough money for a suitable dowry. Although Sumanjeet wasn't quite sure how she was going to raise them, she knew it was a crime to get rid of them. 

"Why are they killing girls, while they're still in the womb? It's a sin for which they'll have to be answerable to God. Small, cute girls like a doll. They kill her in the womb? It's a sin," Sumanjeet weeps. 

The brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi and the wave of outrage that followed brought to light the daily suffering of many Indian women. Thousands of people took to the streets to protest not just rape but the discrimination many women in India often have to live with throughout their lives. 

A Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll last year ranked India as the world's fourth most dangerous country for a woman, behind only Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan. 

Even though the practice is outlawed, 300,000 to 600,000 female fetuses are aborted every year in India because of the preference for boys, according to a 2011 study by The Lancet. And the discrimination that begins while in the womb continues throughout a girl's life. 

Women's rights activist and Supreme Court lawyer Kirti Singh says there is a marked difference between how many parents treat their daughters and their sons. She says girls aren't given the same kind of food, they're not educated in the same manner, and they're only raised to become someone's wife.

"From the time they are born -- or not born -- and continuing till late in life when they become wives or mothers, it's a vicious cycle of discrimination, and violence keeps on continuing."... 

[W]hen discrimination begins even before birth, change will not come easily.

Abortion and population control totalitarianism don't advance women's "rights". They are the ultimate degradation of women, and lead predictably to femicide, gender imbalance, male dominance, and a culture of rape and child-murder.  

India has been the victim of a vicious population control program for the past half-century, much of it forced on India beginning in the 1970's as a condition for food aid.

Population control in India sowed what Indian women are now reaping. Population control stems from hate of humanity, and it degrades women selectively.

Everywhere it is practiced, population control murders girls. Now, in India, it is raping the survivors.

The Pope and the Nuns on the Bus

Pope Francis sharply chastises the leftie nuns of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which has been reduced over the past decades to a left-wing feminist think tank:

Vatican City, 8 May 2013 (VIS) – “The men and women of the Church who are careerists and social climbers, who ‘use’ people, the Church, their brothers and sisters—whom they should be serving—as a springboard for their own personal interests and ambitions … are doing great harm to the Church.” This is what Pope Francis asserted in his address to the participants in the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) whom he received in audience this morning. 

The pontiff spoke to the sisters of obedience, poverty, and chastity: “Obedience as listening to God’s will, in the interior motion of the Holy Spirit authenticated by the Church, accepting that obedience also passes through human mediations. … Poverty, which teaches solidarity, sharing, and charity and which is also expressed in a soberness and joy of the essential, to put us on guard against the material idols that obscure the true meaning of life. Poverty, which is learned with the humble, the poor, the sick, and all those who are at the existential margins of life. Theoretical poverty doesn’t do anything. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ in the humble, the poor, the sick, and in children.” 

“And then chastity, as a precious charism, that enlarges the freedom of your gift to God and others with Christ’s tenderness, mercy, and closeness. Chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven shows how affection has its place in mature freedom and becomes a sign of the future world, to make God’s primacy shine forever. But, please, [make it] a ‘fertile’ chastity, which generates spiritual children in the Church. The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not ‘spinsters’! Forgive me if I talk like this but this maternity of consecrated life, this fruitfulness is important! May this joy of spiritual fruitfulness animate your existence. Be mothers, like the images of the Mother Mary and the Mother Church. You cannot understand Mary without her motherhood; you cannot understand the Church without her motherhood, and you are icons of Mary and of the Church.” 

Continuing, Pope Francis spoke to the superiors about service. “We must never forget that true power, at whatever level, is service, which has its bright summit upon the Cross. … ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them … But it shall not be so among you.’—This is precisely the motto of your assembly, isn’t it? It shall not be so among you.—’Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave’.” 

“Your vocation is a fundamental charism for the Church’s journey and it isn’t possible that a consecrated woman or man might ‘feel’ themselves not to be with the Church. A ‘feeling’ with the Church that has generated us in Baptism; a ‘feeling’ with the Church that finds its filial expression in fidelity to the Magisterium, in communion with the Bishops and the Successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, a visible sign of that unity,” the pontiff added, citing Paul VI: “It is an absurd dichotomy to think of living with Jesus but without the Church, of following Jesus outside of the Church, of loving Jesus without loving the Church. Feel the responsibility that you have of caring for the formation of your Institutes in sound Church doctrine, in love of the Church, and in an ecclesial spirit.” 

“The centrality of Christ and his Gospel, authority as a service of love, and ‘feeling’ in and with the Mother Church: [these are] three suggestions that I wish to leave you, to which I again add my gratitude for your work, which is not always easy. What would the Church be without you? She would be missing maternity, affection, tenderness! A Mother’s intuition.”

Ouch.

Francis provides a sharp precis of the motivation for the nuns' violation of their vows: their aggressive pride, careerism and narcissism. They have substituted their own craving for power and their leftist politics for genuine Christian obedience and charity.

I really love this Pope. He walks the walk, and has a remarkable way of getting to the heart of problems afflicting the Church.

Benghazi lies are unraveling fast and furious

The title of the post is a pun (for you liberals).

You may have noticed that I haven't posted much lately on the Benghazi scandal. Every hour there seems to be new revelations, and the truth is really coming out. If I tried to keep up, I'd be posting every hour.

This we know: our people weren't protected, and were abandoned to die, without an effort at rescue, probably because a big rescue effort would have undermined the pre-election Democrat spin that Al Qaeda  was no more and that the Libyan revolution was a big win for the U.S.

So the scumbags in the Obama Administration decided that they had to blame the murders on an irrelevant idiot You Tube video. They hustled the hapless "culprit" off to jail, in front of the world media, just like they do in totalitarian countries.

Hillary lied. Rice lied. Obama lied. The mainstream press lied with them, with a few courageous exceptions.

It's important to establish all of the truth, for future historians. For now, none of this matters really, unless you just like hearing the truth once in a while.

If you're looking for good honest sources for the Benghazi hearings, Hot Air, Drudge, Real Clear Politics, and Instapundit are doing a great job.

That said, Obama and his hacks will pay no price in the foreseeable future for Benghazi and for their lies, which is an impeachable offense that dwarfs Watergate. Why will there be no consequence?

Neal Boortz explains:

Watergate? Gimme a big league break here. There’s a HUGE difference between 0bama’s problems with Benghazi and Nixon’s Watergate mess. When the Watergate scandal broke we had a New York and D.C. press corps with a burning desire to destroy Richard Nixon.  

With 0bama and the Benghazi scandal we have the very same press corps ready to do anything it can reasonably expect to get away with to protect their God-like hero and preserve his presidency. “But people died in Benghazi!” you say? And you think that’s enough to stop the 0bama hero-worship among the Fourth Estate? 

But what about the American people? Really? Think about that for a few moments. Now … you’re not telling me that the same people who put this colossal failure back into the White House for four more years is going to get worked up over Benghazi, are you? 

Let me tell you what the American people are concerned with right now – and we’re talking about those who aren’t gunched up with 24/7 discussions about college football recruiting and gay NBA players. In a nutshell (and thank goodness for the few exceptions we DO have) the majority of the American people are more worried right now about acquiring and keeping their monthly checks from the government than they are about 0bama’s lies or foreign policy failures. They think a Benghazi is a small yappy dog. 

These people are more concerned about next Winter’s home heating assistance checks than they are about dead ambassadors. They’re worrying about getting more federal dollars for child care to help them take care of the next tricycle motor they’re fixin’ to download without the benefit of a husband. They’re wondering who is going to pay their medical bills, and how they can get their hands on one of those great Section 8 housing vouchers. Some are looking to upgrade their 0bamaPhones. 

How many people do we have on Social Security disability right now? The figure is nearing 12 million Americans. These 12 million are principally worried about how to keep those checks coming, while another 12 million (at least) are wondering how to get on this bandwagon as well. After all, their backs hurt and you surely can’t expect them to get out there and work for a living, can you? (Apologies to those of you with actual disabilities, but we could probably cram every one of you into a Jai Alai Fronton somewhere in Miami if we had to.) 

Then there’s millions more who’s main concern is making sure their unemployment benefits don’t run out (Me? Get a job?) and others who are waiting for 0bama to make their boss pay them more than they’re actually worth on their jobs. 

Benghazi 0bama’s Watergate? For that to happen you need concerned citizens who actually care and a media that will do it’s job objectively. Both ingredients are in short supply. 

It’s going to be a great show, to be sure. But in the end it adds up to nothing.

As long as the welfare checks and foodstamps and Obamaphones and new seasons of Honey Boo Boo keep coming, the American electorate cares not a wit about Benghazi. Who gives a shit about honest government, when the number of (fat) Americans getting freebies from foodstamps exceeds the population of Spain?

Ben Franklin:

"When the people find they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic."

Bread and circuses are the endpoint of the American experiment in self-governance. When you understand that Benghazi occurred after the era of American self-governance, it makes sense.  

Lavender fascism is on the march

Pat Buchanan:

That “loving Jesus means hating gay people” is “proclaimed in Christian churches and on Christian television and radio broadcasts.” 

So declares Dan Savage in his review of Jeff Chu’s “Does Jesus Really Love Me: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America” – on Page 1 of the New York Times Book Review. 

Who is foremost among those who have made “anti-gay bigotry seem synonymous with Christianity”? The Family Research Council and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

So says Savage. And who is he? A cradle Catholic who says he “was in church every Sunday for the first 15 years of my life. Now I spend my Sundays on my bike, on my snowboard or on my husband.” 

One gets the point. And in handing this review to an apostate Catholic and atheist homosexual, the Times was nailing its anti-Catholic colors to the mast. Yet what Savage alleges and the Times published is a lie. 

No true Catholic church can preach that Jesus hates gays. “Love your enemies” is the message of Christ. Hate the sin and love the sinner is taught as gospel truth in Catholic schools. 

This has been Catholic doctrine for 2,000 years. 

Yet, in contending that America is reaching a “cultural tipping point,” Savage is not all wrong. 

Undeniably, the Christian view, though mislabeled “homophobia,” alienates millions. 

Many of America’s young have come to accept that homosexuality is a natural preference of a significant minority and ought to be accommodated, and same-sex unions ought to be treated as traditional marriages. 

Case in point. At George Washington University, two students have demanded that Father Greg Shaffer of the Newman Center be removed for creating an environment hostile to gays. 

The priest’s offense: When Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, Shaffer posted a blog restating Catholic teaching condemning homosexual acts as unnatural and immoral. In private sessions, Father Shaffer also counseled gay students to remain celibate for the rest of their lives. 

One senior, Damian Legacy, says he was shaken by Father Greg’s admonition that he was risking his soul and by his ouster from the Newman Center after the priest learned he was in a relationship with a male student. 

Legacy and his partner have filed complaints against the Rev. Shaffer with the university Office for Diversity and Inclusion, alleging his homophobia has had a detrimental effect on the emotional health of gay students. They are asking the Student Association to cut funding to the Newman Center. 

Though a minor collision in the culture war, this clash at GW may be a harbinger of what is coming, as the homosexual community seeks to have its agenda written into law and fastened onto the nation. 

For traditional Christianity’s view that homosexual acts are immoral and same-sex marriage an absurdity cannot be reconciled with the view that homosexuality is natural and normal and gay marriage a human right. 

The issue is pulling the Republican Party apart. It is pulling Christian communities apart. It is pulling the nation apart. 

Like abortion, it is an issue on which both sides cannot be right. Yet it is an issue of paramount importance both to devout Christians and to the homosexual rights movement. 

What happens if the gay rights movement, as it appears it may, succeeds politically on same-sex marriage, but many Christians refuse to recognize such unions and continue to declare that American society has become ungodly and immoral? 

Gay rights advocates often compare their cause to the civil rights struggle of half a century ago. But there is a fundamental difference. 

When Martin Luther King Jr. called on the nation to “live up to the meaning of its creed,” he heard an echo from a thousand pulpits. Treating black folks decently was consistent with what Christians had been taught. Dr. King was pushing against an open door. 

Priests and pastors marched for civil rights. Others preached for civil rights. But if the gay rights agenda is imposed, we could have priests and pastors preaching not acceptance but principled rejection. 

Prelates could be declaring from pulpits everywhere that the triumph of gay rights is a defeat for God’s Country, and the new laws are immoral and need neither be respected nor obeyed. 

The issue is acceptance. We know of how America refused to accept Prohibition and, in good conscience, Americans broke the laws against the consumption of alcohol. 

Imagine the situation in America today if priests and pastors were telling congregations they need not obey civil rights laws. They would be denounced as racists. Church tax exemptions would be in peril. 

Something akin to this could be in the cards if the homosexual rights movement is victorious – a public rejection of the new laws by millions and a refusal by many to respect or obey them. 

The culture war in America today may be seen as squabbles in a day-care center compared to what is coming. A new era of civil disobedience may be at hand.

We Americans have been privileged to live in a country that respects religious freedom. That is ending. We are soon going to understand in a very personal way that the Christian life is an act of defiance.

Lavender fascism is on the march, and this is going to get very ugly.

What about the Thirteenth Amendment...

Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee asserts that repealing Obamacare would be a violation of the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment.

From Allahpundit:

Speaking on the House floor, Jackson Lee said the right to these services can be read into the Declaration of Independence, which preserves the rights of Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

“One might argue that education and healthcare fall into those provisions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she said. Jackson Lee also praised President Obama for fighting for these rights. 

“I think that what should be continuously emphasized is the President’s leadership on one single point: that although healthcare was not listed per se in the Constitution, it should be a constitutional right,” she said.

Now I think that we can make a strong argument that Christian morality (and simple human decency) requires that we provide healthcare to all who genuinely need it. I treat patients without regard for their ability to pay. I always have and always will. I conduct at least a quarter of my patient visits in Spanish, and many of my patients are (I'm sure) illegal immigrants. I don't ask, and they get exactly the same care as my well-off patients.

That's just the right thing to do. But it is not a Constitutional right to receive free healthcare, or a free education, or nearly anything free. We have no right to the labor of others. Our Constitutional rights are negative rights-- the right to be left alone to do as we will in certain areas, such as political speech, political assembly, religious exercise, etc.

Even those Constitutional rights that involve the government giving something free to a citizen-- a free attorney for example to a criminal defendant-- really involves giving a citizen a way to protect himself from the government.

Morally, it is right to provide all who genuinely need it with healthcare, education, food. But it is not a Constitutional right to be provided such, for two simple reasons:

First, it is not in the Constitution.

Second, the Constitution already has a provision prohibiting anyone in this country from having the legal right to the fruit of the labor of another.

The Thirteenth Amendment:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

"If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

Planned Parenthood hack testifies before the Florida Legislature about killing babies who are mistakenly born alive after a botched abortion:



Bottom line: Planned Parenthood policy 'if you want a dead baby, you get a dead baby'.

Gosnell isn't such an outlier.

HT: commentor  Ben

Obama: "We vow to prosecute Chechen terrorists, and offer them a two-state solution"

(Dissociated Press) President Obama announced today at a press conference that he intends to prosecute all the Chechen terrorists responsible for the Boston marathon bombing, and offer them the eastern half of the United States.

"We must not let this derail the peace process" the President intoned, pounding his fist softly on the podium. "The only path to peace in this conflict is compromise and mutual respect. Everyone-- especially Chechens-- has a right to self-determination."

The President insisted that the United States must abide by the same rules it lays out for its allies around the world.

"The road to peace with Chechnya is a long one, and we must not allow spontaneous man-caused disasters to derail our struggle for co-existence."

The President apologized to Chechens for the American settlements east of the Mississippi "which violate international law", and vowed to sit down at the negotiating table with the militants responsible for the Boston bombings.

The President has also promised not to allow the bombings to halt the billions of dollars in aid that the United States plans to send to Chechnya. "It's important the we keep the doors to peace open", the President said.