'Allahu akbar!' shouted as Christians cuffed
Witness: 'I never thought I would see this in America'

Four Christians were arrested and thrown out of a public Arab festival in Michigan – and at least two people claim a crowd cheered "Allahu akbar!" while the Christians were led away in handcuffs for doing nothing more than engaging in peaceful dialogue and videotaping the event.

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE -- IT IS A RISKY PLACE TO TRY TO LIVE FOR CHRIST!!
Obviously, two of these stories come from England, but that DOES NOT mean we will not eventually see the exact same thing here in this country.  ANYONE can look around the US and see the 'hand writing on the wall'.  The elections this year can go a long way towards returning our freedoms, our 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.'

British Judge: Christian Beliefs Have No Legal Standing

LONDON (RNS) A top British judge has ruled that Christian beliefs have no standing under secular law because they lack evidence and cannot be proven.

Lord Justice John Grant McKenzie Laws made the declaration on Thursday (April 29) in throwing out a defamation suit by Christian relationship counselor who refused to offer sex therapy to gay couples.

Gary McFarlane protested that he was fired because offering sex therapy to same-gender couples violates his Christian principles.

But Laws said "religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence." He added that to use the law to protect "a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified."

No religious belief, said the judge, can be protected under the law "however long its tradition, however rich its culture."

Laws also dismissed as "misplaced" and "mistaken" former archbishop of Canterbury George Carey's warning that a wave of discrimination against Christians threatens "civil war" in Britain. Read more here.

Kiddie Jihad: Child Bombers Terror's Newest Weapon

Erick Stakelbeck

White House Won't Rule Out Value Added Tax, Which Would Hit All Income Levels

Thursday, April 22, 2010
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

– Economist and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas)

(CNSNews.com) – Economist and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said he “always believed” the Democrats would impose a Value Added Tax (VAT) on top of all existing, current taxes when they took control of the House, Senate and White House. Armey also said the VAT is the most “insidious tax of all.”
 
In an exclusive interview with Armey on Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked, “Paul Volcker, a senior economic adviser to President Obama, and several members of Congress, including Speaker Pelosi, have floated the idea of the VAT tax being implemented on top of current taxes. Would you support something like that? Why or why not?”
 
Armey said, “Absolutely not. Look, in 1994, I studied – actually, starting in the fall of ’93 – I studied all tax options out there, and I, of course, settled on the flat tax as the best option for a lot of reasons. The Value Added Tax was always the most insidious tax of all, and I always saw that – I’d seen that back in ’77.”
 
“But, I always believed that when the Democrats got the majority in both the House and the Senate – and I’ve told this to people for years – when they get the House and the Senate and the White House, they’re going to add a Value Added Tax to the existing income tax,” said Armey.

Europe's VAT Lessons

Rates start low and increase, while income tax rates stay high.

As Americans rush to complete their annual tax returns today, there is still some consolation in knowing that it could be worse: Like Europeans, we could pay both income taxes and a value-added tax, or VAT. And maybe we soon will. Paul Volcker, Nancy Pelosi, John Podesta and other allies of the Obama Administration have already floated the idea of an American VAT, so we thought you might like to know how it has worked in Europe.

A VAT is essentially a national sales tax that is assessed at each stage of production, with the bill passed along to consumers at the cash register. In Europe the average rate is a little under 20%. (See the nearby chart.) In the U.S., a federal VAT would presumably be levied on top of state and local sales taxes that range as high as 10%. Some nations also exempt food, medicine and certain other goods from the tax.

VATs were sold in Europe as a way to tax consumption, which in principle does less economic harm than taxing income, savings or investment. This sounds good, but in practice the VAT has rarely replaced the income tax, or even resulted in a lower income-tax rate. The top individual income tax rate remains very high in Europe despite the VAT, with an average on the continent of about 46%.

Europe's individual income tax rates have fallen since the 1980s, following the U.S. lead in the Reagan era, and European corporate tax rates have come down even more sharply. But the drive of this decline has been global tax competition, not the offsetting burden of the VAT.

In the U.S., VAT proponents aren't calling for a repeal of the 16th Amendment that allowed the income tax—and, in fact, they want income tax rates to rise. The White House has promised to let the top individual rate increase in January to 39.6% from 35% as the Bush tax cuts expire, while the dividend rate will go to 39.6% from 15% and the capital gains rate to 20% next year and 23.8% in 2013 under the health bill, from 15% today. Even with these higher rates, or because of them, revenues won't come close to paying for the Obama Administration's new spending—which is why it is also eyeing a VAT.

One trait of European VATs is that while their rates often start low, they rarely stay that way. Of the 10 major OECD nations with VATs or national sales taxes, only Canada has lowered its rate. Denmark has gone to 25% from 9%, Germany to 19% from 10%, and Italy to 20% from 12%. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation recently calculated that to balance the U.S. federal budget with a VAT would require a rate of at least 18%.

Proponents also argue that a VAT would result in less federal government borrowing. But that, too, has rarely been true in Europe. >From the 1980s through 2005, deficits were by and large higher in Europe than in the U.S. By 2005, debt averaged 50% of GDP in Europe, according to OECD data, compared to under 40% in the U.S.

Thanks to the recession and the stimulus, U.S. federal debt held by the public has now reached about 63% of GDP and is headed higher, but the OECD forecasts that the 30 wealthiest nations will see debt burdens "exceed 100% of gross domestic product in 2011." Debt levels in France, Germany, Spain and Italy are expected to have increased by 30 percentage points of GDP from 2008 to 2011. Greece has a VAT rate of 21%, but its debt as a share of GDP is 113%.  Read more here.

By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, April 16, 2010; A17

Six weeks ago, it looked as if there was no chance that Congress would approve climate change legislation this year.

The bill that had passed the House was so long, so complicated, so punitive to the coal-dependent Midwest economy, involved so many political compromises and so much money to be redistributed by the federal government, that it became the whipping boy of choice for conservative politicians and commentators.

Passage of health-care legislation, however, may have changed all that.

Democrats and their liberal supporters saw how much good could be accomplished by not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. And Republicans and the business lobby were reminded of the concessions they could have won but didn't by their decision to abandon bipartisan compromise and instead try to kill the legislation altogether.

Now, thanks to the heroic efforts of two dogged senators -- Democrat John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham -- and the quiet support of the White House, there looks to be a 50-50 chance the Senate will pass a simpler and more moderate version of a bill this year that would begin to substantially reduce carbon emissions in the United States.

Many in the environmental community have come around to Kerry's view that this is the best shot they are going to have anytime soon at passing comprehensive energy and climate change legislation. And parts of the business community have come around to Graham's view that they can't afford another decade of uncertainty over regulatory issues, particularly with an activist Democrat in control of the regulatory agencies, just as they cannot afford to alienate an entire generation that has a keen interest in the environment and doesn't look kindly on their intransigence.

At this point, it's a bit of a stretch to call this a bipartisan compromise -- the bill that Kerry, Graham and independent Joe Lieberman are expected to introduce a week from Monday is likely to have no other Republican as an initial co-sponsor. But its terms have been crafted to appeal to a handful of Republican senators who, either out of personal belief or political necessity, are eager to find themselves on the right side of history.

They include: retiring senators such as George Voinovich of Ohio and Richard Lugar of Indiana, whose Midwestern states would fare even better under the Senate bill than the House-passed version; Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who will surely like all of the goodies for the nuclear power industry included in the bill; Susan Collins of Maine, whose idea for rebating to consumers money collected by the government through the sale of carbon-emission rights to electric utilities and oil refiners is a central feature of the Senate compromise; and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the newbie senator who so far has lived up to his promise to be an "independent" Republican.

Although the Senate bill retains the cap-and-trade structure of the House bill, it would apply, at least initially, only to electric power producers, with other manufacturers coming under the regime after 2016. The oil and gas industry would be handled under a separate regime that requires refiners to buy emissions permits for all the carbon contained in the gasoline or other fuels they sell -- in effect, a fee or tax on carbon. The amount of the fee would be determined by the price at which carbon emissions allowances are bought or sold by utilities on open exchanges. And while the fee would almost certainly be passed on to consumers in the form of higher fuel prices, most of it would be rebated through payroll and other tax credits. By paying more for energy and less for taxes, the idea is that Americans will use less energy and wind up with roughly the same amount of money to spend on everything else. Read more here.

A Complete List Of Bad Things Attributed To Global Warming

 Posted 04/05/2010 05:05 PM ET

Hardly a day goes by that the media don't blame something on global warming. Or so it seems. The British-based science watchdog, Number Watch, wondered just how many and went to the trouble of documenting them.

It has kept on its Web site a near-comprehensive set of links to a long list of things attributed by either scientific research or the media to global warming. As you read it, some items will strike you as contradictory. Others, perhaps, as merely absurd. And still others as factually impossible.

However they strike you, in perusing the list one thing will become clear: just how much the fear of global warming has come to taint both science and news reporting on the issue.

Following is the list of phenomena (756 entries in all) linked at one time or another to warming. They range from acne, bubonic plague and a drop in circumcisions to Yellow fever, whale beachings, walrus stampedes, witchcraft executions and the threat of zebra mussels.

Actual links to stories that make the claims listed below can be found at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm. (Below the list are some claims that no longer have working Internet links.)  Read more here.

1. What Kind of Attack Can Kill 70 to 90 Percent of Americans Within One Year?
2. America is Vulnerable to An Electromagnetic Pulse Attack
3. Don’t Let a Catastrophic Disaster Leave You Stranded Miles from Nowhere

Jena McNeill

You may not realize, but your grocery store carries very few foods from the local area. Strawberries

are often from Mexico, oranges from Florida, and plums from California. For those curious,Ramen Noodles are made in Richmond, Virginia.

3. Don’t Let a Catastrophic Disaster Leave You Stranded Miles from Nowhere

Jena McNeill

1.  Obama Officially Abandons Missile Defense in Europe
2.  Obama Bans Islam, Jihad From National Security Strategy Document
3.  Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms


1. Obama Officially Abandons Missile Defense in Europe

According to the Polish ^[1] daily ^[2], Gazeta Wyborcza, sources in the United States have confirmed that the Obama administration has made the decision to abandon our anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Unfortunately this news is not surprising at all. In March of this year it was revealed ^[3] that President Obama “secretly” offered Moscow a grand bargain whereby it would sacrifice missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for Moscow’s help discouraging Iran’s nuclear program ^[4]. Then in his July summit ^[5] with Moscow, Obama reinforced his message that missile defense remains a bargaining chip that can exchanged for his college dream of a nuclear free world. This is a grave mistake for several reasons: Read more here.

 The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo, Egypt, and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terror and winning the war of ideas.

"You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, 'We're building you a hospital so you don't become terrorists.' That doesn't make much sense," said National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy.

Ramamurthy runs the administration's Global Engagement Directorate, a four-person National Security Council team that Obama launched last May with little fanfare and a vague mission to use diplomacy and outreach "in pursuit of a host of national security objectives."

Since then, the division has not only helped change the vocabulary of fighting terror but also has shaped the way the country invests in Muslim businesses, studies global warming, supports scientific research and combats polio.

Before diplomats go abroad, they hear from the Ramamurthy or his deputy, Jenny Urizar. When officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration returned from Indonesia, the NSC got a rundown about research opportunities on global warming.
Read more here.

3. Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms

By DAVID E. SANGER and PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.

But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.

White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.

Mr. Obama’s new strategy is bound to be controversial, both among conservatives who have warned against diluting the United States’ most potent deterrent and among liberals who were hoping for a blanket statement that the country would never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama argued for a slower course, saying, “We are going to want to make sure that we can continue to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,” and, he added, to “make sure that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.”

The release of the new strategy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review, opens an intensive nine days of nuclear diplomacy geared toward reducing weapons. Mr. Obama plans to fly to Prague to sign a new arms-control agreement with Russia on Thursday and then next week will host 47 world leaders in Washington for a summit meeting on nuclear security.

The most immediate test of the new strategy is likely to be in dealing with Iran, which has defied the international community by developing a nuclear program that it insists is peaceful but that the United States and its allies say is a precursor to weapons. Asked about the escalating confrontation with Iran, Mr. Obama said he was now convinced that “the current course they’re on would provide them with nuclear weapons capabilities,” though he gave no timeline.

He dodged when asked whether he shared Israel’s view that a “nuclear capable” Iran was as dangerous as one that actually possessed weapons.

“I’m not going to parse that right now,” he said, sitting in his office as children played on the South Lawn of the White House at a daylong Easter egg roll. But he cited the example of North Korea, whose nuclear capabilities were unclear until it conducted a test in 2006, which it followed with a second shortly after Mr. Obama took office.

“I think it’s safe to say that there was a time when North Korea was said to be simply a nuclear-capable state until it kicked out the I.A.E.A. and become a self-professed nuclear state,” he said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “And so rather than splitting hairs on this, I think that the international community has a strong sense of what it means to pursue civilian nuclear energy for peaceful purposes versus a weaponizing capability.”

ideo: 'Jihad Jane'  Arrest: Muslims radicalised every day

Experts Say Suburban Pennsylvania Woman Was Easy to Find, and There Could be More Like Her 

The arrest of a suburban Pennsylvania woman known by the alias Jihad Jane, who allegedly plotted with Islamic radicals abroad to kill a Swedish cartoonist, has raised fears about homegrown terrorists in the United States who may be difficult to spot.

"This woman might as well have advertised in the Washington Post," former White House counterterrorism official and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke said on "Good Morning America" today. "It was easy for the FBI to find her, but there are other people who are much more covert."

"There will likely be more attacks," Clarke said. "Hopefully, they will be small, and hopefully, we can catch them early." Colleen R. LaRose, 46, of Montgomery, Pa., was arrested in October 2009 and charged with trying to recruit Islamic fighters and plotting to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist who made fun of prophet Mohammed, according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday.

The FBI had kept the case secret while it looked for more suspects in the United States and abroad. The case was made public after seven men were arrested in Ireland this week, suspected of plotting to kill the Swedish cartoonist.

LaRose's case is rare, Clark said, but it shows the capability of international dissident groups to reach out to Americans via the Internet.

"This is a very rare case of a disturbed woman," he said, but it signifies how "the Internet not only allows them to communicate, it allows them to recruit."

Their persuasive speeches and sermons, which have been effective in recruiting men and women in the Middle East, are "beginning to work for some misfits in the United States," he said.

LaRose was arrested in Philadelphia Oct. 16, 2009, and has been in federal custody ever since, without bail. She has not entered a plea. If convicted, she faces a potential sentence of life in prison and a $1 million fine.

Her three federal public defender lawyers have yet to return calls from ABC News.

LaRose could easily fit the part of a soccer mom. She was described by neighbors as an average housewife.

"Oh, my God, unbelievable, I can't believe that," one neighbor told ABC News.

Another said the news was an "amazing, shocking surprise."

Clarke said there is likely a small group of people like LaRose. But their numbers are less of a concern than the idea that radical groups can convey their ideology via this "remote control through cyberspace," he said.

"I think it's very small but it doesn't have to be very large," he said. "So it's not so much a matter of size. It's the fact that it's going on."

Authorities said LaRose's U.S. citizenship and appearance made her appealing to the Islamic radicals she first contacted on the Internet.

"The terrorists figured out that they can't all look like Middle Eastern people, whether they be male or female," former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett said. "And so they've put a lot of time and energy particularly into the Internet, of recruiting people."

LaRose is better known to federal authorities as Fatima Rose or Jihad Jane. On June 20, 2008, LaRose allegedly posted a video on YouTube calling herself JihadJane and stating she was "desperate to do something somehow to help" ease the suffering of Muslims, according to news station WPVI.
Read more here.
 

Americans forced to confront reality of possible home-grown extremism

A mother in small town America was last night struggling to understand how her daughter had been swept up in an alleged international plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who angered Muslims by depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a dog.

The case of Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a trainee nurse from Leadville in Colorado, who was arrested in Ireland last week, comes on the heels of charges against another American woman, Colleen LaRose from Philadelphia, who called herself "Jihad Jane".

Their twin stories are forcing the US to confront the reality of home-grown fundamentalism, and the ease with which individuals can be sucked into an online network of intolerance and violent conspiracy.

And in Leadville over the weekend, the parents of Ms Paulin-Ramirez, 31, were in no doubt that – despite the absence of official confirmation from investigating authorities in the US or Ireland – it was "Jihad Jane" who had recruited their daughter into the alleged plot to murder Lars Vilks.

"These terrorists came into my home through the internet, uninvited, and have ripped my family apart," Christine Mott told reporters.

Last night, it appeared that Ms Paulin-Ramirez had been released from custody in Ireland, and her family were seeking news of her six-year-old son with whom she travelled across the Atlantic last year, a few months after converting to Islam. The Algerian man she travelled to marry was believed to be among three of the seven detainees still in custody.

Growing up, Ms Paulin-Ramirez was "the kid in the class everyone picked on and made fun of," Ms Mott told the Associated Press. She was married three times before she left for Ireland, and her first husband used to beat her, she said. Her second husband, the six-year-old's father, was an illegal immigrant from Mexico and was deported years ago.

"I'd yell at her, 'Get off the computer, do something with your son'," Mrs Mott said, adding that her increasing extremism led to her estrangement from the family. "We were enemies. We couldn't even speak to each other. She lost her mind." The Algerian man was Ms LaRose's "main contact" in Europe, Ms Paulin-Ramirez's parents claimed. They had been able to speak regularly with their grandson, Christian, on the phone until the arrest last Tuesday, and had become increasingly angry with their daughter as he was taught how "Christians are going to burn in hellfire". His mother had changed his name to Walid after her conversion. Read more here.

3. The Jihadists Next Door

 Security: The arrests of three new homegrown terrorists, including two "Jihad Janes" and an al-Qaida suspect who infiltrated nuclear plants, confirm a rise in homegrown jihadist activity.

Sharif Mobley is one of the latest jihadists next door. Before he was rounded up in a sweep of suspected al-Qaida terrorists in Yemen, Mobley worked at five nuclear plants in New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania. He shot two guards, killing one, before his capture.

Mobley grew up in New Jersey before converting to Islam. His militancy shocked an old high school friend, who ran into him after returning from an Army tour in Iraq. Mobley told him: "Get the hell away from me, you Muslim killer!"

Then there's Colleen LaRose, aka Jihad Jane, who was arrested in Philadelphia for allegedly plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist who'd "offended" Muslims. Jamie Paulin-Ramirez of Denver was also arrested in connection with the assassination plot.

All three suspects are U.S. citizens from different parts of the country. One is black, one white and one formerly married to a Hispanic immigrant. Two, shockingly, are women. While each suspect has a different background, all three are Muslim converts radicalized over the Internet — a dangerous trend.

American converts are al-Qaida's prime recruits right now, because they have a better chance of slipping through security checkpoints.

Many such as Mobley are flocking to Yemen, where another American turncoat, Anwar Awlaki, recruits Westerners via the Web. Awlaki allegedly recruited the crotch bomber from London, then trained him for his suicide mission in Yemen. He also advised the Fort Hood terrorist online.

LaRose is said to have recruited others online to kill the cartoonist. Her accomplice Paulin-Ramirez married an Algerian whom she met online. A straight-A nursing student, the 31-year-old mother of one spent much of her time surfing jihadist Web sites. Both women said they'd be willing to blow themselves up for Islam.

While the essential ingredient in these cases is militant Islam, we have to wonder if the left isn't making otherwise normal Americans vulnerable to such treasonous seductions. After all, the hate-America lobby — led by the American Civil Liberties Union and often cheered by the media — has comforted even the most guilty in the war on terror, including the 9/11 mastermind and other Gitmo detainees.

Take Omar Hammami. A smart American college kid who grew up Baptist in the Alabama suburbs, he's now an al-Qaida field commander in Somalia wanted by the FBI.

What happened? He became consumed with events in Iraq and Afghanistan and began subscribing to conspiracy theories about 9/11. He learned to hate his country, which he calls a legitimate "target" for attack. 

After five young Virginia jihadists last year were caught training in Pakistan, Muslim leaders promised to speak out in a big way against such radicalization. It's been months. We're still waiting.
Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=527364

ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan

By LAURA MECKLER

Getty Images

Customs and Border Protection agent Jesus Gomez checks a passport at the vehicle crossing at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in California.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

"It's the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking," Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. "If you say they can't get a job when they come here, you'll stop it."

"It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."

Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. "We've all got Social Security cards," he said. "They're just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That's all I'm saying."

U.S. employers now have the option of using an online system called E-Verify to check whether potential employees are in the U.S. legally. Many Republicans have pressed to make the system mandatory. But others, including Mr. Schumer, complain that the existing system is ineffective.

Last year, White House aides said they expected to push immigration legislation in 2010. But with health care and unemployment dominating his attention, the president has given little indication the issue is a priority.

Rather, Mr. Obama has said he wanted to see bipartisan support in Congress first. So far, Mr. Graham is the only Republican to voice interest publicly, and he wants at least one other GOP co-sponsor to launch the effort. Read more here.

The Snitch in Your Pocket

Amid all the furor over the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program a few years ago, a mini-revolt was brewing over another type of federal snooping that was getting no public attention at all. Federal prosecutors were seeking what seemed to be unusually sensitive records: internal data from telecommunications companies that showed the locations of their customers' cell phones—sometimes in real time, sometimes after the fact. The prosecutors said they needed the records to trace the movements of suspected drug traffickers, human smugglers, even corrupt public officials. But many federal magistrates—whose job is to sign off on search warrants and handle other routine court duties—were spooked by the requests. Some in New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas balked. Prosecutors "were using the cell phone as a surreptitious tracking device," said Stephen W. Smith, a federal magistrate in Houston. "And I started asking the U.S. Attorney's Office, 'What is the legal authority for this? What is the legal standard for getting this information?' "

Those questions are now at the core of a constitutional clash between President Obama's Justice Department and civil libertarians alarmed by what they see as the government's relentless intrusion into the private lives of citizens. There are numerous other fronts in the privacy wars—about the content of e-mails, for instance, and access to bank records and credit-card transactions. The Feds now can quietly get all that information. But cell-phone tracking is among the more unsettling forms of government surveillance, conjuring up Orwellian images of Big Brother secretly following your movements through the small device in your pocket. 
How many of the owners of the country's 277 million cell phones even know that companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint can track their devices in real time? Most "don't have a clue," says privacy advocate James X. Dempsey. The tracking is possible because either the phones have tiny GPS units inside or each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint a phone's location to areas as small as a city block. This capability to trace ever more precise cell-phone locations has been spurred by a Federal Communications Commission rule designed to help police and other emergency officers during 911 calls. But the FBI and other law-enforcement outfits have been obtaining more and more records of cell-phone locations—without notifying the targets or getting judicial warrants establishing "probable cause," according to law-enforcement officials, court records, and telecommunication executives. (The Justice Department draws a distinction between cell-tower data and GPS information, according to a spokeswoman, and will often get warrants for the latter.) Read more here.

Is The Value Added Tax Next?

As the night follows the day, the VAT cometh.

With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.

We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks -- the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of outflows) -- is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.

It will vastly increase the debt. But even if it were revenue-neutral, Obamacare pre-empts and appropriates for itself the best and easiest means of reducing the existing deficit. Obamacare's $500 billion of cuts in Medicare and $600 billion in tax hikes are no longer available for deficit reduction. They are siphoned off for the new entitlement of insuring the uninsured.

This is fiscally disastrous because, as President Obama himself explained last year in unveiling his grand transformational policies, our unsustainable fiscal path requires control of entitlement spending, the most ruinous of which is out-of-control health care costs.

Obamacare was sold on the premise that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, "health care reform is entitlement reform. Our budget cannot take this upward spiral of cost." But the bill enacted on Tuesday accelerates the spiral: It radically expands Medicaid (adding 15 million new recipients/dependents) and shamelessly raids Medicare by spending on a new entitlement the $500 billion in cuts and the yield from the Medicare tax hikes.

Obama knows that the debt bomb is looming, that Moody's is warning that the Treasury's AAA rating is in jeopardy, that we are headed for a run on the dollar and/or hyperinflation if nothing is done.

Hence his deficit reduction commission. It will report (surprise!) after the November elections.

What will it recommend? What can it recommend? Sure, Social Security can be trimmed by raising the retirement age, introducing means testing and changing the indexing formula from wage growth to price inflation.

But this won't be nearly enough. As Obama has repeatedly insisted, the real money is in health care costs -- which are now locked in place by the new Obamacare mandates. Read more here.

Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look

Levy Viewed as Way to Reduce Deficits, Fund Health Reform

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

"There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform," Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. "I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table."

A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American -- a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.
Read more here.

Corporate Debt Coming Due May Squeeze Credit

Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets.

With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies.

The United States government alone will need to borrow nearly $2 trillion in 2012, to bridge the projected budget deficit for that year and to refinance existing debt.

Indeed, worries about the growth of national, or sovereign, debt prompted Moody’s Investors Service to warn on Monday that the United States and other Western nations were moving “substantially” closer to losing their top-notch Aaa credit ratings.

Sovereign debt aside, the approaching scramble for corporate financing could strain the broader economy as jobs are cut, consumer spending is scaled back and credit is tightened for both consumers and businesses.

The apocalyptic talk is not limited to perpetual bears and the rest of the doom-and-gloom crowd.

Even Moody’s, which is known for its sober public statements, is sounding the alarm.

“An avalanche is brewing in 2012 and beyond if companies don’t get out in front of this,” said Kevin Cassidy, a senior credit officer at Moody’s.

Private equity firms and many nonfinancial companies were able to borrow on easy terms until the credit crisis hit in 2007, but not until 2012 does the long-delayed reckoning begin for a series of leveraged buyouts and other deals that preceded the crisis.

That is because the record number of bonds and loans that were issued to finance those transactions typically come due in five to seven years, said Diane Vazza, head of global fixed-income research at Standard & Poor’s.
Read more here.

COMMENT:  Kitty Werthmann is the president of South Dakota Eagle Forum and a personal friend. Her life story is both moving and sobering as we look at the world around us.

AMERICA.......Truly is the Greatest Country in the World.
Don't Let Freedom Slip Away
By: Kitty Werthmann

What I am about to tell you is something you've probably never heard or will ever read in history books.

I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide - 98% of the vote. I've never read that in any American publications. Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.

In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates.

Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn't want to work; there simply weren't any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people - about 30 daily.

The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other. Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna, Linz, and Graz were destroyed. The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.

We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933. We had been told that they didn't have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living. Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group -- Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria . We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back. Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.

After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order.

Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.

Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn't support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.

Hitler Targets Education - Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children:

Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler's picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn't pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles," and had physical education.

Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail. The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free. We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.

My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn't do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun - no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn't exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.

Equal Rights Hits Home:

In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn't work, you didn't get a ration card, and if you didn't have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn't have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.

Soon after this, the draft was implemented. It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys. They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines. When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat. Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.

Hitler Restructured the Family Through Daycare:

When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.

Health Care and Small Business Suffer Under Government Controls:

Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn't meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.
We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

"Mercy Killing" Redefined:

In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps . The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated. So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work. I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van. I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months. They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.
As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.

The Final Steps - Gun Laws:

Next came gun registration.. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.

Totalitarianism didn't come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria . Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.

After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria . Women were raped, preteen to elderly. The press never wrote about this either. When the Soviets left in 1955, they took everything that they could, dismantling whole factories in the process. They sawed down whole orchards of fruit, and what they couldn't destroy, they burned. We called it The Burned Earth. Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses.

Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized. Those who couldn't, paid the price. There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians. This is an eye witness account.

"It's true..those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.


America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don't Let Freedom Slip Away
"After America , There is No Place to Go"

COMMENT:  As the old song goes, "And the days dwindle down to a precious few...". Just a few days remain for everyone to make their voices heard in no uncertain terms.

ACTION:  Tennesseans go HERE to send your congressman an email. Go HERE to find phone numbers (even better than email).
Out-of-state subscribers:  First scroll to the end of this email to see if your congressman is on the target list compiled by AmeriPAC. If he or she is not, the go HERE to find contact information for your congressman.

1. President Launches Last Push on Health-Care Overhaul

The president vowed to rally Americans and wavering lawmakers alike. White House aides said a pair of trips next week will be followed by a stream of public and private lobbying. The White House wants final votes by month's end.

President Obama outlines his three-part proposal for health care reform in an address at the White House. Courtesy Fox News. 

"At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem," Mr. Obama told a crowd of white-coated doctors and nurses in the East Room, where a year ago he started the drive for the legislation.

With polls showing that the legislation is unpopular and congressional Democrats bracing for big losses in this fall's elections, the president urged them to ignore the politics. "I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it's right," he said. "Let's get it done."

Democrats and the White House are balancing high risks and rewards. Passing the health overhaul would fulfill a decades-old Democratic dream, bringing insurance to some 30 million Americans, and represent the greatest expansion of coverage since Medicare was created in 1965. But if the public judges the overhaul harshly, it is likely to cost some Democrats their seats, and the party's majority in the House could be at risk.

The White House argues that, despite the negative poll numbers, Americans will like the measure if it becomes law, since the focus then could shift from the legislative process to the measure's impact. Polling does find stronger support for the bill's individual provisions than for the package as a whole.

Mr. Obama Wednesday also highlighted a handful of Republican ideas used in the legislation. Republicans dismissed the gesture as insufficient.

"You can't add a couple of Republican sprinkles on the top of a 2,700-page bill and claim that it's bipartisan," said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio).

Rejecting Republican calls to start again, the president said that given the "honest and substantial differences between the parties," there was no point. "Everything there is to say about health care has been said," he said to laughter, "and just about everybody has said it."

For the first time, the president explicitly called on Congress to use a procedural technique that will let the Senate give its final approval with a simple majority vote. He didn't use the word for that technique—"reconciliation"—but characterized the process as a way of calling a simple "up or down vote" that has been used for big bills before.

Republicans say the reconciliation process was never intended for such major legislation. "History is clear: Big legislation always requires big majorities," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the floor Wednesday.

Democrats need to approve the changes in the Senate through reconciliation because they no longer have 60 Senate votes necessary to end a standard debate, due to the loss last month of the Massachusetts seat long held by the late Edward Kennedy. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs downplayed the significance of the reconciliation measure, calling it a set of "technical corrections" to the original Senate measure. The reconciliation version contains some significant differences from the Senate bill, including taxes on the wealthy and lower levies on high-value health-insurance plans.

Under the Democratic plan, the process would work like this: First, the House would vote on the bill that the Senate approved in late December. House leaders hope to pass both that Senate bill, and then the reconciliation package, by March 17. After that, the Senate would need to pass the reconciliation bill. By month's end, Democrats hope, the measure would go to the president to be signed into law.

The final push by Mr. Obama amounts to a critical test of his powers of persuasion. Democrats could face a tough decision, balancing the risk of passing potentially unpopular legislation against the risk of inaction and the stigma of having labored for more than a year to produce nothing. Democratic leaders say lawmakers who already voted yes once will be attacked no matter what, but will be in better shape politically if they have something to show for it.

White House aides vowed the president would use all tactics at his disposal to rally support. That includes speeches around the country, starting with a trip to Philadelphia on Monday, media interviews and direct communication with supporters. Read more here.

3. Hatch: Biden Will ‘Go Down in History as a Real Dolt’ If He Over-Rules Senate Parliamentarian and Lets The Dems Pass Health Care Without 60 Votes
Thursday, March 04, 2010
By Christopher Neefus

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) (Congressional photo)

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said that Vice President Joe Biden would “go down in history as a real dolt” if he used his power as president of the Senate to overrule the Senate parliamentarian on the legitimacy of procedural tactics that could allow the Democrats to enact their health-care reform bill without getting the normally required 60 votes in the Senate.
 
Because the Democrat caucus in the Senate no longer has 60 members with which to end debate on a bill (and prevent a Republican filibuster), it is being reported that the Democrats may attempt to pass changes to their original health care bill with just 51 votes through a process called reconciliation.
 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

In the entire health care debate, among all the competing lawmakers, politicians, experts and pundits, there's just one person who has seen things from both sides of the political aisle. That is Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, who was elected as a Democrat in 2008 and was part of the House Democratic caucus until last Dec. 22, when he switched sides to become a Republican. (Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter doesn't count, because he switched parties in April 2009, before the current health care debate got underway.)

Given Griffith's unique perspective -- he is also a doctor, with 30 years' experience as an oncologist -- perhaps he has some insight into why the White House and his former Democratic allies in Congress continue to press forward on a national health care bill despite widespread public opposition.

It's gotten personal, Griffith says. "You have personalities who have bet the farm, bet their reputations, on shoving a health care bill through the Congress. It's no longer about health care reform. It's all about ego now. The president's ego. Nancy Pelosi's ego. This is about personalities, saving face, and it has very little to do with what's good for the American people."

Conflicts driven by personal feelings can lead to self-destructive outcomes. Ask Griffith whether Speaker Pelosi, his old leader, would accept losing Democratic control of the House as the price for passing the health care bill, and he answers quickly. "Oh yeah. This is a trophy for the speaker, it's a trophy for several committee chairs, and it's a trophy for the president." It does not seem to matter that if Democrats lose the House, the speaker will no longer be speaker, the chairmen will no longer be chairmen, and the president will be significantly weakened.

As Griffith sees his former colleagues, Democratic leaders have become so consumed with the idea of achieving the historical goal of a national health care system that they are able to explain away the scores of opinion polls over the last six months that show people solidly opposed to the Democratic proposal.

The polls are wrong, they say. Or the polls are contradictory. Or the polls actually show that people love the health care plan. And even if the polls are right, and people hate the plan, real leaders don't govern by following the polls. So just pass the bill.

That's easy for Democrats like Pelosi, who occupy safe seats. Not so for dozens of moderate House Democrats whose votes are required for passage, but who face likely defeat for it. "I don't think there are that many moderate or conservative Democrats who want to be sacrificial representatives," says Griffith. Read more here.

Air Force Retracted Invitation for Conservative Leader to Speak at Prayer Luncheon After He Criticized Obama's Position on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
Friday, February 26, 2010
By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins (FRC photo)

COMMENT:  So much for 'tolerance'.  Same-sex marriage supporters will not be satisfied until these relationships are legal and the sexual behavior is protected, supported and validated through public policy.  Now it is being reported that the judge hearing the court case on Prop 8 in California is homosexual.  No wonder I have been receiving emails about how that case is being handled. I encourage you to pray about the case and the people involved in passing Prop 8 as they are harassed.  The outcome could impact the whole country!!

The Elephant in the Room: No way to preach tolerance

Opponents of same- sex marriage have faced persecution in California.

The reaction of some Prop 8 opponents - the self-proclaimed champions of tolerance - was swift and fierce. They moved to harass and persecute Prop 8 supporters.

Groups such as the misnamed "Californians Against Hate" published blacklists of Prop 8 backers that included supporters' names and addresses. Prop 8 advocates became the target of harassing protests, phone calls, e-mails, and mailings.

A flier distributed in one town featured a photo of one Prop 8 backer, his name, the amount of his donation, and the name of his (Catholic) church. Next to his photo was the word "Bigot."

Some Prop 8 campaign donors had to resign from their jobs or take leaves of absence to protect their employers and colleagues. Top officials of California Musical Theatre and the Los Angeles Film Festival were forced to resign just because they had donated in support of Prop 8.

That wasn't all. These warriors for the oppressed also made a point of going after pro-Prop 8 Mormons and their church.

While this ugliness was exploding across California, the anti-Prop 8 forces also ran to the state courts to overturn the people's will. They claimed - get this - that the amendment to the state constitution violated the state constitution.

But not even a state Supreme Court with a habit of rewriting the constitution would accept this illogical absurdity. It upheld Prop 8.

If the reliably progressive activists on the state Supreme Court couldn't be counted on, where to go? How about going before a sympathetic federal district court judge in San Francisco to challenge Prop 8 as violating the U.S. Constitution?

Federal Judge Vaughn Walker has accepted the Prop 8 opponents' assertion that constitutionality hinges on the attitudes of voters, not legal arguments and precedents. So he has consistently ruled in their favor, turning this trial into another instance of harassment of Prop 8 supporters.

Consider Walker's precedent-breaking rulings in the trial, which began last month:

He decided that Prop 8 proponents should be subjected to questioning about their personal beliefs on marriage and sexuality.

He ordered Prop 8 proponents to disclose private communications about never-used campaign messages.

He directed the Prop 8 campaign to turn over copies of all internal records and e-mail messages on campaign strategy.

He refused not only to demand any of these things of the proposition's opponents, but also to so much as rule on a motion related to that issue.

He subjected one proponent to humiliation for his concerns about homosexuality, as written in private e-mails to friends - in Chinese.

He allowed witnesses for opponents of the proposition to air their "expert" opinions that homosexuals have been discriminated against, that they feel bad when society does not validate their relationships, and that the passage of Prop 8 echoed historical bigotry foisted on society by religious zealots.
Read more here.

Judge Walker’s Skewed Judgment   [Ed Whelan]

According to this column in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, “The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.”

In terms of his judicial performance in the anti-Proposition 8 case, the bottom-line question that matters isn’t whether Walker is straight or gay.  It’s whether he is capable of ruling impartially.  I have no reason to doubt that there are homosexuals who could preside impartially over this case, just as I have no reason to doubt that there are heterosexuals whose bias in favor of, or against, same-sex marriage would unduly skew their handling of the case.

From the outset, Walker’s entire course of conduct in the anti-Prop 8 case has reflected a manifest design to turn the lawsuit into a high-profile, culture-transforming, history-making, Scopes-style show trial of Prop 8’s sponsors.  Consider his series of controversial—and, in many instances, unprecedented—decisions: 

Take, for example, Walker’s resort to procedural shenanigans and outright illegality in support of his fervent desire to broadcast the trial, in utter disregard of (if not affirmatively welcoming) the harassment and abuse that pro-Prop 8 witnesses would reasonably anticipate.  Walker’s decision was ultimately blocked by an extraordinary (and fully warranted) stay order by the Supreme Court in an opinion that was plainly a stinging rebuke of Walker’s lack of impartiality. Read more here.

'Gay' judge asked to quit Prop. 8 case
Attorney challenges claim Walker's lifestyle 'nonissue' in California court challenge

An activist attorney is challenging the claim that the reported homosexual lifestyle of the judge deciding the constitutionality of California's limitation of marriage to one man and one woman is a "nonissue."

The San Francisco Chronicle reported politicians and lawyers in the city who have dealt with U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker confirmed Walker has never tried to promote or hide his orientation.

The newspaper said a state senator, Mark Leno, who has proposed several times the authorization of same-sex "marriage," described the judge's background as a nonissue.

Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs with Liberty Counsel, disagrees.

"This is no different than having an avid gun collector preside over a Second Amendment case," he said today, "or a frequent user of medical marijuana deciding the legality of medical marijuana."

"Even his fellow judges on the notoriously liberal 9th circuit have been forced to step in and overturn more than one of his inexplicable rulings relative to this case. Based on his demonstrated misbehavior, there's no reason to believe anything will change," Barber said.

As WND has reported, the dispute over the constitutional definition of marriage adopted by voters in the state has implications across the nation.

The case is petitioning a federal court to overturn not just a law, but a constitutional amendment passed by the people and affirmed by the state's Supreme Court. A victory for same-sex marriage advocates in the case could set a precedent for federal courts to overturn every law and amendment in the country currently protecting the traditional definition of marriage.

The law is being defended by private attorneys, because California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown, both of whom are named as defendants in the suit, have refused to defend the amendment.Read more here.

Defense Calls First Witness at ‘Gay Marriage’ Trial
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
By Lisa Leff, Associated Press
San Francisco (AP) - The federal laws that prevent gays from serving openly in the military and the government from recognizing same-sex relationships are examples of "legally enforced discrimination," a political scientist testified in a federal trial challenging California's ban on gay marriages.
 
The assertion by Claremont McKenna College professor Kenneth Miller came as he was being cross-examined Monday on his testimony that gays in California enjoy substantial political power as a result of nearly unanimous support from high-ranking elected officials, labor unions, newspapers, corporations and progressive religious groups.
 
"Is there any other minority you can identify that is discharged from the military when they are doing a perfectly good job just because somebody discovers their status?" asked David Boies, a lawyer for two same-sex couples suing to overturn the state's gay marriage ban, known as Proposition 8.
 
"I'm not aware of any," Miller answered.
 
But Miller resisted Boies' persistent attempts to get him to put Proposition 8 in the same category as the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. Boies asked Miller if he agreed with another political scientist with whom he had co-authored a book chapter that Proposition 8 is inherently discriminatory.
 
"It's differential treatment. Whether it's legally discriminatory, I don't know," Miller said.
 
The question of whether the gay rights movement constitutes a potent political force is central to efforts by lawyers seeking to challenge the state's same-sex marriage ban on grounds that it unlawfully targeted a disadvantaged group.
 
Miller said one indication of the gay rights movement's clout in California was that neither Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nor any other statewide office holders endorsed Proposition 8. But perhaps the best measure of the movement's strength was the $43 million amassed to defeat the gay marriage ban in 2008, he said. That was $3.4 million more than initiative backers raised. Read more here.

COMMENT: It is encouraging to finally get some public recognition for something we have known to be true. Just one example from here in Tennessee:

Blount Nurses for for Health Education, Blount County, TN, Abstinence Education Program:
1999 --17.7 pregnancies per 1000
2004 -- 8.7 pregnancies per 1000
(TN Department of Health)

Survey of U.S. Parents and Teens:  Nearly all of the adults (91%) and teens (94%) surveyed believe that it is important for teens to be given a strong message from society that they should not have sex until they are at least out of High schools. See what parents prefer HERE.  What are they teaching at YOUR student's school??

Speaking of sex education and activity -- Supporters of Gardasil are still pushing this 'vaccine' on our young daughters - go HERE for important information -  now  they are after our sons too!  This is perfectly ridiculous:

New Childhood Vaccines Schedules Released
Boys should get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to protect them against genital warts, and all children should receive the H1N1 vaccine to guard against swine flu, according to updated guidelines on childhood and teen vaccines.
The new vaccine schedules -- issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Family Physicians -- also recommend using combination vaccines whenever possible. Read more here.
 

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010; A01

Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can persuade a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for U.S. efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found. Nearly half of the students who attended other classes, including ones that combined information about abstinence and contraception, became sexually active.

The findings are the first clear evidence that an abstinence program could work.

"I think we've written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence," said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who led the federally funded study. "Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used."

The research, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, comes amid intense debate over how to reduce sexual activity, pregnancies, births and sexually transmitted diseases among children and teenagers. After falling for more than a decade, the numbers of births, pregnancies and STDs among U.S. teens have begun increasing.

The Obama administration eliminated more than $170 million in annual federal funding targeted at abstinence programs after a series of reports concluded that the approach was ineffective. Instead, the White House is launching a $114 million pregnancy prevention initiative that will fund only programs that have been shown scientifically to work -- a program the administration on Monday proposed expanding to $183 million.

"This new study is game-changing," said Sarah Brown, who leads the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "For the first time, there is strong evidence that an abstinence-only intervention can help very young teens delay sex."

The study is the first to evaluate an abstinence program using a carefully designed approach comparing it with several alternative strategies and following subjects for an extended period of time, considered the kind of study that produces the highest level of scientific evidence.

"This takes away the main pillar of opposition to abstinence education," said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who wrote the criteria for federal funding of abstinence programs. "I've always known that abstinence programs have gotten a bad rap."

Longtime critics of the approach praised the study, saying it provides strong evidence that such programs can work and might merit taxpayer support.

"One of the things that's exciting about this study is that it says we have a new tool to add to our repertoire," said Monica Rodriguez, vice president for education and training at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

Based on the findings, Obama administration officials said programs like the one evaluated in the study could be eligible for federal funding.

"No one study determines funding decisions, but the findings from the research paper suggest that this kind of project could be competitive for grants if there's promise that it achieves the goal of teen pregnancy prevention," said Nicholas Papas, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Several critics of an abstinence-only approach said that the curriculum tested did not represent most abstinence programs. It did not take a moralistic tone, as many abstinence programs do. Most notably, the sessions encouraged children to delay sex until they are ready, not necessarily until married; did not portray sex outside marriage as never appropriate; and did not disparage condoms.

"There is no data in this study to support the 'abstain until marriage' programs, which research proved ineffective during the Bush administration," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth.

But abstinence supporters disputed that, saying that the new program is equivalent to many other well-designed abstinence curricula that are thorough, tailor their messages to students' ages and provide detailed information.

"For our critics to use marriage as the thing that sets the program in this study apart from federally funded programs is an exaggeration and smacks of an effort to dismiss abstinence education rather than understanding what it is," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association.

The study released Monday involved 662 African American students from four public middle schools in a city in the Northeastern United States. It was conducted between 2001 and 2004. Read more here.

Great slide show HERE.

Global Warming Is Frozen Over
By Phyllis Schlafly

Whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow on February 2, there's no denying that January put into a deep freeze the claims of crisis by global warming alarmists. Frigid temperatures destroyed fruit and coral in Florida, and snow fell on Al Gore's palatial home in normally warmer Tennessee.

The 20,000 delegates and journalists who gathered in Copenhagen to discuss climate change had to spend some of their energy hiding their embarrassment about the revelation of emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit, which is an official collaborator of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Those disclosures told the world about some scientists' willingness to suppress climate-change data and rig the process in order to pretend there is consensus among scientists about global warming, to ostracize contrary views, and to promote their globalist agenda.

Obama's State of the Union demand for cap-and-trade legislation fell on deaf ears. Maybe that's because Obama is on record as promising that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be reduced to our 1910 level of emissions, when we had a population of 92 million.

Such a massive reduction in our energy use would mean lowering our standard of living to 19th century levels. The only Republican Senator willing to work with the Democrats on climate change legislation, Lindsey Graham, admitted that "the cap-and-trade bills in the House and Senate are going nowhere."

Even the New York Times admitted that "prospects grew dimmer" for the global warming advocates because Scott Brown repudiated cap-and-trade in his winning campaign in Massachusetts. Some incumbents who voted for the House bill find that challengers are scoring points with the public by attacking that vote.

January ended with a cold blast reportedly from Osama bin Laden blaming the United States for not halting what he called "the global warming crisis" and for failing to sign the Kyoto Protocol. He wants to punish us by getting the global economy to abandon the U.S. dollar.

What was to have been the baptism of the major nations into the religion of global warming in Copenhagen, Denmark, turned out to be a dry run. President Obama came and left empty handed, Communist China refused to limit emissions, and the Third World dictators didn't get the $100 billion handouts they expected.

At the close of the Copenhagen confab, Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus made this same point about global warming. "I'm convinced that after years of studying the phenomenon," he said, "global warming is not a matter of temperature. Global warming is a new religion, a religion of climate change. . . .

"This religion tells us that people are responsible for very small increases in temperatures, and they should be punished. . . . I'm absolutely convinced that the very small global warming we are experiencing is the result of natural causes. It's a cyclical phenomenon in the history of the Earth.

"The role of man is very small, almost negligible. Politicians, their fellow travelers, and the media understood that this is a good topic to take on, because talking about the world in the years 2050, 2080, and 2200 is an excellent way to escape from current reality."

President Klaus sent a message to the world: Do not dictate to humanity how to live based on an "irrational ideology." Man's natural ingenuity can create new technologies that will lessen any impact that mankind has on the planet's environment.

Vaclav Klaus concluded: "I lived in a Communist world where politicians told us what to do. I don't think politicians or presidents should tell business what to do. That is always a mistake."

Nevertheless the propaganda continues. A father's letter to the editor of the Education Reporter described what his 5th-grade daughter Lily, at Three Oaks Elementary, Fort Myers, Florida, said she had learned in school. "I would rather just shoot myself in the head because it would be a less painful death than to suffer and die from global warming."

Thousands of public school students have been shown Al Gore's propaganda movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Another movie called "The Story of Stuff" is also shown in classrooms to teach students the evils of human consumption.

The movie projects a very negative view of capitalism and paints human use of natural resources as "exploitation," which is supposed to be synonymous with trashing the planet. The movie accuses us of chopping down the trees, blowing up mountains to get the metals inside, using up all the water, and wiping out the animals.

The main cause of unemployment and poverty is the lack of enough energy. Rather than expanding government to limit energy, we should be increasing the use of energy to eradicate hardship.

Further reading:

• Global Warming

See: We are 'one vote away' in the House.

NEWS FLASH:
Despite his drawbacks, don't think Brown's election made a real difference?
Senator Says Deal Was Reached on Pro-Abortion Health Care Before Brown Win
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In one of the first concrete confirmations that the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts disrupted the effort to approve the pro-abortion health care bill, a top senator says a deal was in place to approve it but Brown's election prevented it from going forward. Sen. Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said negotiators from the White House, Senate and House reached a final deal on healthcare reform days before Scott Brown’s victory. But with Brown becoming the 41st vote in the Senate against the bill and for a filibuster, the latest revelation shows how agonizingly close Democrats came to passing a final healthcare bill in time for President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. Harkin, who was present for the talks, told The Hill “we had an agreement, with the House, the White House and the Senate. We sent it to [the Congressional Budget Office] to get scored and then Tuesday happened and we didn't get it back.” He said negotiators had an agreement in hand on Friday, January 15. Harkin made clear that negotiators had reached a final deal on the entire bill. Now, Democratic lawmakers have since turned their attention to passing a comprehensive -- instead of a scaled-down -- healthcare bill, using the reconciliation process to make changes and approving smaller bills as a lead-in to that controversial idea.

Speaking for Scott Brown - He was sworn in yesterday so it is offically Senator Brown   -- his campaign produced an excellent ad called The Massachusetts Miracle.  It is worth watching.

If your Congressman is Lincoln Davis, Jim Cooper, Bart Gordon, John Tanner or Steve Cohen, go HERE to send your congressman a message.
Out of State Subscribers go HERE to find your Congressman.


COMMENT:  Despite the fact that the American people do not see health care as a priority President Obama and congressional leaders are still  promoting  his health care. While most folks view the election of  Scott Brown as a clear 'message' on the Obama-Reid-Pelosi health care effort, the administration evidently has not completely received the  message.  Talk about being 'tone deaf'!  I am very happy to report that  time has proven that my friend Dr. Allen Quist, a Republican candidate for congress in Minnesota, was EXACTLY  correct when he exposed the 'marriage penalty' in the health care bill. 
Read The Marriage Penalty HERE.
In addition, the priorities for the American people are Economy, Jobs and Terrorism, not ObamaCare.

Senate Health Care Bill Gives $7 Billion to Health Centers, Could Fund Abortions
A new analysis of the Senate health care bill finds a section of the manager's amendment Senate Leader Harry Reid added to the bill that could find billions of dollars going to abortion funding. The little noticed provision could open a new door to direct taxpayer funding of abortions.During the closing stages of the Senate’s deliberations on its health care bill, HR 3590, Reid got his lengthy manager's amendment added to the measure. Read more HERE.

Top Democrat Working With White House For Abortion Funding in Health Care
Rep. Diana DeGette, the Colorado Democrat who leads the caucus of pro-abortion lawmakers, says she has been talking with the White House and others about how to resolve the abortion differences in the two bills.
The House measure contains the Stupak amendment that effectively bans government-funding of abortions under the health care plan -- consistent with current federal law under the Hyde amendment.
The Senate bill contains the Nelson-Reid deal that contains six different pro-abortion threats and forces taxpayers to pay for abortions. Read more HERE.

1. Scrap It – The most obvious option is for the Senate not to take any action on the House version of ObamaCare and the House to do the same with the Senate version of health care reform. Starting over on health care reform would consist of taking smaller bites of ObamaCare and working with Republicans to pass elements that have bipartisan support.

2. Pass It ASAP (also known as the Thelma and Louise Strategy) – The most dangerous option for liberals is to forge ahead with ObamaCare and attempt a strong-arm strategy to get it passed within the next few weeks. It is possible for the House to take up the Senate bill in an attempt to pass something this year. The House would need a simple majority and the bill would go to the President’s desk. Reconciliation could be used as a means to get a technical corrections measure to the Senate requiring only a simple majority to pass. This would effectively be the Congress doubling down on ObamaCare and ignoring the will of the American people.

3. Lame Duck Strategy – Wait until the 2010 elections are over and jam everything into a reconciliation bill. There may be so many members who have lost their jobs, they may be willing to pass something during the post election time when they have already lost their jobs. Source HERE.

Polls finds growing fears on health bill
WASHINGTON - Fears about President Barack Obama's health care overhaul increased significantly in December, according to a new poll released as the legislation's future hangs in doubt.

The monthly poll out Tuesday from the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation measured consumers' views of how a remake would affect their own finances and access to care, among other things.

It was conducted between Nov. 28 and Dec. 20, in the run-up to the Senate's Christmas Eve passage of sweeping health care legislation that brought Congress closer than ever before to enacting a comprehensive revamp of the nation's medical system. That effort was cast into turmoil last week when a GOP victory in Massachusetts' special Senate election robbed Democrats of their filibuster-proof supermajority.
The survey shows a majority are following the health care debate in Congress — and their trepidation is evidently growing as they do.

Nonetheless, people still think that Obama should address the issue as part of dealing with the nation's economic slump, although the percentage of people who say that it's very important for Obama to do so has slipped from 56 percent in the survey conducted in September, to 49.5 percent in this month's report.

Among the poll's other findings: