This week’s congressional hearings into IRS abuse were illustrative of Leftist contempt for Rule of Law. For starters, it seems the only part of the Constitution that Barack Obama (former constitutional-law lecturer that he is) and his NeoCom lackeys know these days is the Fifth Amendment. And they even get that one wrong.

As the IRS targeted groups with “Patriot” or “Tea Party” in their names for audit or delay of tax-exempt status, one of its criteria was looking for organizations “educating on the constitution and bill of rights” (lowercase in the original inspector general report). Obviously, voters educated on the Constitution and Bill of Rights wouldn’t have elected Obama to begin with, but they also wouldn’t fall for shenanigans like the one pulled by Lois Lerner, the IRS official who directs the offending office. Hence the need for education.

Summoned before Congress, Lerner gave a statement claiming innocence — “I have not done anything wrong, I have not broken any laws, I have not violated any IRS rules and regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.” She then invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself, and refused to answer any questions.

Former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explains, “To testify, by definition, is to agree to submit to cross-examination.” In other words, Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right by making a statement at all.

The Arrogant Ms. Lerner

Unfortunately, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA) let her get away with it, though he said he would call her back for questioning after realizing his mistake. McCarthy noted that Issa should have questioned Lerner anyway, showing by her every refusal to answer how very not innocent she and her IRS henchmen are. (In fact, she was directly involved.) Perhaps that will still happen, and Lerner will find herself in contempt of Congress. She’s already found herself on paid administrative leave (a.k.a. vacation) after refusing to resign.

Former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman simply confessed ignorance of the Constitution. Again, given that the targets were organizations “educating on the constitution and bill of rights,” it’s ironic that Shulman responded to a question about the Constitution with, “I don’t necessarily have the Constitution memorized, sir.” Perhaps he should carry one of our Essential Liberty Guides for reference. He may not have it memorized, but at least he should know what it says.

All of this raises the question of when Barack Obama or any administration officials (or his campaign staff) were informed of the IRS’s actions. Our Sergeant Schultz president claims to have learned about the scandal on the news, but the White House Counsel knew of the inspector general’s report at least by April 22 — nearly three weeks before Obama’s, er, press briefing. The report was supposed to be released last September, and the IRS concluded its own probe in May 2012. Releasing either report just before the election certainly wouldn’t have been convenient timing, hence the delay.

There are also clear indications that the targeting was ordered from on high. For example, Colleen Kelley, the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, met the president at the White House on March 31, 2010. The next day, IRS employees — who belong to that union, and who donated heavily to anti-Tea Party candidates (our tax dollars at work) — began targeting the Tea Party. The inspector general report, however, shows that the targeting possibly began as early as February 2010, and the NTEU, of course, denies collusion. But Kelley herself admitted, “No processes or procedures or anything like that would ever be done just by frontline employees without any management involvement.” So, how high does “management” go? High enough, it seems, to conclude that Team Obama cheated its way to re-election last November by using the IRS to punish this president’s political “enemies.”

Now for a parting thought: The IRS is charged in large part with implementing ObamaCare, and it has created eight offices and hired 2,137 agents — so far — to do so. The invasive exams are just getting started.

Published at The Patriot Post, May 24, 2013.

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Mama Grizzley still lookin’ HOT!

As more information about the IRS scandal trickles out daily, the White House’s involvement is becoming clearer. Those of us who’ve been warning about the demise of freedom with Barack Obama’s efforts to “fundamentally transform” our great nation are about to witness some sad vindication. Will awakened Americans finally join us in saying “enough is enough”?

The president would like us to believe that he only learned about the IRS corruption from watching the news. But we recently learned that the White House was actively working with the IRS on how to roll out the story of this scandal. So, Mr. President, how can you have your staff work on the roll out of the biggest controversy since Watergate, and yet claim that you only heard about it by watching the news with the rest of us?

For the president to deny any knowledge of what was brewing and to claim to know nothing about the Benghazi cover-up or anything about anything White House-related lately, he’s either a liar or a hugely incompetent CEO. You decide.

Yesterday, we also learned that the top IRS official involved in the targeting scandal is planning on pleading the Fifth during her Congressional hearings. That’s keen – she’ll be able to enjoy her Fifth Amendment rights in a hearing about how her intimidating organization denied Americans the ability to fully exercise their First Amendment rights.

Keep in mind that the IRS considers you guilty until proven innocent when they audit you. The Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply.

This scandal is not just about the IRS targeting Americans to deny them tax-exempt status or subjecting them to harassing retaliatory audits. The IRS also leaked to left-wing reporters the confidential application information submitted by conservative groups.

The IRS claims that their leaking of information was “inadvertent and unintentional disclosures by the employees involved.” They at first blamed the entire IRS scandal on a couple of employees who “went rogue,” but we soon found out that this was just more malarkey coming from the president’s spokesman. But even if these were “inadvertent and unintentional disclosures,” is that supposed to make us feel better? With the IRS running Obamacare, what are the chances that our confidential information and medical records will “inadvertently” and “unintentionally” be disclosed? Please remember that some of us warned America about the dangers of having the IRS play such a big role with the administration of Obamacare. We were laughed at and mocked relentlessly back then. It sure doesn’t seem funny now, does it?

This IRS scandal is especially terrible because Americans live in fear of the IRS like no other entity because this monstrous bureaucracy has the power to take your hard-earned money. Your wages are the sum of your labors; hence, the IRS has the power to steal the fruits of your labors. Average Americans live in fear of making an error on their tax returns that could cost them massive amounts of money, plus their reputation and good name. If a small business makes a mistake, the IRS can shut them down and send them to jail.

The IRS has always been the face of intimidating and controlling big government. Now it’s the face of corrupt big government that actively attacks the people it is supposed to serve. This isn’t the change America was hoping for, Mr. President, but it certainly is transformative.

Average everyday Americans like my dad and his non-political buddies are outraged by this IRS scandal, perhaps more so than all the other White House fiascos that are making the radical Left’s intentions crystal clear. It’s because this IRS cluster hits close to home for everyone. It’s tangible proof of how a corrupt government can intimidate and target a person’s record, reputation, and life, and make them feel helpless.

These Obama administration scandals are a sad and stark reminder that only limited government can ensure liberty. At our core, we Americans just want to be left alone to live freely, peacefully, and productively.

Last year the Obama campaign told us that government is something we all “belong” to. I guess they’re right because when the government is powerful enough to target, intimidate, and harass us, we do “belong” to them. The real question is: Will we stand for this?

These atrocious government actions are bigger, uglier, and much more dangerous than “a few rogue employees.” It’s time for all Americans to stand together and join in the growing outraged chorus that looks at our out-of-control government and says, “Enough is enough!”

Written by Sarah Palin and published on Brietbart May 23, 2013.

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Meanwhile, Wall Street has been transformed into the biggest casino on the planet, and much of the new money that the Federal Reserve has been recklessly printing up has gone into stocks. But the Dow does not keep setting new records because the underlying economic fundamentals are good. Rather, the reckless euphoria that we are seeing in the financial markets right now reminds me very much of 1929. Margin debt is absolutely soaring, and every time that happens a crash rapidly follows. But this time when a crash happens it could very well be unlike anything that we have ever seen before. The top 25 U.S. banks have more than 212 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives combined, and when that house of cards comes crashing down there is no way that anyone will be able to prop it back up. After all, U.S. GDP for an entire year is only a bit more than 15 trillion dollars.

But most Americans are only focused on the short-term because the mainstream media is only focused on the short-term. Things are good this week and things were good last week, so there is nothing to worry about, right?

Unfortunately, economic reality is not going to change even if all of us try to ignore it. Those that are willing to take an honest look at what is coming down the road are very troubled. For example, Bill Gross of PIMCO says that his firm sees “bubbles everywhere”…

We see bubbles everywhere, and that is not to be dramatic and not to suggest they will pop immediately. I just suggested in the bond market with a bubble in treasuries and bubble in narrow credit spreads and high-yield prices, that perhaps there is a significant distortion there. Having said that, it suggests that as long as the FED and Bank of Japan and other Central Banks keep writing checks and do not withdraw, then the bubble can be supported as in blowing bubbles. They are blowing bubbles. When that stops there will be repercussions.

And unfortunately, it is not just the United States that has a bubble economy. In fact, the gigantic financial bubble over in Japan may burst before our own financial bubble does. The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers…

First and foremost, Japan is the second largest bond market in the world. If Japan’s sovereign bonds continue to fall, pushing rates higher, then there has been a tectonic shift in the global financial system. Remember the impact that Greece had on asset prices? Greece’s bond market is less than 3% of Japan’s in size.

For multiple decades, Japanese bonds have been considered “risk free.” As a result of this, investors have been willing to lend money to Japan at extremely low rates. This has allowed Japan’s economy, the second largest in the world, to putter along marginally.

So if Japanese bonds begin to implode, this means that:

1) The second largest bond market in the world is entering a bear market (along with commensurate liquidations and redemptions by institutional investors around the globe).

2) The second largest economy in the world will collapse (along with the impact on global exports).

Both of these are truly epic problems for the financial system.

And of course the entire global financial system is a giant bundle of debt, risk and leverage at this point. We have never seen anything like this in world history. When you step back and take a good, hard look at the numbers, they truly are staggering. The following statistics are from one of my previous articles entitled “Why Is The World Economy Doomed? The Global Financial Pyramid Scheme By The Numbers”…

-$70,000,000,000,000 – The approximate size of total world GDP.

- $190,000,000,000,000 – The approximate size of the total amount of debt in the entire world. It has nearly doubled in size over the past decade.

- $212,525,587,000,000 – According to the U.S. government, this is the notional value of the derivatives that are being held by the top 25 banks in the United States. But those banks only have total assets of about 8.9 trillion dollars combined. In other words, the  exposure of our largest banks to derivatives outweighs their total assets by a ratio of about 24 to 1.

- $600,000,000,000,000 to $1,500,000,000,000,000 – The estimates of the total notional value of all global derivatives generally fall within this range. At the high end of the range, the ratio of derivatives to global GDP is more than 21 to 1.

The financial meltdown that happened back in 2008 should have been a wake up call for the nations of the world. They should have corrected the mistakes that happened so that nothing like that would ever happen again. Unfortunately, nothing was fixed. Instead, our politicians and the central bankers became obsessed with reinflating the system. They piled up even more debt, recklessly printed tons of money and kicked the can down the road for a few years. In the process, they made our long-term problems even worse. The following is a recent quote from John Williams of shadowstats.com…

The economic and systemic solvency crises of the last eight years continue. There never was an actual recovery following the economic downturn that began in 2006 and collapsed into 2008 and 2009. What followed was a protracted period of business stagnation that began to turn down anew in second- and third-quarter 2012. The official recovery seen in GDP has been a statistical illusion generated by the use of understated inflation in calculating key economic series (see Public Comment on Inflation). Nonetheless, given the nature of official reporting, the renewed downturn likely will gain recognition as the second-dip in a double- or multiple-dip recession.

What continues to unfold in the systemic and economic crises is just an ongoing part of the 2008 turmoil. All the extraordinary actions and interventions bought a little time, but they did not resolve the various crises. That the crises continue can be seen in deteriorating economic activity and in the panicked actions by the Federal Reserve, where it proactively is monetizing U.S. Treasury debt at a pace suggestive of a Treasury that is unable to borrow otherwise.

And there are already lots of signs that the next economic downturn is rapidly approaching.

For example, corporate revenues are falling at Wal-Mart, Proctor and Gamble, Starbucks, AT&T, Safeway, American Express and IBM.

Would revenues at Wal-Mart be falling if the economy was getting better?

U.S. jobless claims hit a six week high last week. We aren’t in the danger zone yet, but once they hit 400,000 that will be a major red flag.

And even though we are still in the “good times” relatively speaking, the federal government is already talking about tightening welfare programs. In fact, there are proposals in Congress right now to make significant cuts to the food stamp program.

If food stamps and other welfare programs get cut, that is going to make a lot of people very, very angry. And that anger and frustration will get even worse when the next economic downturn strikes and millions of people start losing their jobs and their homes.

What we are witnessing right now is the calm before the storm. Let us hope that it lasts for as long as possible so that we can have more time to prepare.

Unfortunately, this bubble of false hope will not last forever. At some point it will end, and then the pain will begin.

Written by Michael Snyder and published at The Economic Collapse, May 21, 2013.

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The foundation of the Soviet model of trade and investment was centralization under the guise of “universal public ownership”. The entire goal of communism in general was not to give more social and political power to the people, but to extinguish alternative options and focus power into the hands of a select few. The process used to reach this end result can vary, but the goal always remains the same. In most cases, such centralization begins with economic hegemony, and it is in our fiscal structure that we have the means to see the future. Sovietization in our financial life will inevitably lead to sovietization in our political life.

Does the U.S. economy’s path resemble the Soviet template exactly? No. And I’m sure the very suggestion will make the average unaware free market evangelical froth at the mouth. However, as I plan to show, the parallels in our fundamentals are disturbing; the reality is that true free markets in America died a long time ago.

The Tyranny Of Planned Economy
The characteristics of a free market society defy the use of centralized planning. Adam Smith’s original concept of free market trade stood as an antithesis to what was then referred to as “mercantilism,” a select few “joint stock companies” (corporations) monopolizing production while using government ties to destroy any new competition. Unfortunately, there are to this day economists and politicians who believe that corporate centralization is a “natural” function of a free market. In reality, corporate monopolies are an unnatural creation of collusion between governments and big-money interests designed to suffocate any entrepreneurship outside of their sphere of influence. Over time, as we now see in the United States today, government power and corporate power begin to hybridize, until one can barely be distinguished from the other.

The bottom line is that you cannot have planned structures, monopolized production or controlled capital flow within an economy and still claim it to be a “free market. There are no exceptions to this rule.

The Soviet system was the ultimate in centralization. Every aspect of financial life was dictated by the communist government, from industrial input and output to investment to food production and rationing to wages and retail prices. Some people might argue that this structure is a far cry from what we now have in the United States, but let’s look at the fundamentals.

Controlled Money Creation
One of the primary tenets of The Communist Manifesto was the creation of a central bank meant to keep tight controls over currency issuance. The existence of a central bank immediately disrupts any chance of a true free market. Central banking without competition allows an oligarchy, whether corporate or political or a meshing of the two, to manipulate interest rates as well as adjust prices through inflation. Lending standards (which the central bank determines arbitrarily) built on fractional reserve banking opens the door to murky debt instruments and toxic financial products that are further used to either fabricate a “high” standard of living (as we saw in the U.S. in the 90s and early 2000s) or execute a bubble implosion causing a lower standard of living (as the U.S. is experiencing today).

Since the establishment of the Federal Reserve through subversive collusion between banking interests and corrupt politicians in 1913, America has not had a free market system. From that point forward, every boom and bust, every interest rate disaster, every inflationary increase in prices has been scientifically engineered.

Dominance Of Industry
Soviet controls on industrial output are legendary. Every part of the resource allocation process became subject to bureaucracy, and this led to stunted manufacturing growth as well as a culture of misrepresented economic data. In the United States, the establishment has taken a slightly different approach but with the same end result.

Heavy taxation on business ventures within the U.S. against entrepreneurs not lucky enough to run in elitists circles has erased incentives for manufacturing experiments within our borders. In the meantime, members of the corporate glee club receive government subsidization while they simultaneously outsource industrial projects to Third World nations. Controlled industry within communist Russia was meant to force the population to depend upon the government for every means of survival. In the United States, dependency on government has been replaced by interdependency on the globalized model in general. Necessities are now compartmentalized, and only select international businesses with cooperation from government have the ability to bring all the pieces together to keep our domestic economy running smoothly. Our society has been so distanced from self-sufficiency that many people now consider the globalist dynamic indispensable.

The next step in this degradation of free market industry is the introduction of “public works projects” by the federal government, which gives the illusion that job creation through centralization is possible. This is the same strategy used in the Soviet Union and to this day, socialists still argue that the communist design for industrial expansion was “effective”. In truth, the soviet public works plan with all its trains and transits and bridges and buildings was an absolute failure, as the collapse of the country made clear. Tax funded infrastructure is no replacement for free market invention, and at bottom, no public works enterprise can be undertaken without the government first stealing capital from one area in order to fund another. Governments can never and will never create wealth or jobs. They can only present the semblance of economic progress while siphoning wealth away from private citizens.

Bureaucracy And Food Production
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations, based on dubious junk science and often instituted on high without congressional oversight, further erode business possibilities, especially for young companies as well as private agriculture, while giving free reign to elitist entities like Monsanto, an organization the government actually PROTECTS through specialized legislation making it nearly immune to civil litigation.

While farms in the United States are not exactly “controlled” by the Federal government in the Soviet sense, many of them are subsidized through welfare on the condition that they grow only particular kinds of crops, raise particular animals or grow nothing at all. This subsidization is an indirect form of price control, creating engineered scarcity or abundance. At the same time, agricultural empires like Monsanto make private farm ownership increasingly difficult by using their government protection to harass and squeeze out independent food producers.

This destabilization of private resource management by common citizens has culminated in the passage of President Barack Obama’s executive order National Defense Resource Preparedness, which allows under a “national emergency” (which the President can declare for any reason) the confiscation of any and all private resources, including farms and businesses, to be redistributed by the government to ensure security conditions. This is the Stalinist model, pure and simple.

Centralized Control Of Investment
We now know that since at least 2008, the U.S. stock market, often presented by the mainstream as a paragon of free market prowess, has actually been propped up and inflated by Federal Reserve fiat. Both former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and current branch head Richard Fisher have openly admitted in separate news interviews that the central bank spends considerable energy in “artificially sustaining” equity markets. This has been done, I suspect, with full knowledge of the U.S. Treasury and the Obama Administration.

The Soviet model for investment was to remove all uncertainties from their domestic markets, often in the name of preventing manipulation by “speculators.” The speculator rationale was generally a distraction away from the attempt to dictate the natural forces of supply and demand. The idea was that if the government could dismiss legitimate demand or lack of demand or hide excess supply or lack of supply, the perception of a balanced economy could be conjured for the population. This led to strict redirection of capital to areas where manipulation was needed to artificially pump up (or deflate) a particular part of the economy. The government became the sole investor of the Soviet system and, thus, the sole determinant of the success or failure of any particular market.

This is EXACTLY what is going on in America today, in what mainstream economists now call “the new normal”. Federal Reserve fiat is being printed and dumped into every financial mechanism that supposedly maintains our country’s fiscal health, including stocks, Treasuries and municipals, while trade volume remains low and private investment disappears. The Federal government now owes its very existence to the continued support of central bank dollars, and the Dow Jones does as well. If this is not the Soviet ideal, then I don’t know what is.

Labor Oppression, Dismal Living Standards And Government Dependency
Poverty levels within the United States are at record highs. Nearly 50 million Americans are now dependent on government-subsidized food stamps for their survival. Nearly 100 million Americans receive welfare (or Social Security) in one form or another from the establishment. That is almost one-third of our entire population that relies on the system for at least a part of their sustainment. If Obamacare is fully realized, millions more Americans will also be conditioned to become dependent on government-designated healthcare providers. The point is not to pass judgment on those people who get money or services from the government, only to make clear our progression away from freedom and into centralized servitude.

For a Soviet structure to thrive, poverty among common citizens has to be institutionalized. Dependency requires a constant state of desperation. In America, this has been accomplished through a combination of inflated prices and reduced wages in conjunction with the destruction of labor options.

At the height of the communist machine in Russia, employment was ample; but the kind of employment one could apply for was dependent on bureaucratic red tape and availability based on a worker’s record. Only the academic “elite” within the government-run cesspools of Soviet universities and military schools had their choice of employment; even then, they were often pressured into particular specialized fields, depending on the kind of labor the state needed done at that particular time.

In the United States anyone can certainly aspire to do whatever job he hopes to do. But again, options have been removed economically; and the same academic elitism pervasive in Soviet Union labor markets exists in America today. In a recent installment of his weekly radio show, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was better for “so-so” high school students to pursue a career in plumbing rather than go to college.

Though I rarely agree with Bloomberg on anything, my initial reaction was surprise at his willingness to steer American youth away from university indoctrination centers. However, upon further examination, it became clear that Bloomberg was not trying to save the next generation time and money. Instead, he is promoting a shift in the labor dynamic of the U.S. economy toward a Soviet-style foundation. Bloomberg knows well that the U.S. labor market will never return to its former glory, partly because he is a supporter of the globalist policies that ruined our economy in the first place. Instead of suggesting ways to reverse the trend of progressive poverty and the lack of high-end jobs that engender ingenuity and invention, elitists like Bloomberg are saying “forget your dreams and get used to being a drone.”

In a 70% service and retail economy, where job availability is increasingly degraded and independent business is discouraged, Americans will have two choices: Excel in the world of federally funded and propagandized education and sell your soul just for a chance at obtaining a professional career in a field of influence, or, settle for the leftovers. Modern socialists often sing the praises of the soviet educational model for raising the literacy rates of once agricultural and isolated people to 98%, but what they fail to mention is that this literacy was only encouraged in order to create a more efficient servant class that was easier to propagandize. The U.S. is moving into a similar paradigm. For some people, being a plumber is a fine thing; but it should not be the only thing. In a true free market, a smart man can make his own way, even if he does not conform to the ideologies of the educational racket. In a Sovietized market, a smart man is prohibited from accomplishing anything unless he conforms to the ideologies of the educational racket.

Some people may respond that the centralization conspiracy within the American economy is an obvious thing today, and that there is little need to expose it any further. I would point out that centralization is not the only issue here; the guidebook by which that centralization is being implemented is also important. This has all been done before on the other side of the world only decades ago, and the end result was a horrifying cascade of social enslavement and mechanically inclined death.

In the end, the Soviet economy was so utterly fraudulent that the final breakdown of the system came as a complete surprise to many in political and economic fields of the era. This is what happens when governments control all source data for financial statistics; transparency dies and collapse creeps in. Centralization is an absolute affront to the natural laws of supply and demand and an oppressive hindrance to the innovation that humanity thrives on. Such systems require constant theft from the populace in the form of reduced employment, reduced wages, reduced resources, increased taxes, increased price controls and a highly ignorant citizenry in order to function even for a short time. Sadly, the United States is well on its way in all of these areas, emulating a poisonous fiscal system and lending itself to a global economic tyranny in which all of us work much harder, for much less, and all for a government that seeks to use our very labor against us.

Written by Brandon Smith and published at Alt-MArket, May 22, 2013.

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In one major change, the committee voted 17-1 to make a third drunken-driving conviction a deportable offense for the newly legalized immigrants if at least one of those offenses occurs after they are approved for legal status.

But immigrant-rights groups called that a rollback of due-process rights for the immigrants and said a drunken-driving incident shouldn’t cost someone a chance at citizenship.

“We cannot and will not support hard-line proposals that take away discretion and limit an individual’s ability to pursue the pathway to citizenship,” said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Lawyers Guild’s National Immigration Project.

Overall, the committee continued to maintain the delicate balance struck by the “Gang of Eight” senators who negotiated the 867-page bill: Quick legal status for illegal immigrants, but delaying citizenship rights until after the administration spends more money on border security, puts in place a new electronic verification system to check workers’ status, and enacts an entry-exit system to check visas at airports and seaports.

In previous days’ action, two Republican members of the Gang of Eight — Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona — joined with Democrats to block a series of GOP amendments to stiffen the bill’s security.

But on Monday, the two Republicans sided with their party colleagues on key questions on giving illegal immigrants public benefits.

The 10 Democrats on the committee still outnumber the newly unified Republicans, but the votes signaled tough fights ahead on the Senate floor.

In one vote, Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, tried to prevent anyone but citizens and green-card holders from being able to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, which uses the tax code to transfer money to the poor.

But Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said that would deny the tax credit not only to legalized immigrants but also refugees, asylum-seekers and other legal workers.

And Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii Democrat, said denying the tax credit to legalized immigrants would hurt their children, many of whom are U.S. citizens.

The committee avoided what likely would have been a bitter fight over guns and whether those on the government’s terrorist watch list should be allowed to buy firearms when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, withdrew his amendment.

“Evidently we think it’s OK for people on the terrorist watch list to buy a gun,” Mr. Whitehouse said.

He said he would try again later when the bill comes to the Senate floor.

Written by Stephen Dinan and published at Washington Times, May 20, 2013.

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Oh Shit…..

The two unions represent a total of 20,000 employees in the Department of Homeland Security who would play a central role in carrying out the ambitious legislation, either by reviewing applications from millions of immigrants who could gain new legal status through the bill or by expelling illegal immigrants who did not qualify.

A letter to Congress that excoriates the Senate proposal, and that the immigration officers’ union signed for the first time, reveals simmering unrest among Homeland Security employees, who have been asked to carry out broad and fast-paced immigration policy shifts by the Obama administration. Deportation agents have been instructed to focus heavily on removing serious criminal offenders, while immigration officers have been urged to accelerate their decisions on granting legal papers and reprieves from deportation.

The criticism of the bill from inside the system gives new political fuel to its most staunch opponents — among them Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama — when they had been battling on the defensive.

The labor alliance also raises the influence of the federal officer who leads the union that represents most deportation agents, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council. The officer, Chris Crane, has emerged as a star witness for the opposition to the overhaul and a troublesome adversary for Obama administration officials working to promote it.

Mr. Crane first wrote to Congress on May 9, saying the Senate bill was tailored to meet the demands of “special interests,” and calling it “a dramatic step in the wrong direction” on public safety and interior enforcement. He said the proposal would give administration officials too much discretion in choosing which immigration laws to enforce. Mr. Sessions helped circulate Mr. Crane’s letter.

In a statement that the unions expected to release Monday — but that was given to some reporters on Sunday — Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, said he had added his signature to Mr. Crane’s letter. Mr. Palinkas, whose union represents 12,000 employees of the agency that approves documents, said the officers had been “pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation.”

Support from another immigration union considerably strengthens Mr. Crane’s hand. Up to now, his law enforcement allies had been far outnumbered by groups that rallied behind the Senate bill and the White House. Also, Mr. Crane does not represent the more than 8,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who handle criminal investigations, hunting down human traffickers and drug smugglers. They have much smoother relations with the administration.

Mr. Crane has testified repeatedly this year in Capitol Hill hearings, mostly invited by conservative Republicans who reject any measure that would offer a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants. Although his delivery is measured and cool, Mr. Crane’s message is invariably scorching: he says the Obama administration has pandered to groups that advocate for those immigrants while hobbling the agents he represents, preventing them from doing their work.

Opponents of the bill, written by a bipartisan group of eight senators, are increasingly relying on Mr. Crane to bolster their case. Last week, another pillar of conservative resistance, the Heritage Foundation, was badly weakened when many Republicans dismissed a study it published on the bill’s costs. One author of the study, Jason Richwine, resigned under criticism of his past writings asserting that some immigrants had lower intelligence. Many conservative talk radio hosts are softening on the legislation.

But Mr. Crane is not holding any of his fire. At a hearing in February, he spoke shortly after his top boss, the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano. He accused her point blank of running a department afflicted with “gross mismanagement and overall corruption.”

In April, Mr. Crane strode into the news conference where the eight senators who wrote the bill presented it to the public for the first time. He repeatedly raised his hand and asked the senators to “take a question from law enforcement.” Federal marshals finally stepped forward to march him out of the room.

With debate on the bill moving quickly in the Senate, Mr. Crane’s broadside attacks are a vexing irritant to administration officials, who argue that the time is right for Congress to offer a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants because enforcement is stronger than ever. Claiming the authority of agents in the trenches, Mr. Crane depicts an almost opposite reality.

The sweeping Senate bill would offer legal status and eventually citizenship for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, tighten border security, and speed visa reviews for more than four million immigrants who have applied legally and are waiting in backlogs.

Homeland Security officials vehemently dispute Mr. Crane’s view of their enforcement record, saying he has used the guise of labor advocacy to pursue his own political agenda, aligning squarely with the most right-wing opponents of the overhaul. They point to official figures showing that the Obama administration has deported more than 1.4 million immigrants.

Last week, Latino and labor organizations called on President Obama to suspend most deportations, protesting that thousands of people from their communities are still being expelled each week.

In an interview in Salt Lake City, where he is based, Mr. Crane dismissed those groups as simply mistaken. “This department under this administration is doing anything and everything they can not to arrest any alien in the interior of the United States,” he contended.

Up to now, Mr. Crane had managed to speak loudly from a small platform. His national council represents about 7,700 of the 20,000 employees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mr. Crane, who joined the agency 10 years ago after two tours of duty in the Marine Corps, was elected to a second term as union president in August.

Written by Julia Preston and published at The New York Times, May 20, 2013.

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What’s this Mr. Holder, you are asking people to respect the office which you hold? Why don’t you begin by respecting the office yourself? You are the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. Why don’t you see to it that our laws are enforced? Take your buddy for instance, that guy over in the Oval Office who, perhaps, might not even be eligible to hold the office he does, why don’t you investigate that? Or the fact that under your watch guns were run to Mexican drug cartels, resulting in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, why hasn’t THAT been investigated? Then there is the fact that there are currently millions of illegal aliens running free in this country when our laws make their being here a crime. Instead of talking about immigration reform, why don’t we hear about immigration law enforcement? I mean, you are the chief law enforcement officer, aren’t you? You want my respect sir, you are going to have to earn it by doing your job!

Which leads me to the whole purpose for this rant, people wanting respect, but not willing to give it in return, or not earning it in the first place. As the title of this article implies, you aren’t entitled to a damn thing in this life, other than the chance to live free of governmental interference while seeking to improve yourself. If you choose not to improve yourself, or to work, then you alone must suffer the consequences of your actions, not place the burden upon society to sustain your pathetic existence.

There is this mistaken belief which is held by many people in this country that simply because you exist you are entitled to things when the truth is that you aren’t entitled to a damn thing unless you have earned it. If there is one thing is this world that I despise, it is laziness, be it physical or mental. I absolutely loathe people who expect something without having put forth any effort whatsoever to earn it.

There is one thing about this country which set us apart from others, the ability of the people to speak whatever is on their minds. That is guaranteed by the First Amendment as long as by our speaking out does not endanger the public safety, or slander another’s name or reputation. Yet if I were to say that the actions of our current, or past presidents, are treasonable and justify their serving time in prison, I am called unpatriotic, I am told I do not respect my country, or the presidency. As I said, everything has to be earned in this world, including respect. If the actions of a president show me that they do not respect their office, or their oath to the Constitution, then by God they are not going to get any respect from me! Teddy Roosevelt once said, “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.” Just as I spoke of regarding the comments made by the Attorney General, if the person holding an office does not respect that office, why should I respect it, or the person holding it?

This whole concept of people wanting respect, without having earned it has been eating at me for a long time. Everyone seems to want respect, but they are unwilling to show any in return for those who may have opposing viewpoints. For instance, this whole issue of gay marriage, if you speak out against it you are called homophobic or told that you are denying others their God-given rights. When the truth is that I don’t believe that government should even get involved in it at all.

I don’t believe that homosexuality is normal, I think it is abnormal behavior. But I am not going to judge you should you choose that lifestyle. I fall far from the perfection of Christ and it is not my place to judge. I should, however, be allowed to openly speak as to why I feel the way I do without being targeted for harassment by anyone else due to my beliefs. As I said, respect is a two way street. You respect me and my beliefs, and I’ll respect you and yours. I may not like what you choose to do, but as long as you don’t bother me in the enjoyment of my rights I will leave you alone.

And this idea of respect goes for the work environment as well. I will turn 55 next month and yet I see kids nearly half my age unwilling to do what is required of them to earn their pay. Yet they say they want a raise and better benefits? Why don’t they begin by earning what they get now? If you want to be respected, and given a higher salary, then you should first EARN that respect before asking for more pay or better benefits.

But that is part of what is wrong in this country, everybody thinks they are entitled to something without having first earned it. This goes for your opinions as well. If you spout off at the mouth about something the you obviously know nothing about, do not be surprised when someone, who has taken the time to educate themselves as to the facts, shoots down your argument and makes you look like a fool. If you want your opinions to be taken seriously, and given the respect you think they deserve, then first learn the facts before opening your mouths. It’s that simple. Believe me, over the course of my years writing I have been taught that lesson numerous times. It takes an adult though to learn from the humiliation of having your thoughts and ideas systematically dismantled, and then learning from it. Instead, most people I know would resort to emotional outbursts instead of going back and seeing if they, in fact, had been wrong in the first place.

If you want my respect there are a few simple things you need to do before I’ll give it to you. First you must not lie to me, you must also keep your promises should you make them. Next, you must not tell me it is my responsibility to give a portion of what I earn to give to anyone, be it a group, or an individual, who is less fortunate than I. If I want to donate my time or money that is a different story, but don’t tax me to subsidize others. And finally, you must let me do as I please as long as my doing so does not hurt anyone else…and this is a big one.

For instance, I, along with millions of other gun owners, have owned guns all our lives. We like them, plain and simple. Our right to keep them is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. So, just because some nut job takes a gun and goes out and shoots dozen of innocent people you DO NOT have the right to deprive me of my right to keep any type gun I wish. I just heard today that as many as 50 people were injured when someone with a car drove in to a crowd of parade goers in Damascus Virginia. By your logic we should pass a ban on those type cars now simply because one was used to hurt innocent people.

I, honestly, don’t care what you do with your life. I don’t care if you are gay, choose to be a bum or a drug addict, or if you choose to apply yourself and succeed beyond your wildest dreams. I really don’t care. I only care about living my life the way I choose without anyone else telling me what I can or cannot do. You want my respect, allow me to do that and you shall have it. On the other hand, cross me, deny me my rights, continue to vote for people who will deny me my rights and you will become my worst enemy. It’s that simple. As the band Bad Company once sang, “I am just a simple man trying to be free.”

But it is hard to be free in a country where the law of the land has been perverted to plunder from those who work, to give to those who won’t; when the people who come to this country think that they are entitled to things they have never earned; when those who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and defend our rights, work continuously to take them from us.

And that is why I have so little respect for most people in this country, they are too concerned with their own petty lives to take the time to see how badly we have screwed things up in this country. I know there are others out there who feel as I do, the remnants of a lost age. Maybe we are dinosaurs, relics from a time gone past. Maybe when we are gone you can have your Utopian society where all are equal and all reap the benefits and are given the respect they claim they deserve. But, as long as I live and breathe I will fight for what I see to be good, and honest, and right. You may not like that, but you better learn to respect it, because one day we will be on opposing sides of a conflict, and if you don’t have the virtue to stand for what you believe in, YOU WILL LOSE.

May 19, 2013

Neal Ross
Student of history, politics, patriot and
staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment
Send all comments to: bonsai@syix.com
Check out my books at: http://thebookshelf.us

If you liked Neal’s latest column, maybe you’ll like his latest booklet: The Civil War: (The Truth You Have Not Been Told) AND don’t forget to pick up your copy of ROSS: Unmasked

Not only are the Democrat’s complicit, the establishment Republicans are doing their best to lick the boots and shield this corrupt administration to protect their power hungry asses as well.

Senate minority leader, Ms. McConnell was on Meet The Press, this morning, being grilled by the ultimate Girly man, David Gregory.

Gregory asked McConnell if the Republicans would stop talking about impeachment proceedings. McConnell refused to address a response, like a little bitch.

He should have grabbed the opportunity to send a message: “Hell yes! Impeachment for starters, and treason when it comes to any wrong doing at Benghazi,” but he didn’t, the little neutered stooge remained true to the code of remaining a feckless, political establishment punk, useless to the cause of justice, and worthless to himself.

Neocon media darling, Brit Hume, stated on another program that “the GOP would be stupid to consider impeachment proceedings, while political mega candidate, Alan Keyes stated that the IRS scandal is a ploy to shield Obama’s collaboration with terrorists to destroy America … I tend to agree with Keyes.

Most American’s aren’t as stupid as the Obama administration or the main stream media portray them to be.

We don’t like the way our country is going, and we don’t want to be living under a corrupt government, drunk with power, encroaching on every aspect of our lives.

Our founders fought against government tyranny and considered our liberty as a jewel that needed to be guarded.

Who is guarding that jewel now?

Who is guarding that “jewel,” Mitch McConnell, you mealy mouthed piece of shit masquerading as a man.

Who is guarding our jewel John Boehner, you complicit jackass, are you begging for a target on your back?

Why isn’t any politician calling for impeachment, and also launching an investigation into Obama’s eligibility, and use of fraudulent documents?

The very tenacious attorney, Dr. Orly Taitz, has been compiling evidence and bringing aggrieved plaintiffs into the courts for years, only to be rebuffed or stalled by cowardly, sticky fingered judges.

Sheriff Joe Arpio has amassed reams of fraudulent evidence against this phony president but he seems to be sitting on it, rather than turning it over to a Congressman or honest judge … if one can be found in this climate of tyranny.

How would you like to be Chief Justice John Roberts now just as Obama Care is about to click in?

Ha,ha,ha, I wouldn’t put on his shoes for a million bucks, after that abominably, diabolical, unconstitutional decision he rendered over Obama Care, plunging our country into an economic catastrophe.

He has to be looking over his shoulder every minute of every day, hoping that some crazed gun man doesn’t unload his seven shot magazine into his feeble brain.

Go around come around, so it’s time to turn the tables on these evil doers and go after them not pamper them, or suck up to them.

Americans are dead because of their actions, so don’t try to sugar coat their treachery.

The Obama administration is governing our country in the “Chicago Way.”
We tried to warn you but everybody was too much in love with this small time huckster, community organizer con man, to realize his ulterior motives about destroying our country.

Now you’ve got to live with it as we do in Chicago, the nations murder capital.

Did you ever hear Obama talk about the murders or violence in Chicago, his home district?

Of course not, just like Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the Associated Press scandal, and everything else, that he knows nothing about, until he reads about it in the Papers, or Ebony Magazine.

Now he’s got that raccoon looking attorney general, Eric Holder, dummying up too, which shouldn’t be a hard task for this brainless idiot.

Both of these turds claim to know nothing about any of these scandals. They are clueless, so the American people have the right to boot them out of office.

If these two overly protected, criminally negligent psychopaths, have no knowledge of anything going on they are totally useless.

If it is found that they are complicit in any of these scandals which impair our liberty, then they should be prosecuted under the fullest extent of the law … but wait!

It’s a proven fact that our government, and judiciary, are corrupt as proven by the results and malfeasance in the Taitz cases, for starters.

A citizens grand jury, must be assembled to hear charges against Obama, Holder, and everybody else complicit in this tyranny.

A death panel to be explicit, just like Obama’s “Death Panel,” in Obama Care, which will deny these traitors the right to breathe any of our fresh air.

The jewel of liberty must be guarded at all cost.

MAy 19, 2013

~ About the Author ~
Federal Observer contributing columnist Rick Biesada is the co-founder of The Chicago Minuteman Project.

The following paragraphs outline a story about blatant, in-your-face political corruption, racketeering, graft and fraud by former President Clinton, Obama, the Obama Administration, along with Obama appointees in the Justice and Agriculture Departments and certain members of Congress that included a scheme to buy off Black, Latino, Indian and women farmers for their votes with your tax money, for alleged racial discrimination by the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It is a story of unbelievable twists, turns, corruption and graft at the highest levels of government.

Andrew Breitbart actually broke the story several months ago but he was vilified by the press and those belonging to the Donkey party as being a bigot, a racist and a sloppy reporter that was loose with the facts. It turns out that Breitbart was uncannily accurate, as proved out by a 5,000 word expose’ on the front page of the New York Times on April 25, 2013 ….. the New York Times mind you, no friend of conservative issues! READ IT. You won’t believe that your government could be this reckless with your money!

The case started back in 1997 with a lawsuit by one Timothy Pigford against the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for racial discrimination between the years 1983 and 1997. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman) The case became a class action and rose quickly to 2,000 Black farmers that claimed racial discrimination against USDA for withholding loans based on race alone. However, two government reports showed that racial discrimination was not systemic in USDA and that Black farmers only showed a slightly higher incidence of discrimination over White farmers. Yes, the report showed White discrimination as well as Black discrimination.

Early on in the Pigford payoff scandal, it was reported that President Clinton ordered USDA to pay 60% of the Black farmer claims and reject 40% of the claims as a template for the payouts. President Clinton also suggested a payout amount of $50,000 to Black farmers and that became the standard. No wonder he was labeled the first “Black” president.

After the initial payouts to Black farmers, Senator Menendez, a Hispanic senator, and other sympathetic Democratic senators in September of 2009 cried foul and said that Hispanic farmers were also discriminated against and should be compensated as well. Menendez wanted the same payout for Hispanic farmers who had been allegedly discriminated against by USDA. With such a large payout for alleged discrimination, claim filers, Black and Latino, crawled out of the woodwork to get their share of the loot. In one county alone, claims filed were four times the number of farmers in the county.

It got worse from there. Women and Indian farmers suddenly showed up on the scene and said they were discriminated against too and they wanted an ill-gotten piece of illegal government generosity. $760,000,000 was allocated for Indian farmers alone.

Even though the U. S. Supreme Court ruled against most of these cases, after Obama was elected president in 2008, his Administration and political appointees in the Justice Department and USDA set aside $1.33 billion for payouts to farmers making discrimination claims. But here’s the rub. All Black, Latino, Indian and Women farmers had to do was to file a claim to reap their reward. They didn’t have to provide the slightest evidence or proof of discrimination. The rationale was that paying them off (and that is what they did) was cheaper than fighting multiple Class Action lawsuits and it made good political sense, especially with the 2012 presidential election looming in the distance. Except that, legal scholars and some attorneys in the case stated multiple times that such Class Action lawsuits had no chance to prevail.

Pigford and his class of Black farmers sued USDA again, once in 2002 and then again in 2005, requesting a modification to the 1999 U. S. Supreme Court Settlement agreement. In an arrogant move the Black “class” wanted their lead class counsel disqualified and they wanted more money from the government. However, by 2005, 13,500 Black farmers had already received $830,000,000 from the government, which works out to over $61,000 per Black farmer. They had the audacity and unmitigated gall to ask for more of your money. SOURCE

Unilateral political decisions by Obama’s White House, the Justice Department, USDA and Democrat and Republican members of Congress were made to buy off these farmers of alleged discrimination, in spite of negative decisions by the U. S. Supreme Court against these types of racial discrimination claims. According to the New York Times article, the government is now on the hook for an estimated 90,000 Black, Latino, Indian and Women farmers, to the tune of $4.5 billion of your dollars. Most of these farmers cannot prove discrimination and a large share of them are not even farmers. Many of the claims were filed in the names of children by relatives. Many claims were filed using inner city addresses and from apartment buildings.

Under the Pigford Class Action lawsuit and further extensions of its application to certain minorities, there were time limits for filing claims. President Obama, his administration, the Justice Department, USDA and members of Congress moved repeatedly to keep extending the filing dates so that more Blacks, Latinos, Indians and Women could take advantage of the undocumented, illegal payoffs. Attorneys on both sides of the Pigford scandal reaped profits exceeding $130,000,000.

For Obama, his Administration and the Justice Department, USDA and certain members of Congress to agree to payout huge sums of money to undeserving people of limited character and honesty without any legal basis, can only be construed as stealing our tax money to buy votes. Grand theft is woefully inadequate to describe what Clinton, Obama and the Obama administration have done with your money. Collusion, racketeering and fraud on a national scale for political gain is what it is, pure and simple. These are the same types of crimes perpetrated by the U. S. Department of Energy in dolling out multi-million dollar grants and loans to wind and solar companies (friends of Obama) whose business model had no chance of success. Government might just as well as have set fire to those millions in a grand conflagration and arrogantly invited the taxpayers to the event to see what is being done with their money.

We believe that these crimes by our government cannot go unpunished. If three corporations, or three individuals, had done what Clinton and Obama and their “crews” did, the officers of the corporations, or the individuals would go to jail for a very long time and as well they should.

We have grown tired and weary of the government using our money as a tool to maintain political power and watching them get away with it. If the people don’t take action against the criminals who did this, it only emboldens others in government to do the same. This kind of political corruption is systemic in government and has to stop. It’s almost like a disease with no known cure but there is a cure if the people will just act. Our goal is to be doers, not watchers.

To that end we intend to file a formal criminal complaint with the FBI against former President Clinton, President Obama, certain officers of the Obama Administration, the Department of Justice, the USDA and certain members of Congress, alleging collusion, racketeering, grand theft, fraud, malfeasance, misfeasance and violation of their constitutional oath for political gain. In the complaint we will be naming specific agencies and department heads in those branches of the federal government that were involved in the illegal scheme to buy votes. We will also file the FBI criminal complaint with certain members of the print, radio and TV media that in our judgment will give the issue space and/or time. In addition, we will send a copy of the complaint to those agencies and individuals named therein.

Now we don’t hold out much hope that the FBI will actually do anything with our complaint because when it comes to government, the FBI is just the Fox guarding the Hen House. But by doing so, we will shine a brighter light on what government is doing with our money in overt and covert acts of criminal negligence and corruption. If one or more of our readers would like to sign the complaint, send us an e-mail at ron@narlo.org and we will forward you a copy of the complaint by return e-mail when it is done, so that you can read it and then sign it if you determine you want to take part. We will also post a copy of our FBI complaint on the NARLO website in PDF format when it is completed and can be downloaded from the site. The more people that sign the complaint, the greater its impact.

Ladies and gentlemen, unless there are consequences for politicians, or the directors of bureaucracies, this type of corrupt behavior using our tax money to illegally buy off constituency groups for votes will continue well into the future and only get worse. It is our goal to take specific actions and start holding these politicians and bureaucracy department heads accountable in the hopes that we can put at least a small dent in political corruption.

We are well aware that by taking this stand we will be called racists, bigots and nasty things will be written and said about us, just like they did to Andrew Breitbart. But quite frankly we are tired of taking the heat for alleged minorities that consider themselves victims (thanks to the government) and demand that productive Americans pay for their perceived suffering! Now if you are Black, a Latino, Indian, or a women looking for a free handout from the rest of us that you don’t deserve and you take offense to what we have said here, we strongly suggest you start taking responsibility for your own lives and quit asking productive Americans, White or otherwise, urban or rural, to pay for your inadequacies. If you are a self-supporting, self-reliant, responsible Black, Latino, Indian, or a woman, you should be just as angered as we were when we learned of the Pigford Class Action lawsuit scandal where the government is buying off minorities with your money ….. for their votes.

If you are not angry yet by what we have written here, then we strongly urge you to read the New York Times article we have linked above, if you haven’t already. After reading the article and you still aren’t outraged, then it is obvious that the job of reclaiming freedom in America cannot expect any help from you.

Now if none of this makes you mad, then click the following video link covering huge IRS refund payments being paid to 2,000,000 illegal aliens living in America, for children living in Mexico. Estimated cost to the taxpayers: $4,200,000,000 annually. The IRS knows it and does nothing.

“If the government does not obey the law and determines it is above the law, then America, under the rule of law, no longer exists. In such event the people will become slaves to government tyranny and anarchy or revolution can be America’s only future.” – Ron Ewart

NOTE: Please take note of the fact that we never once used the terms African-American, Latino-American, or Native American anywhere in this article and there is a reason. We then would have to call ourselves an American-American, or as an alternative, a European-American and of course one can see that is ridiculous since we were born in America 75 years ago and thus the only appropriate term is “American.” There is a high probability that most Blacks, legal Hispanics and Indians were also born in America and are thus Americans as well. Hyphenated ethnic names only serve to divide all Americans and that is exactly what government wants to do, keep us divided and our attention on each other instead of on the government where our collective attention belongs.

© Copyright Sunday, May 19, 2013 – All Rights Reserved

~ The Author ~
Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, “In Defense of Rural America“, is the President of the The National Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO), a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State and dedicated to restoring, maintaining and defending property rights for urban and rural landowners. Mr. Ewart can be reached for comment at ron@narlo.org.

Mr. Ewart has been a continuing contributor to the Federal Observer since May of 2007. His archives can be found at the Old Federal Observer and in its current generation, HERE.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.” SOURCE

That bit of news ought to scare you to death!

I find it incomprehensible that anyone, I mean ANYONE, is surprised by the antics at the IRS.

Conservative commentators, conservative groups, conservative political groups have been complaining for years that the IRS was really leaning on them. Now there is irrefutable proof. Heck, the IRS even admitted it!

Now we have the added horror of knowing that this same government agency will be administering our healthcare.

THIS is a NIGHTMARE!

I sincerely hope that all the folks who have joked and made fun of those of us on the right side of the political spectrum as a result of our distrust of big government will finally see exactly what we are afraid of from a strong central government.

All last week, I asked myself this question: If the government is willing to admit THIS overreach, just how deep IS their overreach and what will we find if we continue to dig especially into the depths of the agencies under the direct control of the executive branch of the government. I shudder just thinking about it.

In the same article from ABC News we also learned: “Sen. John Cornyn even introduced a bill, the “Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013,” which would prohibit the Secretary of the Treasury, or any delegate, including the IRS, from enforcing the Affordable Care Act.

“Now more than ever, we need to prevent the IRS from having any role in Americans’ health care,” Cornyn, R-Texas, stated. “I do not support Obamacare, and after the events of last week, I cannot support giving the IRS any more responsibility or taxpayer dollars to implement a broken law.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also reacted to the revelation late Thursday, stating the news was “stunning, just stunning.” SOURCE

Look. We can thank God that the AP scandal became public at the same time as the IRS scandal. Had it not, I feel certain we would not have the participation of the leftist Mainstream Media in coverage of the IRS mess. They are heart broken and outraged to learn that their messiah, Obama, could do such a thing to them — especially them — as they have worked so diligently to whitewash the Obama administration. Their lapdog-like adoration of Obama either blinded them to his feet of clay, or they have deliberately chosen to drop their facade of unbiased reporting of the news and throw their considerable resources toward advancing Obama’s Leftist/Progressive/Marxist agenda for America.

The past four and a half years American consumers of news have been subjected to a gusher of leftist propaganda unlike anything the country has ever known.

Now, however, the low-blow by Obama may, and I say that reservedly, MAY have knocked some sense into them. But it will take some time for the MsM to regain the confidence of their consumers … if ever they do.

The investigations in Congress will continue and will intensify. This is only the beginning. Whether the end result will be the deconstruction of the Obama presidency, or not, remains to be seen. But investigations of this type have a way of snowballing touching off other investigations by other congressional committees until someone — somewhere — breaks and spills the beans.

We have warned of the overreach of Obamacare. Many of you are not going to believe just how deep into your personal affairs the government is going to delve under cover of that monstrous law we call Obamacare.

Hopefully, the hearings on the IRS will bring Americans to their senses enough to bring pressure to bear on the Congress to repeal that godawful law.

This is why the election of 2014 is so important. To repeal Obamacare we will need a Senate AND a House of Representatives to even have a CHANCE of repealing Obamacare. And then, to seal the deal, we must win the Oval Office.

So — please pay attention to these hearings and learn just what the Obama administration thinks of the American electorate.

This is important, dear reader. America is on the cusp of a constitutional crisis. It could be the crisis that brings America down.

It is imperative that Americans reclaim their country — before it is too late.

© J. D. Longstreet

May 20, 2013

~ The Author ~
J. D. Longstreet is a conservative Southern American (A native sandlapper and an adopted Tar Heel) with a deep passion for the history, heritage, and culture of the southern states of America. At the same time he is a deeply loyal American believing strongly in “America First”.

He is a thirty-year veteran of the broadcasting business, as an “in the field” and “on-air” news reporter (contributing to radio, TV, and newspapers) and a conservative broadcast commentator.

Longstreet is a veteran of the US Army and US Army Reserve. He is a member of the American Legion and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A lifelong Christian, Longstreet subscribes to “old Lutheranism” to express and exercise his faith.

Federal Observer contributing columnist, J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom.

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Not to be outdone…

With Nixon, it was 18 1/2 minutes of tape. With Obama, it was 94 pages of hidden e-mails.

The Benghazi Papers
Read the e-mails released by White House. (Read Full Story)

Bozell: Obama’s Legacy? Scandal

Obama laughably claimed to be above politics, above partisanship and dirty tricks — when the facts are proving he’s really the dirtiest pool player in today’s politics. It’s Chicago-style politics, day and night. (Read Full Story)

As with ‘Fast and Furious,’ the IRS attacks on Tea Party members and other conservative groups, and currently, the continued efforts to shield the truth about what has become known as “Benghazigate,” the Obama administration exists in a continued circle of lies…

As stated in a May 13, 2013 Investor’s Business Daily article,

“Obama has chosen the high-risk strategy that when you lie, lie big and stick to it. Just how many new facts will it take to crack his poker face? In his Monday press conference, President Obama’s damage control strategy became … “perfectly clear.”

In the June 15, 2012 edition of The Weekly Standard, John McCormack recants claims by the Obama administration (as reported by all of the major networks) that,

“Since 2009, the annual average number of deportations has approached 400,000, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That’s double the annual average during President George W. Bush’s first term and 30 percent higher than the average when he left office.”

In an August 7, 2012 edition of the Tampa Bay Times, the question is asked, “Has Barack Obama deported more people than any other president in U.S. history?“

And just days ago, Brietbart posts an accusation that, Ice Agent Union President Claims White House Inflates Deportation Numbers.

The first phone call…
I was pulling into the parking lot of a shopping mall some months ago, when my cell phone rang. I did not recognize the number, but answered it anyway. The caller asked, “Is this the Federal Observer?“

She proceeded to tell me her story, after referencing a column in this publication, which offered information regarding upcoming changes in the immigration laws of this country as related to felons. The personal story then began, “I am a mother with children, but my husband, who had been in this country for 23 years, was convicted of a felony, and upon being released from prison, was deported.”

The story went on from there, as to how the family was going to lose their home, and how important it was to get her husband readmitted to the US.

I’ll not elaborate on the story any further, as I frankly told her that I was not in a position to help, as I was just a publisher, and not an immigration attorney, and that she needed to seek professional assistance.

Oh, did I mention that the original column she referenced had been published in 2002? At that point I told here that any changes being proposed at that time were moot, as new legislation was pending in the U.S. Congress.

From Behind Prison Bars…
Since that phone call, on a weekly basis I have been receiving letters from incarcerated individuals all over this country seeking my assistance in regards to immigration issues. Each of these letters have referenced the same column from 2002.

The second phone call…
…occurred on Monday, May 13, 2013. The story was absolutely identical the the first call from months before – and it was from the husband of the original caller – who is back in his native land of Pakistan, yet one single issue came from our rather lengthy conversation (and I am still not aware of what the felony charge was, but his sentence was for a mere twelve months) …

Upon release from prison, he was quickly labelled an ‘undesirable’ and deported. All of this after serving his sentence and making financial restitution.

Fazal informed me that this has become the practice in deportations. There is no attempt nor desire to deport ILLEGALS – but long-term residence, who have proven themselves in the business world, to be productive human beings.

What of all the concerns expressed for the families, who should nolt be split up? Where is the compassion?

None of this makes a specific case for Fazal and his family, as there is too much that is still unknown, but… if what he he is saying is correct – then the claims of the Administration are misrepresentative of the deportation numbers. Fazal was not incarcerated for murder, rape or immigration violations, but a business gone bad, where he was set up as a patsy by his partner. Embezzlement seems to have been the crime, but from whom, and for what?

So my question is, “how many ILLEGALS” have been deported?” – or is just folks who have productive, tax paying, contributing family men?

The borders remain wide-open to all (ILLEGAL) comers, with no resolve in sight.

Without Apology I am,

Jeffrey Bennett

Let the punishment fit the crime – by guillotine…

• Dr Kermit Gosnell accused of running a ‘house of horrors’ abortion clinic

• Gosnell is facing five murder charges – four babies and one mother

• Staff were said to ‘cut the spinal cord’ of babies born outside the womb

For more than 30 years, it was supposed to be a haven for poor and needy women, a place where they could get check-ups, prescriptions and abortions from a doctor who boasted that he never turned away a patient for want of money.

But a shocking court case gripping America has heard that the truth about the Women’s Medical Society clinic in Philadelphia was very different — and that it was in fact a ‘baby charnel house’ where babies were delivered alive, only to have their spines severed after birth and their remains discarded in shoe boxes and even catfood containers.

The trial of Dr Kermit Gosnell, a late-term abortionist (a late-term abortion typically refers to a termination that occurs after the 20th week of pregnancy) who presided over what prosecutors dubbed a ‘house of horrors’, has sickened and disgusted the U.S. public.

But the case has also divided the U.S., a country which has yet to decide exactly where it stands on a woman’s ‘right to choose’ and raises moral questions that some argue undermine the whole ethical case for abortions.

The Women’s Medical Society may have been an abomination, but the problem for those who support abortion rights is that Gosnell’s clinic was licensed and much of its work perfectly legal. This was no furtive back-alley outfit but a clinic that made more than £1.1 million a year.

And it shamefully escaped inspection for 17 years because successive governments, in an effort to give women greater access to abortion, insisted that clinics only needed a once-over from officials.

Moreover, the murder charges Dr Gosnell faces invite the question of why we are so horrified by the thought of babies being killed outside the womb, when the deaths would be perfectly legal if brought about only a short time earlier, before delivery.

The jury is now commencing its third week of deliberation with members considering five murder charges — four of babies and one of a mother — that could send 78-year-old Gosnell to Death Row.

According to the prosecution, inside his filthy, squalid and cramped three-storey practice in west Philadelphia’s impoverished Mantua neighbourhood, Gosnell ran not so much a house as a factory of horrors, despatching unwanted babies as if on a production line.

He is accused of killing babies after delivering them alive when the usual procedure of injecting drugs into the mother failed to kill them in the womb. When they showed signs of life such as moving an arm, crying or drawing breath, he or his staff would snip their spinal cord at the back of the neck with surgical scissors, the trial heard.

Prosecutors said one of the babies was delivered into a lavatory. A witness claimed the baby, identified just as Baby E, was up to 15 in long and made swimming motions in the water before its short life was ended.

Defence lawyers have countered that witnesses who noticed movement in the four babies were only seeing usual post-mortem spasms rather than signs of life. But seven former staff gave evidence against Gosnell after agreeing plea deals — negotiating leniency in return for their testimony.

In some cases they said they saw babies breathe, move or whine before their spines were cut. Adrienne Moton, 35, an unqualified medical assistant paid just £6 an hour to work at the clinic, sobbed in court as she described cutting the spines of at least ten babies.

The practice was led by two medical school graduates who had never qualified as doctors
She said one of the babies, a boy, had been so large that Gosnell — a fan of gallows humour — joked that he was so big he could ‘walk me to the bus stop’.

Steven Massof, a medical school graduate who had no doctor’s licence and earned just a few hundred dollars a week, has claimed he personally cut the spines of more than 100 babies born alive.

Gosnell didn’t only kill babies but was a ‘deadly threat’ to mothers, too, prosecutors allege. He denies a fifth murder charge, this time of Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old married Nepalese immigrant whose tragic fate, say prosecutors, could easily have been suffered by scores more women who reported being infected by dirty surgical instruments, or else left sterile or injured by internal injuries.

Unable to read English, Mrs Mongar signed paperwork she couldn’t understand and was then dosed with Demerol, a cheap painkiller, while staff waited for Gosnell to arrive, the court was told.

The trial heard Gosnell rarely bothered to attend the clinic, delegating the work to untrained, pitifully paid staff ‘led’ by two medical school graduates who had never qualified as doctors.

His anaesthetist was a school dropout who could barely read or write and had to have her instructions colour-coded on what drugs to give each patient.

Usually the doses were heavily over the norm, ensuring patients had little recollection of what followed, the court heard. A 15-year-old schoolgirl helped in the surgical suite and recovery room, where prosecutors said she was ‘exposed to the full horrors of Gosnell’s practice’.

In Mrs Mongar’s case, she had stopped breathing by the time Gosnell arrived, say prosecutors. Gosnell attempted to resuscitate her but the clinic’s defibrillator was broken.

The court heard the doctor later lied to an ambulance crew about how much Demerol the patient had been given, and she died the next day. The defence has blamed a pre-existing medical condition.

As for Gosnell’s patients, nearly all were poor and black. He allegedly took more care over his few white patients, ushering them into a slightly cleaner area because he considered they were more likely to make a complaint.

Patients were charged $325.00 for a first trimester abortion (before the 12th week of pregnancy) — a sum appreciably less than the national average of around $450.00 — and between $1,600.00 and $2,960.00 for an illegal abortion, which in Pennsylvania is anything after 24 weeks.

The older babies were terminated on Sundays, when the clinic was officially closed and the only person allowed to assist Gosnell was his wife, Pearl. She is among the ex-staff of the now closed clinic who admitted various charges in a plea agreement.

House of horror: Gosnell’s former facility, the Women’s Medical Society, in Philadelphia where prosecutors allege he killed five people, including a patient and four viable babies allegedly born alive.

Prosecutors estimated Gosnell’s practice was taking up to nearly $15,000 every night just from the abortions, on top of a lucrative sideline selling pre-signed prescriptions for extra-strong sedatives to addicts and drug dealers.

To the shame of local authorities, which didn’t inspect the clinic for 17 years, Gosnell’s so-called ‘abortion mill’ was discovered by accident. Tipped off that Gosnell might be fraudulently handing out prescriptions for powerful painkillers, federal agents and police raided the clinic in February 2010.

What it is alleged they found was infinitely worse. According to a Grand Jury report that formed the basis of the prosecution case, there were bloodstains all over the floor and furniture. A flea-infested cat wandered around as semi- conscious women scheduled for abortions sat moaning on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets.

When investigators talked to staff and went through files, it emerged that patients had been sedated with often out-of-date drugs administered by assistants who were unable to recall exactly what they had given to whom.

The surgery rooms were compared by officials to a petrol station toilet, with surgical instruments often going uncleaned between operations.

Life-saving equipment was frequently broken and, particularly disgustingly, the same corroded suction tubing used for abortions was also used for opening oral airways if the patients needed help breathing.

Plied with labour-inducing drugs, many patients would be asked to sit on the lavatory and their babies were later fished out of the water.

Foetal remains were littered throughout the clinic on shelves and in a freezer — stored in milk jugs, bags and orange juice cartons. The report said a row of jars contained — for no appreciable medical reason — the severed feet of foetuses.

Defence lawyers called no witnesses, not even Gosnell. Citing evidence from a coroner that none of the 47 foetuses found in the clinic had been born alive, defence counsel John McMahon told the court: ‘The first rule of homicide is someone has to be alive.’

Prosecutors countered that a trio of witnesses had testified that they saw three instances of life — one baby breathing, another making a whining sound and the third moving its arms and legs, before Gosnell ‘killed it’.

Mr McMahon said that because the women were given injections of the drug digoxin, which causes ‘foetal demise’, any post-delivery movements were involuntary spasms.
‘Every single piece of scientific evidence in this case has shown stillbirth,’ he said.

The defence has tried to question the prosecution’s motives — primarily by playing the race card. Gosnell is black and his ‘racist’ prosecution is effectively a ‘lynching’, said his lawyer.

‘Dr Gosnell never turned down a desperate and troubled young lady because they didn’t have any money.’

In an interview before the trial, Gosnell portrayed himself as a sort of medical missionary, devoting his career to living and working in the same blighted neighbourhood.

The jurors have been deliberating for well over a week. America can’t make up its mind on this dreadful case either. Both sides in the country’s fierce abortion debate insist the Philadelphia scandal proves their point.

Pro-choice groups say his clinic is exactly the sort of place that desperate women will be forced to use if pro-lifers get their way and make abortions harder to obtain legally.

The legality of abortion in the U.S. was enshrined in the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling, in which a Texas woman successfully challenged the outlawing of abortions, but conservative states continue to try to limit women’s access to it.

The law varies enormously between states over the permissible time frame with some such as liberal Pennsylvania — where Gosnell’s clinic was based — permitting abortion up until 24 weeks of pregnancy and others making it illegal after six weeks.

Conservative states Arkansas and North Dakota this year banned abortions beyond 12 and six weeks respectively. Others, like Mississippi, are trying to pass laws forcing abortion clinics to close.

Most states impose restrictions such as insisting on parental involvement, compulsory pre-operation waiting periods and anti-abortion counselling.

In 2009, Dr George Tiller — a prominent late-term abortion provider — was shot dead by a pro-life extremist.

Anti-abortion Republicans in the U.S. Senate this week pushed for tighter regulations on abortion clinics in the wake of the Gosnell case.

Their allies — some of whom sat in court throughout the five-week trial — say the case not only highlights the extreme lengths to which some abortion doctors will go but also exposes a major weakness in the pro-choice philosophy.

Why is an abortion performed ‘in utero’ completely legal, they ask, but a similar termination, conducted a few minutes later after the baby has left the mother’s body, considered murder?

Whatever the verdict on Kermit Gosnell, it is a paradox that many will struggle to explain.

Written by Tom Leonard and published at The Daily Mail, May 12, 2013.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www. law. cornell. edu/uscode/17/107. shtml

Obamacare passed by a straight Democratic party vote on Christmas Eve in 2009. No Republican voted for it and, as one poll recently revealed, a third of Americans are still unaware it is the law of the land. A divided Supreme Court gave it a pass, calling it a tax, but it is a profoundly unconstitutional law insofar as the federal government may not pass a law that requires Americans to purchase something and to fine them if they do not. It is also playing havoc with the economy, delaying recovery as it deters hiring and encourages firing.

Nonetheless, a number of states have gone on record seeking to nullify its enforcement and some are doing the same as regards gun control. Arizona became famous when it passed its own immigration law in response to the federal government’s failure to protect its border with Mexico. The proposed “Gang of Eight” immigration law is facing stiff opposition for its various provisions, most of which do not address the central issue of security on the southern border.

How out of touch is the President? He went to Mexico and blamed the violence arising from its drug cartels on America, saying “Most of the guns used here to commit violence came from America.” He made no mention of the scandalous “Fast and Furious” scheme in which the ATF actually ran guns into Mexico, claiming they would track them. It took an executive order to throw a blanket of silence over it and a compliant media to ignore that scandal.

It is, however, Obamacare that poses the greatest threat to the nation, intruding on the patient-doctor relationship, robbing billions from Medicare to pay for it, requiring states to fund more Medicaid when many are strapped to meet other needs, and putting 16% of the nation’s economy under federal control.

A total of twenty-seven states have filed suit against Obamacare. Two federal judges have upheld its individual mandate to purchase health insurance and two others have ruled that it is unconstitutional.

Twelve states have introduced versions of the Federal Health Care Nullification Act that was drafted by the Tenth Amendment Center. They include Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Alabama, and Maine. All declare that Obamacare is “hereby declared to be invalid, shall not be recognized, is specifically rejected, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect.”

In South Carolina, on May 1st, the state House passed a bill that declares the bill null and void and goes a step further, criminalizing its implementation. Earlier Governor Nikki Haley, in her state of the state address, said that South Carolina does not want and cannot afford Obamacare, saying of the President’s namesake, “not now, not ever.”

The following day, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback sent a letter in response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s opposition to its Second Amendment Protection Act, declaring it unconstitutional; essentially tell him to piss off. “The people of Kansas,” said the Governor, “have clearly expressed their sovereign will.” The same day, Missouri passed a comparable law protecting the Second Amendment.

Not since the years leading up to the Civil War was kicked off on December 20, 1860 when South Carolina voted for secession, has there been such open resistance to the mandates of the federal government by the states on a range of issues. Earlier, in 1832, President Andrew Jackson had threatened to send troops to South Carolina to enforce federal laws.

Nullification, however, will not succeed as a means to rid the nation of Obamacare. To Obama’s dismay, his gun control law failed in Congress when even members of his party joined in voting against it. The fate of immigration reform remains unknown but it will come to a vote soon enough.

The reason why nullification will fail is embedded in the Constitution. The Supremacy Clause states “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be found thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary, notwithstanding.”

That has not discouraged the legislatures of many states from expressing their opposition to Obamacare, intrusions on the Second Amendment right of citizens to bear arms, and to demand the federal government enforce the laws regarding its borders.

There isn’t a constitutional scholar that does not support the Supremacy Clause. The Heritage Foundation has a policy paper on the subject of nullification that says “there is no clause or implied power in either the national or the various state constitutions that enables states to veto federal laws unilaterally.”

The states, though, can express their displeasure and their opposition to federal laws and that is what lies at the heart of the spate of nullification laws that have been passed. As sovereign republics, the states can and do express themselves and, through their elected Senators and Representatives, have the power in concert to repeal obnoxious and injurious federal laws.

That will be the fate of Obamacare.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

~ About the Author ~
Federal Observer contributor Alan Caruba writes a doily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

Murdering Slut

Whether Jodi Arias gets her wish — to be executed rather than spend her life in prison — is now up to the Arizona jury that on Wednesday found her guilty of brutally murdering her one-time boyfriend, Travis Alexander, in a jealous rage on June 4, 2008, in a Phoenix suburb.

The jury must consider whether the cruelty, brutality, and depravity of her attack on Mr. Alexander deserves a sentence of death, a finding that would make Ms. Arias the fourth woman to be awaiting execution on Arizona’s death row. (The state has not executed a woman since Eva Dugan, a cabaret dancer, was hanged in 1930.)

Against that possibility, jurors will weigh potential mitigating circumstances, such as Arias’ allegations of abuse, which she outlined at length during the trial.

Largely because of an unedited video stream from the Arizona courthouse, incessant Twitter chatter, and cable news coverage about the case, the Arias trial took on the air of a celebrity procedural, with enough characters, drama, gore, betrayal, and lies to compete as a daytime soap opera for millions of Americans. The sentencing phase could take weeks.

The Maricopa County jury will deliberate against a backdrop of evolving societal views about female murderers. On one hand is a somewhat chivalrous sense that women are not capable of brutality at the same level as men and resort to it under extenuating circumstances — such as sexual abuse that Arias claimed at the hand of her victim. On the other is a sense that women can indeed be cold-blooded killers who are every bit as deserving of execution as male murderers.

James Acker, a criminal justice professor at the State University of New York at Albany, describes the “competing theories” this way. One is that “this is about chivalry, where we’re all bending over backward to make sure no women, or members of the fairer sex, are treated this way, versus the less-sexist notion that women … who do [commit capital murder] somehow tend to lose their identity as female and become a demonic killer that overwhelms the definition of a woman – that to dispatch someone to execution you almost have to relegate them [to being] outside the human family.” Still, he adds, “it’s more difficult to do that with a woman than a man.”

The Arias case alone probably won’t provide much of a guidepost to the direction of sentiment in the U.S. regarding executing women. But the sentencing phase comes at a peculiar time in the annals of death row — chiefly that the share of women murderers entering death row has stayed constant even as the percentage of men sentenced to die has noticeably dropped.

From 1973 to 1999, the percentage of women murderers receiving death sentences sank to historic lows, but the rate since 2001 has rebounded to the historical average, says Victor Streib, a retired Ohio Northern University law professor who published a periodic report about women on death rows in the U.S. Meanwhile, the rate at which men are being sentenced to death has notably decreased.

The result: The percentage of female death sentences has jumped from 2 percent of the total, on average, to 6 percent, a peak, in 2011.

Even so, women killers remain underrepresented on death row. Women commit 10 percent of murders in the U.S., but they are 2 percent of people on death row. The list of convicted female killers sentenced to death since the late 1970s, when the U.S. Supreme Court ended a capital-punishment moratorium, is fairly short: 178 women have been sentenced to death and 12 have actually been executed.

Women in America are increasingly in trouble with the law. Their arrest rates are up 5 percent since 2000, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics. Arrest rates for men have remained flat during that time.

Death penalty experts, however, don’t correlate such statistics with a broader movement by U.S. courts to end so-called “positive discrimination” regarding women suspects and convicts, such as a more lenient sentence than men receive for committing a similar crime. As the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in the 1984 case of Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, which found that a single-sex admissions policy violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause: “… if the statutory objective is to exclude or ‘protect’ members of one gender because they are presumed to suffer from an inherent handicap or to be innately inferior, the objective itself is illegitimate.”

Still, Arias’ lawyers had their reasons for putting their client on the stand for 18 days of testimony. One, Mr. Streib says, is “to get the jury to see [her] as a human being, so they don’t think they’re killing a monster or a faceless animal, but someone they’ve actually gotten to know.” In part of that testimony, Arias described Alexander as an abusive sexual deviant, but offered no proof.

“One of the lines in the [1996 movie “Last Dance”] was where a defense attorney said, ‘Now that women get rights and are treated equally, they can expect to get more death sentences’ — the idea being that if these women want to be treated equally, by golly, we’ll treat them equally,” Streib continues.

He points out that the movie script was not particularly prescient. Instead, Streib says, “My conclusion is that, for prosecutors, sentencing a woman to death is still like hitting a girl on a playground. In other words, he’s not a tough guy for getting a death conviction, but a guy who hits girls.”

But the sexual aspects of the trial — including the playing of a taped raunchy phone conversation between Arias and the victim — may undermine any sympathy for Arias among the jurors, Patricia Pearson, author of “When She Was Bad: How and Why Women Get Away with Murder,” writes in an e-mail to the Monitor.

She notes that women who commit “sexual murder” often do not fare well in sentencing. “The sexual component to Arias’ story,” Ms. Pearson says, “makes her a more likely candidate for the death penalty, in terms of what kind of woman still gets that ultimate sentence.”

Written by Patrik Jonsson and published at Christian Science Monitor, May 11, 2013.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www. law. cornell. edu/uscode/17/107. shtml

• He also says that Johnson, instructed Richard Nixon to hire Jack Ruby years before he shot Lee Harvey Oswald

• The revelations are made in his book ‘The man who killed Kennedy – the case against LBJ‘ out later this year

A renowned Republican strategist and lobbyist has claimed that former president Lyndon B. Johnson set up John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which occurred on November 22, 1963.

Roger Stone, 61, makes the claim in his upcoming book ‘The Man who killed Kennedy – the case against LBJ,’ which is set to be published in October.

He also writes that Richard Nixon and Johnson had a documented relationship with Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer, years before he shot Oswald in the basement of Dallas police headquarters in 1963, reports The Daily Caller.

Stone worked for Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President in 1972 and later served in the Nixon administration.

He claims that Johnson, a congressman at the time, instructed Richard Nixon, also a congressman at the time, to hire Ruby onto the House of Representatives payroll in 1947.

Stone claims Johnson ‘micro-managed’ Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade, demanding it pass through Dealy Plaza on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, the infamous day when Oswald shot Kennedy from the overlooking book depository building.

‘Nixon knew Jack Ruby, hired him on House payroll in 1947 at request of … Lyndon Johnson. Newly released documents prove it. in my upcoming book “The Man who killed Kennedy- the case against LBJ” Out Oct 1–order yours today,’ Stone wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday.

‘LBJ and Gov. John Connally micro-managed Dalla JFK’s schedule and demanded the route thru Dealy Plaza where the motorcade came to a full stop and LBJ had JFK killed,’ he added.

‘They had no interest in JFK stops in Austin or Houston!‘

Stone, now a member of the Libertarian Party, co-wrote his book with Libertarian writer Mike Colapietro.

Ruby, whose real name was Jacob Leon Rubenstein, moved from Chicago to Dallas in 1947, the same year Stone alleges that Nixon put him on the House payroll at Johnson’s request.
Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism on January 3, 1967, a little more than three years after killing Oswald.

Johnson died of a massive heart attack on January 22, 1973.

Nixon died on April 22, 1984, after suffering a severe stroke four days earlier.

Written by Damian Ghigliotty and published at The Daily Mail, May 11, 2013.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www. law. cornell. edu/uscode/17/107. shtml

The U.S. Department of Education is replacing the terms ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ on student loan forms with the less gender-specific ‘Parent 1’ and ‘Parent 2.’

The changes will be introduced on the 2014-2015 federal student aid form (FAFSA) and the move is designed to better accommodate students who are brought up in gay homes where there are two mother or two fathers.

‘All students should be able to apply for federal student aid within a system that incorporates their unique family dynamics,’ Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement.

For the first time the department will collect income ‘from a dependent student’s legal parents regardless of the parents’ marital status or gender, if those parents live together,’ reports the Washington Times.

The announcement has already elicited an angry response from conservative Christian groups.

‘But the federal government says I’m Mommy no more. I am Parent 1. Or maybe Parent 2. Mr. President, I dare you to tell my daughters I’m not their mother.’

According to education secretary Duncan the change is about more than being inclusive and will help the department to more precisely calculate federal student aid eligibility based on what a student’s whole family is able to contribute.

The change will help ensure that taxpayer dollars are better targeted toward those students who have the most need, she said.

Written by David McCormack and published at The Daily Mail, May 11, 2013.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www. law. cornell. edu/uscode/17/107. shtml

That is the reason for the hearings on Benghazi, and the difference between a civil, and animalistic society.

In spite of all of the rhetoric from the media and the Democratic party about these hearings being politically motivated, we are learning just the opposite. The betrayal was politically motivated to help Junior get re elected.

So now we know.

It’s 3 AM and your children are safe and asleep, but there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Something is happening in Benghazi, and this isn’t the old ad Hillary Clinton ran against Barack Obama during their 2008 presidential campaign.

It’s 3 AM and the White House phone is ringing off of the hook, but our Commander In Chief is fast asleep with visions of hundred dollar bills dancing in his feeble head.

He’s off to a fund raiser the next day in Las Vegas, so nothing is going to disturb his beauty rest.

Across town at the Clinton residence, the phone is also ringing…

Bill yells out to Hillary; “honey get the phone, it’s probably for you, nobody would ever think I’d be home this early.”

“What difference does it make,” Hillary sarcastically scorns at Bill, “you lazy bastard, it’s probably Monica sniffing around for more money, and now you disturbed my pleasant dreams of dancing with the native girls in Malawi, South Africa, when I went there to unload some tax dollars on that racist president, Zuma, with my sweetie Huma.”

Well, now we all know that the answer to that ad is obvious. Neither one of these worthless pieces of shit would have responded to that crisis because neither one of these misfits are capable enough of holding high political office; and this is the reason why it is important to hold hearings on Benghazi.

It is important to hold the people responsible for this betrayal of United States citizens accountable for their despicable, and treasonous actions, and hope that this treachery never happens again.

It is important for our military to know that they won’t be forsaken over politics.

It is important for unit cohesion so our troops don’t lose confidence, but more importantly, it is important for our military officers to start acting as leaders and stop cow towing to political correctness and politicians.

It is important for American citizens to know that we have a corrupt, out of control government, and if we don’t start locking some of these despots up, and keep them off of our streets, America will no longer be a safe place for American’s.

Obama will always have his repulsive, sycophant media, the Democratic Party, and his parasitic base of free loading mooches, but you can’t hide from the truth forever.

Obama was never fit to be a president, and he has proven to be a big failure.

I don’t care what anybody claims, Obama’s second election was ripe with fraud and his opposition should be investigated for allowing it.

I don’t need any proof to back up my claims, my gut instinct, and knowledge of Chicago politics, plus the fact that they used electronic voting machines tells me all I need to know about fixed elections.

Obama’s brazen arrogance is about to catch up with his lies and fraud. He’s running out of luck, and soon he will be running out of donors, and sycophants, as they start abandoning him in search of a new nauseous hero.

Unfortunately, it will be up to a reluctant John Boehner, Speaker of the House, to get off of his big fat, slow moving ass, and begin criminal proceedings against the Commander In Chief. It is past time for Boehner to start honoring his oath, or resign … period!

For Barack Obama’s criminal negligence, and treason, he should be eligible finally, for the death penalty.

Hopefully, they will bury him at sea near Osama bin-Laden’s resting place.

Then Joe Biden can gleefully exclaim. “GM is alive and Barack Obama is dead.”

Never again!

May 12, 2013

~ About the Author ~
Federal Observer contributing columnist Rick Biesada is the co-founder of The Chicago Minuteman Project.