Saturday, July 31, 2010

op ed review 8/1

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

A federal judge blocked most of the new Arizona immigration law just hours before it was to take effect, handing the Obama administration a win in the first stage of a legal battle expected to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. A Clinton appointee, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton issued a temporary injunction, ruling that it would "impermissibly burden federal resources." In other words, enforcing federal law is a violation of federal law.

http://www.latimes.com/la-na-arizona-immigration-20100729,0,3606702.story

Dallas Morning News: Bolton had to stand on her head to buy the Justice Department's case…. a less legal translation would be: If the feds aren't doing the job they insist is theirs alone, it's not fair to force them to do more.”

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-immig_0730edi.State.Edition1.1462318.html

David Limbaugh: “…the latest example of a virtually unchecked renegade federal government waging war against the states and against the liberties of its citizens.”

And nobody seems to have noticed that in 1996, Congress passed a law known as 287g that empowers state and local law enforcement to impose immigration law. More than 60 jurisdictions in states across the country have taken advantage of it, including Florida, Virginia, Oklahoma, Ohio, New Hampshire, California, and even Massachusetts.

http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/battle/2010/07/30/Congress-Passed-an-Arizona-Like-Immigration-Law-in-1996

According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, 55 percent of Americans back the Arizona law and 58 percent disapprove of Obama immigration policies.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/28/judicial-activism-against-arizona/

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced that he is considering introducing a constitutional amendment that would change existing law to no longer grant citizenship to the children of immigrants born in the United States. Currently, the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to any child born within the United States. But with 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, Graham said it may be time to restrict the ability of immigrants to have children who become citizens just because they are born within the country.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40395.html

President Obama turned down an invitation to speak at the Boy Scouts' Jamboree marking the group's 100th anniversary. The Jamboree kicked off this week at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, where organizers had invited the president to speak to the 45,000 scouts in attendance. All three of Obama's predecessors have made it to one Jamboree while in office.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/27/obama-missing-historic-boy-scout-jamboree-fundraisers-view-taping/

President Obama's choice to be the government's chief budget officer received a bonus of more than $900,000 from Citigroup Inc. last year -- after the Wall Street firm for which he worked received a massive taxpayer bailout.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/28/omb-nominee-got-900000-after-citigroup-bailout/

“Starting today, Arizona residents at least 21 years old can carry a concealed weapon without a permit.”

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/07/29/20100729arizona-concealed-weapons-law.html

The recovery lost momentum in the spring as growth slowed to a 2.4 percent pace, its most sluggish showing in nearly a year and too weak to drive down unemployment.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Recovery-loses-speed-as-apf-2286906230.html?x=0&.v=6

Time magazine admits that Rush Limbaugh might have been right about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico not being the environmental disaster that everyone warned.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/07/29/time-mag-shocker-rush-limbaugh-might-have-been-right-about-oil-spill

Support is mounting for a University of Illinois professor who was fired for telling students in his Catholicism class that he agrees with the Catholic Church's teaching against homosexuality. A student at the university accused Professor Ken Howell of engaging in "hate speech" when he stated in a class review session that he agreed with the Catholic teaching that homosexuality is immoral.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=1098952

Republican Dino Rossi picked up some endorsements: Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, announced he's backing Rossi from his Senate Conservatives Fund. Also, the endorsements of the Family Research Council PAC, FreedomWorks PAC, and Gun Owners Action League of Washington.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politicsnorthwest/2012484220_rossi_endorsed_by_demint_conse.html?syndication=rss

Meanwhile, Republican U.S. Senate candidates Clint Didier and Paul Akers made an unusual announcement Thursday — they will be joining forces for the campaign, setting aside the fact they are competing on the ballot for the same seat. The two anti-establishment candidates said they would start doing joint radio ads and talking in joint online forums. Both said they are upset at the political establishment — a not-too-subtle dig at front-runner Dino Rossi, who was recruited by national Republican leaders.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2012485747_didierakers30m.html

Meanwhile, U.S. Senate candidates Clint Didier and Paul Akers held a joint BlogTalkRadio appearance.

http://palousitics.blogspot.com/2010/07/didierakers-big-announcement-shocker.html

Cal Coburn Brown, who raped and tortured a woman in a 36-hour ordeal, then took her life, can be executed, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/424126_brown29.html?source=rss

After getting caught moving his new yacht to Rhode Island to avoid Massachusetts taxes, now Sen. John Kerry says he always intended to make the $500,000 payment once he had registered the boat.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/07/30/kerry_says_he_always_intended_to_pay_tax/

International AIDS charities say they now long for the good old days of ..... the previous administration.

http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/1931-global-aids-activists-pine-for-president-bush

With Congress gridlocked on an immigration bill, the Obama administration is considering using a back door to stop deporting many illegal immigrants - what a draft government memo said could be "a non-legislative version of amnesty." The memo, addressed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas and written by four agency staffers, lists tools it says the administration has to "… reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/immigration-memo-republicans-accuse-obama-administration-scheming-amnesty/story?id=11288210

What a concept!: A proposed reorganization of the British National Health Service would “shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/world/europe/25britain.html?_r=2&hp

But “some of the most common operations — including hip replacements and cataract surgery — will be rationed as part of attempts to save billions of pounds, despite government promises that front-line services would be protected.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7908742/Axe-falls-on-NHS-services.html

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THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN

Will Washington's Failures Lead To Second American Revolution?

By Ernest Christian, Gary Robbins, Investor’s Business Daily, 07/30/2010

The Internet is a large-scale version of the "Committees of Correspondence" that led to the first American Revolution — and with Washington's failings now so obvious and awful, it may lead to another.

People are asking, "Is the government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?"

Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency. Too many overreaching laws give the president too much discretion to make too many open-ended rules controlling too many aspects of our lives. There's no end to the harm an out-of-control president can do.

Bill Clinton lowered the culture, moral tone and strength of the nation — and left America vulnerable to attack. When it came, George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily. Barack Obama, however, has pulled off the ultimate switcheroo: He's diminishing America from within — so far, successfully.

He may soon bankrupt us and replace our big merit-based capitalist economy with a small government-directed one of his own design. He is undermining our constitutional traditions: The rule of law and our Anglo-Saxon concepts of private property hang in the balance. Obama may be the most "consequential" president ever.

The Wall Street Journal's steadfast Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote that Barack Obama is "an alien in the White House."

His bullying and offenses against the economy and job creation are so outrageous that CEOs in the Business Roundtable finally mustered the courage to call him "anti-business." Veteran Democrat Sen. Max Baucus blurted out that Obama is engineering the biggest government-forced "redistribution of income" in history.

Fear and uncertainty stalk the land. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says America's financial future is "unusually uncertain."

A Wall Street "fear gauge" based on predicted market volatility is flashing long-term panic. New data on the federal budget confirm that record-setting deficits in the $1.4 trillion range are now endemic. Obama is building an imperium of public debt and crushing taxes, contrary to George Washington's wise farewell admonition: "cherish public credit ... use it as sparingly as possible ... avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt ... bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts there must be Revenue, that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not ... inconvenient and unpleasant ... ."

Opinion polls suggest that in the November mid-term elections, voters will replace the present Democratic majority in Congress with opposition Republicans — but that will not necessarily stop Obama. A President Obama intent on achieving his transformative goals despite the disagreement of the American people has powerful weapons within reach. In one hand, he will have a veto pen to stop a new Republican Congress from repealing ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank takeover of banks.

In the other, he will have a fistful of executive orders, regulations and Obama-made fiats that have the force of law. Under ObamaCare, he can issue new rules and regulations so insidiously powerful in their effect that higher-priced, lower-quality and rationed health care will quickly become ingrained, leaving a permanent stain. Under Dodd-Frank, he and his agents will control all credit and financial transactions, rewarding friends and punishing opponents, discriminating on the basis of race, gender and political affiliation. Credit and liquidity may be choked by bureaucracy and politics — and the economy will suffer.

He and the EPA may try to impose by "regulatory" fiats many parts of the cap-and-trade and other climate legislation that failed in the Congress. And by executive orders and the effect of an industrywide "boot on the neck" policy, he can continue to diminish energy production in the United States.

By the trick of letting current-law tax rates "expire," he can impose a $3.5 trillion 10-year tax increase that damages job-creating capital investment in an economy struggling to recover. And by failing to enforce the law and leaving America's borders open, he can continue to repopulate America with unfortunate illegals whose skill and education levels are low and whose political attitudes are often not congenial to American-style democracy.

A wounded rampaging president can do much damage — and, like Caesar, the evil he does will live long after he leaves office, whenever that may be.

The overgrown, un-pruned power of the presidency to reward, punish and intimidate may now be so overwhelming that his re-election in 2012 is already assured — Chicago-style.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/542171/201007301830/Will-Washingtons-Failures-Lead-To-Second-American-Revolution-.aspx

Another good read, rocker Ted Nugent fires both barrels with this Washington Times editorial:

“Barack Hussein Obama did not sneak into power. An army of clueless, disconnected, ignorant Americans invited him to bring his Marxist, glaringly anti-American jihad into our lives……Will we finally use the incredible freedoms as provided by the sacrifices of our amazing warrior heroes of the U.S. military to be sure this insanity can never happen again? Can we show at least that basic respect for the privilege of being American and how we got here? It is not them, it is us. Pogo was right.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/30/it-is-us/?page=2

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS

"From Karl Marx to today, the Left has always hated people on the Right, not merely differed or been angry with them. The question is: why? Here are three possible answers. First, the left thinks the right is evil. ... Second, when you don't confront real evil, you hate those who do. ... Third, the left's utopian vision is prevented only by the right. ... Hatred of conservatives is so much part of the left that the day the left stops hating conservatives will mark the beginning of the end of the left as we know it."

-Dennis Prager

"The next time you hear a liberal scoffing at the idea that the American left has a set of 'talking points,' or that they're 'reading from the same script,' tell him to google 'JournoList.' Frankly, it is completely unsurprising that 400, invitation-only, members of leftist media, academia, think tanks and political activist associations would be attempting to coordinate their political strategy. When your ideology is bankrupt, the only thing left is strength in numbers. And when you revere the collectivist aspirations of Marxist/socialist all-encompassing government, 'group-think' becomes as natural as breathing."

-Arnold Ahlert

"The more the president appeals to his base in racial terms, the more his appointees identify themselves as members of a particular tribe, and the more political issues are framed by racial divisions, so all the more such racial obsession creates a backlash among the racially diverse American people. America has largely moved beyond race. Tragically, our president and a host of his supportive special interests have not."

-Victor Davis Hanson

"Elites may have more brilliance, but those who make decisions for society as a whole cannot possibly have as much experience as the millions of people whose decisions they pre-empt. The education and intellects of the elites may lead them to have more sweeping presumptions, but that just makes them more dangerous to the freedom, as well as the well-being, of the people as a whole."

-Thomas Sowell

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LEFTIST WATCH

“Mexican Flag Flies as Dozens Arrested at Illegal-Immigration Law Protests.” A clue about who was behind this protest: note the big Cuban flag with an inserted picture of Che Guevara .

http://www.breitbart.tv/mexican-flag-flies-as-dozens-arrested-at-anti-immigration-law-protests/

Despite its name, membership in the liberal online community Journolist wasn’t limited to journalists. Present among the bloggers, reporters and editors were a number of professional political operatives, including top White House economic advisors, key Obama political appointees, and Democratic campaign veterans. Some left government to join Journolist. Others took the opposite route. A few contributed to Journolist from their perches in politics. At times, it became difficult to tell who was supposed to be covering policy and who was trying to make it.

http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/29/political-operatives-on-journolist-worked-to-shape-news-coverage/

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ACTIVISM

King County Republican Party's 2010 Family Picnic, Homestead Park in Mercer Island, Saturday, August 14th, 11am – 3pm

http://www.kcgop.org/sitemax/

Sign Fred Thompson’s petition to renew the Bush tax cuts:

http://www.leagueofamericanvoters.com/petition?promo_code=A5E8-1

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ARTICLES

It is just a technical matter, the Obama administration says: We just need to make a slight change in a law to make clear that we have the right to see the names of anyone’s e-mail correspondents and their Web browsing history without the messy complication of asking a judge for permission. It is far more than a technical change. The administration’s request, reported Thursday in The Washington Post, is an unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30fri1.html?_r=1&hp

President Obama was swept into office by a tidal wave of support from a diverse coalition comprised of white Democrats, women, independents, Hispanics, Jews and African-Americans. Amid the din of "Yes, we can!" chants, it seemed that nothing could bring the history-making President down. But now, with his policies largely unpopular and his inability to goose economic growth increasingly apparent, Obama's once powerful political coalition is imploding

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/columnists/tantaros/index.html

Well, that was fast. Just a few weeks ago, the Gulf oil spill was a turning point for America. It was precisely the providential prodding Americans needed to wean ourselves from the diabolic goo that runs our cars, heats our homes, and forms the plastic that makes the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip possible….. the anointed consciences of American life combusted with frustration and rage…..But now it increasingly appears that “the worst environmental disaster in American history” wasn’t all that bad.

http://article.nationalreview.com/438908/a-crisis-gone-to-waste/jonah-goldberg

Somewhere lurking in the hot, putrid halls of Congress this summer is a union bailout bill of epic proportions and long-term ramifications….Likely to surpass the touted $165 billion it is estimated to cost, the Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act (S. 3157) was introduced on March 23rd by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and is designed to bailout unions’ underfunded pension funds by transferring the liability of those funds onto the backs of the taxpayers…In sum, Democrats need the bailout desperately and Republicans should shun it like the plague.

http://biggovernment.com/laborunionreport/2010/07/30/why-democrats-are-pushing-the-165-billion-union-pension-bailout/

Boy Scouts celebrated their 100-year anniversary at their National Jamboree in Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia this week. President Obama decided not to attend, so he could instead tape his appearance on The View. That's too bad. For a century, Boy Scouts of America has been a top organization that cultivates young leaders by teaching them patriotism, morals, and responsibility. It’s a group the president should want to promote.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/boy-scouts-100

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NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES

John Koster’s first ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMOHKpsP4yI

The website of the Boy Scout National Jamboree. (Your editor’s son recently became an Eagle Scout)

http://www.bsajamboree.org/

The State Auditor finds problems in the Seattle Public Schools, here’s the report:

http://www.sao.wa.gov/findings/1003871.pdf

The Obama “Change it back!” tshirt:

http://www.bufftees.com/barack-obama-change-it-back-t-shirt/

Or how about a “Chairman Maobama” tshirt?

http://www.mikechurch.com/zenshop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=152

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LATE NITE

Jay Leno: Because of Arizona’s new law, a lot of immigrants have fled the state and returned to their homeland, Los Angeles ….Congress’ approval rating has hit an all-time low of 11 percent. To give you an idea of how bad that is, the BP oil spill is at 12 percent…..Continental announced a new feature called “self boarding.” There’s no ticket agent taking your boarding pass anymore, and you scan it yourself as you board the plane. It’s part of Continental’s “Terrorists Fly Hassel-free” program.…A 104-year-old woman who called herself the world’s oldest member of Twitter, has died. Her last tweet: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

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HUMOR

“Faced with years of disaster-level ratings, MSNBC has announced it will change its name to MPTV, Microsoft Progressive Television (the Microsoft name was kept because, well you don’t want to upset Microsoft). Along with the name change is a more family friendly TV lineup. For example in the late morning there will be a block of game shows, the most promising of which is based on the health care bill and called Take the Money or Let Granny Die. Another daytime show is designed to compete with programs like The People’s Court; it’s called Arrest President Bush, every day a regular person gets to charge former President Bush or someone from his administration with a crime…Made just for MPTV is a new version of the popular CSI series, Called CSI Small Town, it follows a crime scene investigation team as they work in small Red State towns. Well at least what matches their vision of Red State towns. Follow these investigators as the search for answers in towns where everyone sits on their front porches clinging to their guns and religion…”

http://bigjournalism.com/jdunetz/2010/07/30/not-a-real-news-network-anyway-msnbc-announces-name-and-format-change-welcome-to-mptv/#more-101193

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WISE WORDS

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."

-Thomas Jefferson

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