Ted Cruz: Holder Should Resign "This DOJ Has Shown a Willingness to Disregard the Law"

World War 3 Has Already Begun

stormcloudsgathering.com

Nixon and Obama: Like brothers from another mother

Common Core’ Nationalizes And Dumbs Down Public School Curriculum

May 27, 2013
alt-market.com
By Ron Paul

This article was written by Ron Paul and originally published at Lew Rockwell

In addition to shredding civil liberties, launching a utopian global war for democracy, and going on a spending spree that would make LBJ blush, the so-called “conservative” Bush administration dramatically increased federal control over education via the “No Child Left Behind” act. During my time in Congress I heard nothing but complaints about this law from teachers, administrators, and, most importantly, students and parents. Most of the complaints concerned No Child Left Behind’s testing requirements, which encouraged educators to “teach to the test.”

Sadly, but not surprisingly, instead of improving education by repealing No Child Left Behind’s testing and other mandates, the Obama administration is increasing national control over schools via the “Common Core” initiative. Common Core is a new curriculum developed by a panel of so-called education experts. The administration is trying to turn Common Core into a national curriculum by offering states increased federal education funding if they impose Common Core’s curriculum on their public schools. This is yet another example of the government using money stolen from the people to bribe states into obeying federal dictates. Read More

Obama’s Dangerous Contempt for the Rule of Law

May 27, 2013
bloomberg.com
By Ramesh Ponnuru

Whatever the investigation into misconduct at the Internal Revenue Service reveals, we already have all the evidence we need to understand President Barack Obama’s fundamental attitude toward the rule of law. That evidence is right there in the public record, and what it shows is indifference and contempt.

The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint officials to fill vacancies when the Senate isn’t in session. In 2012, Obama made such “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- even though the Senate had stayed in session precisely to keep him from doing so.

Obama’s lawyers argued that the Senate wasn’t really in session even though it claimed to be: It was going through the motions to block Obama, but it wasn’t taking up bills or nominations. No previous president had ever tried this maneuver, and an appeals court has just ruled that it was unconstitutional.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the sweeping health-care law that Obama signed in 2010, asks state governments to set up health exchanges, and authorizes the federal government to provide tax credits to people who use those exchanges to get insurance. But most states have refused to establish the online marketplaces, and both the tax credits and many of the law’s penalties can’t go into effect until the states act. Read More

President Obama’s arrogance is undoing his presidency

May 25, 2013
kansascity.com
By Steve Rose
The Kansas City Star

Barack Obama just had his worst week in a deeply flawed presidency.

It’s not as bad as Jimmy Carter’s presidency, but it’s still one that can make even the most right-wing conservative long for Democrat Bill Clinton.

What Barack Obama has lacked from the beginning is humility, and what he has displayed consistently is arrogance.

He could have nipped the Benghazi fiasco in the bud, but Obama apparently decided that since only Fox News was beating the drums for the truth, he could finesse the ugly matter. Instead of coming clean from the get-go, that this was an act of terrorism, Obama stone-walled. Now, he has a bonafide scandal on his hands.

It still is not clear how far up the chain of command it went, possibly to Obama himself, but there was an order for our troops to “stand down” when the Benghazi consulate was under attack. Who gave that order? How much did the president know, when did he know it, and what did he do about it?   Read More

The Age Of Authoritarianism: Government Of The Politicians, By The Military, For The Corporations

May 25, 2013
alt-market.com
By John Whitehead

This article was written by John Whitehead and originally published at LewRockwell.com

“[F]orce alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the well-spring of extremism, a perpetual war – through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments – will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways.” ~ Barack Obama, May 23, 2013

President Obama’s declaration that “America is at a crossroads” in the fight against terror, a fight that is increasingly turning inwards, setting its sights on homegrown extremists, should give every American pause.

We have indeed reached a crossroads. History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a militaristic state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom. Certainly, this is a time when government officials operate off their own inscrutable, self-serving playbook with little in the way of checks and balances, while American citizens are subjected to all manner of indignities and violations with little hope of defending themselves. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age, let’s call it the age of authoritarianism.

Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal. Don’t believe me? Let me take you on a brief guided tour, but prepare yourself: the landscape is particularly disheartening to anyone who remembers what America used to be. Read More

Lahaina Market Place Cuts Down Its Trees

Just a bit of local news...5/25/13

My hand-painted t-shirt business was located in this beautiful Market Place on Front St. from 1984-2001. The Lahaina Market Place was enchanting, inviting, and oh so refreshing. Not anymore!



May 22, 2013 | 09:06 AM

LAHAINA MARKET PLACE CUTS DOWN ITS TREES

And now we're going to talk a bit about trees–or rather, the act of going up to very old, very beautiful trees and chain-sawing them into sawdust and toothpicks. This is happening, or by this point has happened, at the Lahaina Market Place on Front Street. That little courtyard of shops has been an oasis of shade for decades in Lahaina Town, but no more of that. All of the trees are coming down.
Did I mention at least one of the shop owners in the place is pissed? Did I mention he is supremely pissed?
"It looks like a SCUD missile hit the courtyard," said Scott Picard of Sure Thing Burger. "Lahaina Market Place is a respite for everyone in town. You know how warm it gets. This is where they stopped. They'd smell the food, see the jewelry, see the glass blower. Now that's gone."
No one from Lahaina Market Place management responded to my request for comment (the property owner is the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation). And one employee of one of the Lahaina Market Place did tell me that one reason for the tree removal was apparently that the roots from the old trees were pushing up the courtyard's bricks (a common enough reason for tree removal). But Picard told me that he received no warning whatsoever that the trees were coming down.
"There were no signs, letters or phone calls," he said. "We had to do a temporary closure. You can't give food away during construction like that. It's like a sawmill when you're cutting these trees down. It was like it was snowing–there was total whiteout."
So, yeah. Those of who liked to duck into Lahaina Market Place and rest under the shade of gentle, ancient trees while window shopping or getting brain freeze from one of Ululani's Shave Ice are now out of luck.
"They could have done a ceremony," Picard told me. "They could have done a million things. Instead, this is an epic event with a disastrous ending."

http://www.mauitime.com/Site.Home.html

http://www.mauitime.com/Articles-News-i-2013-05-23-77376.113117-Lahaina-Market-Place-Axes-Its-Trees-While-State-Of-Hawaii-Throws-Book-At-Mortgage-Broker-Tricia-Morris-As-The-Kihei-Upcountry-Road-Goes-Nowhere.html

The New Barbarians

May 25, 2013
americanthinker.com
By Gary Horne

Recent abuses of power are a reminder that the barbarians are still with us, using the power of progressive government to punish anyone who dares oppose them. Barbarians have no regard for others and depend on plunder for their existence, as they have throughout history, taking from the productive by force.

J. Bronowski described the barbarian Genghis Khan in The Ascent of Man:

From AD 1200 to 1300 they made almost the last attempt to establish the supremacy of the robber who produces nothing and who, in his feckless way, comes to take from the peasant (who has nowhere to flee) the surplus that agriculture accumulates.

Modern plunderers realize they don't need Genghis Khan's horsemen, and can use the power of the state in place of the sword. Known by various names, the left, liberals, socialists, communists, progressives, et al., these new plunderers are able to corrupt the civilized rule of law, enlisting government as plunderer-in-chief. The most aggressive American plunderer is the radicalized Democratic Party, whose hold on power depends on distributing the loot. This, of course, requires the use of force. There is no box to check on the tax return, "I agree to contribute to the Plunderer's Fund."

The victim of plunder is not free, as Mark Levin remarks in Liberty and Tyranny:

In the civil society, private property and liberty and inseparable. The individual's right to live freely and safely and pursue happiness includes the right to acquire and possess property, which represents the fruits of his own intellectual and/or physical labor. As the individual's time on earth is finite, so, too, is his labor. The illegitimate denial or diminution of his private property enslaves him to another and denies him his liberty. Read More

Hillary's - and now Obama's - Vast Left-Wing Cover-Up

May 25, 2013
americanthinker.com
By Jim Guirard

Almost 20 years ago, early in the Clinton-Rodham-Gore era, the late New York Times columnist William Safire charged that First Lady Hillary Clinton was so routinely dishonest in her reaction to the many scandal-"gates" of which she and Husband Bill were being accused as to merit the label of "congenital liar."

According to that highly acclaimed political affairs commentator and author of the Times "On Language" column, Hillary's tendency to spin, scam, deceive, and lie in her response to charges of impropriety and corruption (e.g., in Whitewater-gate, S&L-gate, Travel Office-gate, Cattle Futures-gate, Missing Files-gate, Hubble-gate, Vince Foster-gate, Lippo/China-gate, and many more) was so deeply rooted as to be in her genes.

Now that President Barack Obama is being accused of similar spins, scams, and cover-ups, the reaction of the White House, the left-wing Democrats, the establishment media, and most of academia is -- like then -- one of indignant outrage. But are not Barack and Hillary joined at the hip in their Saul Alinsky ideologies, their Rules for Radicals tactics, and their current tar baby of the Benghazi cover-up?   Read More

Obama's Faustian bargain

May 25, 2013
americanthinker.com
By Richard Butrick

President Obama recently gave a speech at the National Defense University, titled "The Future of Our Fight against Terrorism."

Moreover, we must recognize that these threats don't arise in a vacuum. Most, though not all, of the terrorism we face is fueled by a common ideology - a belief by some extremists that Islam is in conflict with the United States and the West, and that violence against Western targets, including civilians, is justified in pursuit of a larger cause. Of course, this ideology is based on a lie, for the United States is not at war with Islam; and this ideology is rejected by the vast majority of Muslims, who are the most frequent victims of terrorist acts.

Translation: The theofacist ideology (er, religion), Islam, is not fundamentally at odds with Western Enlightenment values (Human Rights). It is just some extremist misfits who don't understand their own religion of peace.

According to Barry Rubin, Mideast analyst for PJMedia, the subtext of the speech just confirms the unspoken strategy of Obama's war on terrorists to the effect that the Muslim Brotherhood can be enlisted in the war against extremist groups like al Qaeda if we just ally ourselves with their takeover of the Arab Spring nations.

Mr. Rubin characterizes the strategy as being based on the belief that:

If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Egypt, that is not a strategic threat but a positive advantage because it is the best organization able to curb al-Qaeda. And that policy proves that the United States is not at war with Islam.

If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Tunisia, that is not a strategic threat but a positive advantage because it is the best organization able to curb al-Qaeda. And that policy proves that the United States is not at war with Islam.

If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Syria, that is not a strategic threat but a positive advantage because it is the best organization able to curb al-Qaeda. And that policy proves that the United States is not at war with Islam.

Cut to the bone, to follow the meat packing metaphor, here is the Obama pitch:

Follow me little lambs. We are not at war with Islam. It is just those deranged Al Qaeda meatpackers in Afghanistan and their ilk that would put you on a skewer. In fact the Muslim Brotherhood Meatpackers Inc. are keeping us safe from Al Qaeda.

Unfortunately, in this Faustian deal with the devil, it is not Obama but the citizens of the US that will suffer.

Levin Offers Proof: 'It's A Flat Out Lie' That Obama Didn't Know About IRS

May 23, 2013

The Three Stooges of Big Government

May 24, 2013
americanthinker.com
By C. Edmund Wright

While many conservative voters obsess over the unholy trinity of elected big liberalism -- Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid -- but the real threat to our liberties and way of life is unelected 'big bureaucracy.' Unelected bureaucrats are who have persecuted Tea Parties, conservative donors, adoptive parents, True the Vote, Boeing's non-union plant, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, select GM dealerships, and God knows who else over the past few years. And this week, we've met the three stooges of the big bureau; Steven Miller, Loris Lerner, and Sarah Hall Ingram. Collectively, they paint an accurate picture of what we face.

As such, the real problem with these despicable minions is not merely the havoc they have managed to personally wreak, it is the quintessential nature of what they represent. When America met Miller, Lerner, and Hall-Ingram, we effectively met big government face to face. There are enough bureaucrats like these three to guarantee that abuse and incompetence are the rule and not the exception. They, and millions like them, were here before Obama was and most of them will be here long after Obama is gone from office. They infest cubicles at every level of government, and their job is to extract money from the very people who pay their salaries and fund their retirements and health benefits, not to mention paying for the cubicles as well.

Consider: Read More

Rep. Gowdy Grills IRS Hack

May 23, 2013

BOOM!!!! Other Benghazi Shoe To Drop…GUNRUNNING – “Devastating to Obama and Hillary”

May 21, 2013
theulstermanreport.com

As the nation prays for the people decimated by the Midwest tornadoes, some in Congress continue to do the work of uncovering what really happened before, during, and after the Benghazi Massacre. Reports are now emerging regarding at least two more whistleblowers who have information that could prove “devastating” to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton…

More whistleblowers will emerge shortly in the escalating Benghazi scandal, according to two former U.S. diplomats who spoke with PJ Media Monday afternoon.

These whistleblowers, colleagues of the former diplomats, are currently securing legal counsel because they work in areas not fully protected by the Whistleblower law.

…Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft. Read More

Make IRS Criminal Actions be about Liberalism Not Obama

May 21, 2013
godpolitics.com
By Gary DeMar

Let me be clear. I do not believe that President Obama will be impeached. He will never admit that he has done anything wrong. If there is any wrong-doing, others will take the blame (or be forced to take the blame).

The media will only go so far in attacking President Obama even though he disdains them and uses them for his own purposes. President Obama is anti-American, and that includes the freedoms found in First Amendment. The media do not care. Their religion is liberalism, and they will follow any god who proclaims it. Read More

You WILL Affirm All Things ‘Gay’

May 21, 2013
News with Attitude

In addition to the Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting of political dissenters, and the illegal seizure of media phone records, whistleblowers within the Department of Justice (DOJ) have contacted Liberty Counsel to express grave concerns over this administration’s latest attack on freedom.

Our sources have provided Liberty Counsel an internal DOJ document titled: “LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers.” It was emailed to DOJ managers in advance of the Left’s so-called “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month.”

The document is chilling. It’s riddled with directives that grossly violate – prima facie – employees’ First Amendment liberties.

Following are excerpts from the “DOJ Pride” decree. When it comes to “LGBT” employees, managers are instructed: “DON’T judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.” (Italics mine)

That’s a threat. And not even a subtle one.

Got it? For Christians and other morals-minded federal employees, it’s no longer enough just to shut up and “stay in the closet” – to live your life in silent recognition of biblical principles (which, by itself, is unlawful constraint). When it comes to mandatory celebration of homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors, “silence will be interpreted as disapproval.”

This lawless administration is now bullying federal employees – against their will – to affirm sexual behaviors that every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology reject. Read More

Is it time to consider a RICO case against the Administration? Administration using the apparatus of government as a tool of political repression and widespread corruption.

May 21, 2013
americanthinker.com
By Matt Holzmann

We are finding out new and interesting revelations about how our government operates every day, it seems. From an ever expanding IRS scandal to the Department of Justice's fishing expedition at AP to the President of the United States telling us that he found out about all of this in the newspapers just like the rest of us, it seems that everywhere we look there is evidence of the Administration using the apparatus of government as a tool of political repression and widespread corruption.

So say such diverse authorities as Bob Woodward, Charles Rangel, Peggy Noonan and Jon Stewart.

There is now enough evidence to begin considering a RICO (Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization) case.

Think about it. It began with Czars and Czarinas unanswerable to anyone but the president and shielded from any form of oversight. Whole segments of the economy were reorganized behind closed doors, and GM and Chrysler bondholders and retirees were disestablished. The rule of law was damaged.

Then came the regular abuse of executive orders. As recently as last week his recess appointments of members of the NRLB was declared illegal. The Wall Street Journal wrote earlier this year:

"President Obama has shown increasing contempt for the constitutional limits on his power, and the courts are finally awakening to the news."

Early in 2009, the White House, in a conference call hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts urged grant recipients "to plug Barack Obama's domestic agenda". The Administration was called out on this and swiftly withdrew, but it seems that this administration is most adept at pushing the legal envelope.

They have broken new ground in an amoral overreach. Individuals and organizations have been targeted and harmed. The FBI, once the paragon of rectitude, has become an arm of the Obama Campaign.

The president, his press secretary, and his water carriers such as Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi have made the most fantastic claims about the Benghazi investigation. HHS Secretary Sebelius is strong arming the pharmaceutical industry to fund Obamacare.

Everywhere we look we see what is more and more looking like a pattern of corruption.

Should we be surprised? For a politician who came out of the Chicago School, it is par for the course. Valerie Jarrett told us:

"After we win this election, it's our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don't forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won't be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go."

Sounds sort of like Al Capone. But this statement goes to the core of the Administration's philosophy. This how they do business.  Read More

Obama's Criminal Mendacity Run Amok

The Scathing Speech That Just Got a Standing Ovation During the IRS Hearing

May 17, 2013

The Next Food Crisis Will Be Caused By Globalist Land-Grabs

May 17, 2013
alt-market.com

This article was written by Susanne Posel and originally published at Occupy Corporatism

The UN warns that global food stores like grains are depleting at an expediential rate and when combined with failing harvests, there will be a food crisis in 2013.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) explain that “we’ve not been producing as much as we are consuming. That is why stocks are being run down. Supplies are now very tight across the world and reserves are at a very low level, leaving no room for unexpected events next year."

Since 2010, the FAO have stated that the rise in food prices is directly correlated to the 80 million people being added to the world's population annually. This fact, according to the globalists at the UN, is beginning to "tax both the skills of farmers and the limits of the earth's land and water resources."

Added to this problem are the 3 million people who are "moving up the food chain" eating more than their share in gluttonous nations like the United States and China.

The World Bank issued a statement of concern last month for the coming food shortage due to the drought devastating the US and Europe. According to Jim Yong Kim, World Bank group president: "Food prices rose again sharply threatening the health and well-being of millions of people. Africa and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable, but so are people in other countries where the prices of grains have gone up abruptly."

Corn yields in the US have succumbed to an infection known as aspergillus flavus which causes a carcinogenic toxin to manifest and renders the corn unfit for human consumption. In Iowa, cattle ranchers have reported that their livestock that ate the corn have died due to "toxic nitrate doses". Read More

Andrew P. Napolitano...Storm Clouds Gathering

May 17, 2013
lewrockwell.com
by Andrew P. Napolitano

It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that "our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule" has been so successful that trusting the government is the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the government is the same as challenging ourselves. And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government tyranny.

Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s and 1780s was actually won in the minds of colonists in the mid-1760s when the British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The Stamp Act required all persons in the colonies to have government-sold stamps on all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps. Read More

IRS As A Political Hit Squad

May 17, 2013
alt-market.com
By James Hall

This article was written by James Hall and originally published at batr.org

When the Internal Revenue Service admits to violations of law by targeting limited government advocate organizations, you know that the non-divulged crimes are much worse. The disclosure in the mainstream media is a pleasant astonishment. The usual pattern of protecting "Big Government" is still intact, while the noise and agency diversion on the abuses of the IRS avoid the fundamental problem with federal taxation, based upon a system of deductions, exemptions, incentives and grants.

The extortion and intimidation in the enforcement of the tax code is the entrusted role assigned to the IRS by the political hacks that administer the social engineering experiment that is fundamentally changing America.The politicization of the system is premeditated. The revelation that Obama governance resulted in IRS scrutiny went beyond Tea Party, targeting of conservative groups broader than thought, should not be shocking. The sycophants in federal employment have a deranged hostility towards any voice that defends and promotes constitutional federalism.   Read More

Is The USA Now A Soft Tyranny? Milton Friedman – Freedom vs Tyranny & Misery

Woodward: Don’t dismiss Benghazi as a scandal

May 17, 2013
hotair.com

We heard from one half of the Watergate-exposing journalistic duo this week on the AP scandal, and now the other half weighs in on the supposedly waning Benghazi debate. The White House released 100 pages of e-mails that went around the administration on 9/14 — but oddly not on 9/12 or 9/13 — less than an hour before Barack Obama gave a speech on the IRS scandal and pushed the e-mails back into the background. Bob Woodward tells Morning Joe that they won’t stay in the background, because it shows an exercise by the White House to keep people from learning the truth about the terrorist attack … and that looks mighty familiar to him: Read More

Ryan’s Tense Exchange with IRS Head on Why He Withheld Targeting Info in July Despite Knowing About It

May 17, 2013

An Even Bigger Scandal: Why Are IRS Audits Being Used To Punish Obama’s Political Enemies?

May 16, 2013
theeconomiccollapseblog.com
By Michael Snyder

"Unfortunately, thanks to new "Big Brother" technology that the IRS has been implementing, pretty soon there will be very little about us that the IRS does not know."

Is it right for Barack Obama to use IRS audits to punish his political enemies? As crazy as that sounds, there is a mounting body of evidence that indicates that this is actually happening. And if this can be proven, it is a much, much larger scandal than the IRS giving "extra scrutiny" to the applications of conservative non-profit groups. Let me be clear - if Barack Obama has been using IRS audits to punish his political enemies, that is an impeachable offense. Of all of the other scandals that are out there right now, this is the one that could actually bring down the presidency of Barack Obama. That is how serious this is. As you will read about below, there is a huge amount of circumstantial evidence that political enemies of Barack Obama have been singled out for IRS audits. We need to find out who initiated these audits. Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent, this kind of abuse of government power should sicken and horrify you. If it can be proven that Barack Obama has been using IRS audits to attack his enemies, every single U.S. citizen should be calling for him to resign. This is something that is beyond politics - this is a direct threat to the very integrity of our system.

The recent revelation that the IRS has been specifically targeting patriot groups and Tea Party organizations for "extra scrutiny" has opened up the floodgates. In recent days, a large number of highly respected people have come forward claiming that they were the subject of IRS audits that were politically motivated.

For example, Larry Conners, a respected local news anchor at KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis, Missouri says that he was hit with an IRS audit almost immediately after he conducted an interview with Barack Obama in April 2012... Read More

The Mainstream Media Obama Psychodrama

May 16, 2013
americanthinker.com
By Thomas Lifton

Do not underestimate the psychological shock currently being processed by many members of the mainstream media and the low-to-medium information voters who rely on them for political analysis. To them, the election and re-election of Barack Obama, the first African American to hold the office of President of the United States, was a cause, a fulfillment of heartfelt dreams.

With his Ivy League pedigree and ability to deliver a speech, Obama charmed the liberal media folk into believing that he was the one they had been waiting for, an inspiring black man on a white horse who could heal our lingering racial wounds, if only given the chance. They hoped he could change an America their progressive belief system held to be flawed by racism, history, and greedy businessmen, and by helping him do so, they too could nudge history along in a positive direction. Perhaps in their own minds making up for whatever personal flaws or unfair advantages they might have possessed along their way to the top of the media food chain. Everyone wants to believe he or she is a good person, doing good things in the overall scheme of things, after all.

So they invested themselves in making the dream come true, attaching their self-concept to his cause. This is why information that was dissonant tended to evoke a rather widespread hostile reaction. Only racists and birthers could doubt any of the official Obama narrative. The Tea Party became an object of hatred, slander, and even physical attacks when it first appeared and threatened the Great Obama Project. When the tea partiers inflicted a serious blow to the political standing of Obama and the Democrats in the 2010 election, taking over the House, they became an obstacle to be removed.

People react with discomfort and hostility when their self-concept, their source of self-esteem, is threatened. It is subconsciously received as a challenge to one's status as a good person.

Three serial shocks (and their continuing aftershocks) are sufficiently grave to produce a form of trauma in those who hitched their hearts to Obama:

1. Facing proof from one of their own that Obama and his administration lied and then continued to lie to the faces of the White House Press Corps through Jay Carney about Benghazi casts serious doubt on other claims of his they have supported and defended;

2. Continuing revelations of the IRS's misbehavior toward the hated tea partiers and conservatives calls into question which side are the good guys (see point 1);


3. And finally the revelation that all their loyalty bought them no consideration at all when it came to secretly grabbing records of their communications in AP, tells them loyalty is one way street with this guy and his crowd.

The big question now is how many of the liberal media will return to form as this process unfolds itself with more whistleblowers emerging, and with documents subpoenaed and witnesses put under oath over the coming months. To be sure some already have reverted to their default position of excuse-making support, floating rationalizations to minimize the damage: Obama is too remote and disconnected (even, it may even be intimated as a fallback concession, a bit lazy what with all that golf and partying) to have actively instigated these shocks.

This would be the face-saving option for both Obama and the journalists who wish to remain invested in his cause, albeit at lower intensity now that they have conceded incompetence and perhaps sloth. He has disappointed them a little, but any overestimation they may have engaged in was out of the best of motives.

But others will take a different tack. Having devoted five plus years to the narrative of Obama the good, they will be ready to follow a new story line now, because it has the ultimate virtue in the news business: it is new. If the special committees which will investigate the scandals do their job, there will many veins to mine in uncovering and telling the stories of wrongdoing. In the 1970s, nobody made a good career move defending the Nixon administration's use of the IRS against its opponents, after all.

Professor Charles Lipson of the University of Chicago shared with me his thoughts on how those in the journalistic world who think in terms of institutional survival might understand the situation they face:

How did the reporters keep from getting killed when they did stories on the Mafia in the bad old days? Answer: They had what international-relations specialists call "Second-strike capability," which served as an effective deterrent. Concretely, the Mafia knew that any strike against a reporter would lead to a devastating response, namely a whole slew of stories by newspapers on all aspects of the Mafia's local business. If a reporter was killed, all the newspapers would assign a slew of reporters to investigate and publish everything they could about the whole Mafia organization. That implicit threat kept reporters safe. In Chicago, Jake Lingle was the only reporter ever killed by the Outfit, as our Mafia is called, but it turned out that he was a Mafioso himself. (It happened in 1930, during the Capone era.)

Following this line of reasoning, the AP's best response to the DOJ's intrusion is to assign as many investigative reporters as they can to all aspects of DOJ's activities, including Fast and Furious, the Minnesota scandal involving Tom Perez, Eric Holder's life history (including an armed take-over at Columbia during his college years), and everything else they can think of. That should even-up the scales the next time the DOJ or other government agencies think about overstepping their bounds.

It might also get the AP back in the habit of actually investigating an incumbent administration that is not Republican.

The mainstream media psychodrama that is about to unfold before us promises to be amusing and even gratifying or those of us who have been frustrated for years by the ability of the Obama organization to make its storylines stick in the face of contrary data. No doubt there will be a certain amount of "I told you so" gloating. But we should also be prepared to welcome and encourage those former inhabitants of the media plantation who venture out into the intoxicating realm of uncovering the deceptions that enabled a program to fundamentally change America to get as far as it has.

If enough members of the media see the light and join in the discovery of all the deceptions proffered over the last few years, we may see the partisan divide actually diminish, as common revulsion at the dishonesty and abuses brings people together. In a way that he never anticipated, Barack Obama finally may become what he promised to be: a uniter not a divider.

The Chicago Way: Bring out the baseball bats...Intim-O-Gate...

May 15, 2013
glennbeck.com

The Chicago Way: Bring out the baseball bats

Also Intim-O-Gate

Lions And Tigers And Terrorists, Oh My!

  This is an excellent article



May 15, 2013
alt-market.com
By Brandon Smith

The debate over what actions actually constitute “terrorism,” I believe, will become one of the defining ideological battles of our era. Terrorism is not a word often used by common people to describe aberrant behaviors or dastardly deeds; however, it is used by governments around the world to label and marginalize political enemies. That is to say, it is the government that normally decides who is a “terrorist” and who is a mere “criminal,” the assertion being that one is clearly far worse than the other.

The terrorist label elicits emotional firestorms and fearful brain-quakes in the minds of the masses. It causes the ignorant and unaware to abandon principles they would normally apply to any other malicious enterprise. They begin to reason that a criminal should be afforded justice, while a terrorist should be afforded only vengeance, even though the act of branding a person a “terrorist” is often completely arbitrary. This vengeance is usually pursued by any means. Thus, the terrorist moniker becomes a rationalization for every vicious and inhuman policy of the establishment, as well as for the citizenry.

Dishonorable and foolish people claim the existence of terrorism essentially gives license for the rest of us to become criminal, willfully trampling on individuals’ rights to privacy, property, free speech, due process, civic participation, etc. Mass criminality against the individual in the name of social safety is the glue that holds together all tyrannical systems, triggering a catastrophic cycle of moral relativism that eventually bleeds a culture dry. Read More

The Still-Forgotten Obama Lie

May 15, 2013
americanthinker.com
By Nick Chase

"Benghazi-gate," "IRS-gate," "AP-gate" -- it would seem the intrepid investigators in the dinosaur media, in an effort to repair their shredded reputations, are finally catching up to the truths known months or years ago to those of us who get our news from the internet.

IRS targeting "patriots"? Not a problem for the dinosaurs; those racist lovers of the Constitution deserved it. Hillary, Susan, and crew covering up the Benghazi terrorist attack with a bald-faced lie about a video trailer? The dinosaurs had no problem swallowing this lie until the whistleblowers made it apparent what fools they were for doing so. Then they had to quickly regroup. But the Obama administration sucking their vitals from the Obama-friendly Associated Press? Well, that hurts them directly. They're under attack! Unforgivable!

Hey, dinosaurs, now that we have your attention, we have a hot tip for you: there's one big Obama lie that's two years old that you completely missed. In fact, you suppressed the truth. And you don't have to dig very hard to find this lie; it can still be downloaded at any time from whitehouse.gov for your own inspection and analysis. It's the Obama long-form "birth certificate" forgery.

That this digital document is a forgery has been proved beyond question. Various experts have proved its fakery on different levels: Read More

The same IRS that targeted conservative groups for punitive audits will be demanding your private health insurance records in January

May 14, 2013
naturalnews.com

(NaturalNews) By now, everyone is aware that the IRS has been caught red-handed conducting politically-motivated audits of conservative non-profit groups. Non-profits that taught the Constitution or even mildly criticized the federal government were targeted for special scrutiny, and the IRS demanded they turn over names of all their donors and volunteers.

"The IRS came under fire on Friday when its Office of Inspector General released a draft of an investigative timeline showing that the agency had played political favorites with nonprofit groups seeking tax-exempt status," reports the Daily Mail.

"In 2010, according to that investigation, the Cincinnati-based IRS office responsible for vetting tax-exempt applications began targeting groups with 'Tea Party or similar' words in their names -- including words like 'patriots' and '9/12' -- for tighter scrutiny."

The Obama administration, in other words, has been using the IRS as a political weapon to silence dissent and threaten political enemies.

"This is obviously disturbing," said Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Committee, in a USA Today article. "Coming within a week of revelations that the White House lied to the American people about the Benghazi attacks and the IRS targeted conservative Americans for their political beliefs, Americans should take notice that top Obama Administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don't have to answer to anyone."

Documents reveal the IRS scheme stretched all the way to Washington D.C. IRS offices. Read More

How Many Scandals Will It Take To Oust Obama?

May 14, 2013
godfatherpolitics.com

There is no doubt in my mind that Barack Hussein Obama is the most corrupt president that we have ever had. I said it numerous times and I’ll say it again, the man is worse than any leader of organized crime in the history of the United States. I don’t understand is why Congress has not done something to hold him accountable for his many crimes.

When Richard Nixon was president it only took one scandal to force him to resign the presidency. When it became apparent that he had lied to the American people, in his attempts to cover up the Watergate scandal, it left Nixon no alternative but to leave office.

Nearly 40 years later we have a president who is facing his third and fourth scandals and yet he is hanging on to the presidency like an alligator hangs on to its prey. Read More

Beck’s Passionate Break Down of the IRS ‘Inquisition’ of Conservative Groups — and What’s Coming Next in the Case

May 13, 2013
theblaze.com

Benghazi, IRS Create Perfect Storm Threatening Obama's Credibility

May 13, 2013
nationaljournal.com
By Ron Fournier

When two storms collide, the weather gets hairy. For President Obama, the IRS and Benghazi stories converged this weekend for a self-inflicted tempest that threatens his credibility.

His people can’t get their stories straight.

Internal Revenue Service officials denied for months the targeting of conservative political groups for reviews of their tax exempt status. With investigators poised to expose the chilling operation, a high-ranking IRS official acknowledged it late last week and apologized for it.

The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware. That appears to be untrue. The Associated Press reported Saturday that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general's report.

Politicizing the IRS threatens the integrity of an agency entrusted with Americans' secrets and the taxes that fund government. It also fuels the paranoia of conspiracy theorists. Read More

Fabrication power to the People! Why no government can stop the 3D printing revolution

Friday, May 10, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of  NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) The 3D printing revolution has arrived, and it's freaking out governments around the world because distributed, non-centralized fabrication technology threatens their monopolistic controls over physical objects. For a few thousand dollars, anyone can purchase a 3D printer (an "additive" desktop fabrication device) and print out physical objects using ABS plastic. (See list of manufacturers, below.) 3D plans are freely available to download online, and the printers are on the verge of flooding into the marketplace with a wide range of affordable, easy to use models from a large number of manufacturers.

Being able to print your own objects sounds amazing to the average citizen. Need a hose mender for your garden hose? Don't drive to Home Depot to get it -- just print it! Need a replacement part for your child's toy? Just design it in 3D software and print it! Any object you can imagine can be printed in ABS plastic, including complex gears and objects with intricate details. Many printers can print in multiple colors, too. Read More

It's the character, stupid

May 11, 2013
americanthinker.com
Thomas Lifson

Mark Steyn has a magnificent column today on the Benghazi Lie. He directs our focus to an issue more important than policy" character. The Benghazi episode reveals what he later characterizes as "depravity." With his trademark incisiveness and wit, he eviscerates the behavior of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The entire column demands to be read, but here is one of many excellent examples: Read More

The Enemy from Within and the Enemy from Without

May 11, 2013
americanthinker.com
By William J. Meisler

"For Westerners to think that what the West does will matter with regard to the necessary internal reformation of Islam represents intense narcissism and arrogance."

In 1453, with the Turks literally on the verge of storming the once-impregnable walls of Constantinople, the Byzantine Greeks persistently devoted their energies to their longstanding passion for arguing over matters of religious minutiae among themselves rather than attending sufficiently to the catastrophe at hand. Even if by that date the final fate of the Byzantine Empire had already been sealed, it is nevertheless marvelous to behold how the Byzantines could not stop themselves from indulging in their customary habits of bitter religious disputation even as the Turk was poised to engulf them forever.

In a similar vein, the political histories of both Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy are full of examples of factions in a given city regularly allying themselves with the traditional enemies of that city in order to achieve or maintain their own power in their own city.

The dynamic of the whole process of such internal disintegration resulting from intense domestic political rivalry can be said to revolve around a fatal combination of the principles of "divide and conquer" from without and "a house divided against itself cannot stand" from within, with that inevitably present taskmaster the ego blinding the judgment and driving the actions of the ill-fated players involved. Read More

Jay Carney Spends 7 Minutes Ducking Questions On The Benghazi Talking Points

Glenn Beck- Why Obama Hid the Truth of Benghazi ?

glennbeck.com
October 12, 2012

GOP Sen. Inhofe: Obama could be impeached over Benghazi

May 10, 2013
thehill.com


Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) suggested that President Obama could be impeached over what he alleged was a White House cover-up after last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Thursday with “The Rusty Humphries Show” that impeachment would become an issue soon over the “greatest cover-up in American history.”

“People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe said.

“The I-word meaning impeachment?” Humphries asked.

“Yeah,” Inhofe responded.

“Of all the great cover-ups in history — the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, all the rest of them — this ... is going to go down as most egregious cover-up in American history,” Inhofe said.

When Humphries suggested that the Democratic-controlled Senate would not impeach the president, Inhofe said that was true. He said that Benghazi would "endure" and impeachment could come after the 2014 midterm elections, when Republicans hope to retake control of the upper chamber.

Republicans have accused the Obama administration of changing the “talking points” about last year’s attack in Benghazi for political gain in the heat of the 2012 presidential election.

Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the attack on the U.S. Consulate there.

Republicans say the talking points used by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice intentionally downplayed the al Qaeda connections and falsely blamed the attack on a spontaneous protest.

The House Oversight Committee held an emotional hearing this week where the No. 2 diplomat in Libya said his “jaw dropped” when he heard Rice’s comments.

The White House has said the revisions to the talking points were made by the intelligence community, but ABC News reported Friday that the State Department played a key role in editing out the al Qaeda references.

Republicans have homed in on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s role in the attack. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) wrote an op-ed in The Washington Times Friday that said Clinton should “never hold high office again.”

Both are considered possible 2016 presidential candidates.

Inhofe is not the first Republican to suggest Obama could be impeached over Benghazi. Former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said this week that Obama “will not fill out his full term” over Benghazi.

Benghazi Was About Running Missiles to Syrian Rebels

Geraldo Rivera: My Sources Tell Me Benghazi Was About Running Missiles to Syrian Rebels

May 10, 2013
foxnews.com

Geraldo Rivera said Friday that his sources tell him the U.S. was involved in a secret mission in Libya to arm the Syrian rebels, which was the reason for the initial secrecy about the attack in Benghazi.

Rivera said on “Fox & Friends” that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney may have been briefed by then-CIA Director David Petraeus “to suggest that there was a secret mission going on there, that we can’t go there, we can’t talk about it.”

“I believe, and my sources tell me, they were there to round up those shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, they were going to hand those missiles over to the Turks and the Turks were going to give them to the rebels in Syria,” Rivera said. “It was like Iran-Contra, I think it merits gigantic investigation, it will all become clear. Read More

Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference

 

May 10, 2013
abcnews.go.com

When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack. Read More

John Boehner demands Obama release Benghazi documents during White House Briefing

Statists Use Twisted Logic To Attack The Bill Of Rights

May 8, 2013
alt-market.com
By Brandon Smith

In the war for the continued existence of our Nation’s Constitutional principles, I had long wondered whether statists were simply confounded by the Bill of Rights and ignorant of its function or whether they were maliciously inclined, knowing exactly what it means but seeking its destruction anyway. In recent years, I have decided it is a combination of both faults.

Statists are people who view every aspect of society through the lens of government power. If you want to know the primary difference between Constitutionalists and anti-Constitutionalists, you have to understand that some people in this world only want control over their own lives, while other people desperately clamor for control over other people’s lives. Why do they do this? Usually, it’s fear. Fear of the persistent unknowns in life. Fear that they do not have the intelligence or the will to take responsibility for their own futures. Fear that they will be forced to take care of themselves. Fear that their ideologies will be found lacking. Fear that if others are allowed freedom, they will one day indirectly suffer for it. Read More

Father Of SEAL Killed In Benghazi: “I Knew” Hillary Clinton Was Lying To Me When She Said It Was About The Video…

Video: Mattera and Redford go Sundancing over The Company You Keep

May 6, 2013
hotair.com

You have to feel a little sorry for Robert Redford, don’t you? He just released a feature film asking audiences to reconsider their harsh feelings about the Weather Underground, which set off bombs, killed police officers, and robbed banks for more than a decade of domestic terrorism, but who were just misunderstood people acting on their deeply-held beliefs about justice. Unfortunately for Redford, a couple of misunderstood kids did the same thing at the Boston Marathon ten days after the film opened. So far, Redford’s paean to leftist terrorists and murders has grossed only $3.5 million since its limited April 5th opening, and in the last two weeks, its wide distribution has only made $1.9 million: Read More

No, BO: "The voices of the Founders resounded with a multiplicity of warnings against trusting government..."

 

May 6, 2013
americanthinker.com

Our grand "Campaigner in Chief" Barack Obama had these words for the graduates of Ohio State University on May 5, 2013.

Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.

Had any of these graduates read and understood the words of the founders of the United States of America that afforded them the freedom to pursue their dreams, they would absolutely reject President Obama's admonition to "reject these voices". The voices of the Founders resounded with a muliplicity of warnings against trusting government. Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14 in 1781 warned:

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.

Perhaps James Madison in his speech at the Virginia State Conventionon Dec. 2, 1829 said it even better.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

This distrust of government by the founders is well documented, yet President Obama would have all Americans place their unbridled trust in his government and ignore any voice that speaks out against the overreaching power of government. A true leader would admonish the People to listen to the voices of distrust of government, not reject them for in them lie the truths of good governance. The despotic rely upon the ignorance of the governed in their quest for power. A true servant of the People seeks only the Peoples' Liberty and revels in their education. Daniel Webster voiced his concern on this when he wrote:

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe . . . Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.

Reject these voices"? No Mr. President, celebrate these voices, for in them lies the nature of the liberty our forefathers bequeathed this Nation.

U.S. Military in Tripoli Ordered Not to Go to Benghazi

May 6, 2013
weeklystandard.com
By Stephen Hayes

A top U.S. diplomat will testify Wednesday that as fighting raged in Benghazi, Libya, in the early morning hours of September 12, 2012, military officials in the region told a second rescue team preparing to deploy from Tripoli to Benghazi not to make the trip.

In an interview with the House Oversight and Reform Committee last month, Greg Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Libya during the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, recalled his conversations with Libyan government officials and U.S. military leaders as he tried to get support to U.S. diplomatic and intelligence officials under attack in Benghazi. Hicks says he received a call from the Prime Minister of Libya shortly after 3am informing him that Ambassador Chris Stevens had been killed. Hicks became the top US diplomat in Libya after Stevens died.

In the hours that followed, Hicks says, the Libyan military agreed to fly a C-130 from Tripoli to Benghazi in the early morning hours of September 12 – a flight that was to include a second team of Special Operations soldiers – dispatched from the Libyan capital to join a team sent earlier to Benghazi. But as those reinforcements were leaving for the flight, they were told to stand down. Hicks received the news in an early morning phone call from a top military commander in the region.

“So Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, who is the SOCAFRICA commander, his team, you know, they were on their way to the vehicles to go to the airport to get on the C‑130 when he got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can't go now, you don't have authority to go now,’’ Hicks recalled. “And so they missed the flight.”

Pushed to clarify whether they second rescue missed flight because they were told not to take it, Hicks responded: “They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

Hicks says he was talking to officials in Washington all night but because the C-130 would be taking off from Mitiga International Airport, on the other side of Tripoli, he didn’t have time to push anyone in the United States to reverse the decision. “The flight was leaving. And, you know, if they missed ‑‑ you know, if the vehicles didn't leave when they leave, they would miss the flight time at the airport.”

Hicks remembers Gibson saying: “I have never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than somebody in the military.”

The team would have likely arrived after the fighting in Benghazi had ended, but those who made the decision not to send them had no way of knowing that when they ordered them to remain in Tripoli.

Hicks will also tell the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday that military officials twice declined to send air support to Benghazi because the U.S. military didn’t have “tanker assets” to support the trip from Aviano, Italy. Read More

Federal Reserve Blows More Bubbles

May 6, 2013
News with Attitude
By Ron Paul

Last week at its regular policy-setting meeting, the Federal Reserve announced it would double down on the policies that have failed to produce anything but a stagnant economy. It was a disappointing, but not surprising, move.

The Fed affirmed that it is prepared to increase its monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities if things don’t start looking up. But actually the Fed has already been buying more than the announced $85 billion per month. Between February and March, the Fed’s securities holdings increased $95 billion. From March to April, they increased $100 billion. In all, the Fed has pumped more than a half trillion dollars into the economy since announcing its latest round of “quantitative easing” (QE3) in September 2012.

Although many were up in arms when the Fed said it would buy $600 billion in government debt outright for the previous round, QE2, all seems quiet about the magnitude of QE3 because it doesn’t come with huge up-front total price tag. But by year’s end the Fed’s balance sheet could hit $4 trillion.

With no recovery in sight, where’s all this money going? It is creating bubbles. Read More

DeMint: Immigration Bill ‘Will Cost Americans Trillions’

May 6, 2013
breibart.com

Obama’s SS: Here NOW

May 6, 2013
News with Attitude
By John Galt

ShutzStaffel.

The name which struck terror into the German people who still believed in freedom and wanted their nation to remain a peaceful, respectable member within the international community. Nazi Germany’s SS was a force for terror and intimidation, creating an aura of fear within the citizenry and horror for the remainder of the world watching the spectacle of a police state far more brutal than any in human history up to that time. Apparently this lesson has not been lost on the dictators of the world since that era as the communist leaders and rulers around the world learned that building an effective domestic spying and military police apparatus was the key to remaining in power.

Welcome to modern America my friends, as Obama’s SS is here now.

Think I am crazy? Let’s start by reviewing the following video:



The video created by the DHS above appears to reflect a peaceful national law enforcement agency which supports local LEO’s by hitting hard at the most difficult criminal situations and engaging with highly specialized and sometimes classified investigations in addition to a terrifyingly effective paramilitary force known as Homeland Security Investigations, Special Response Team (SRT). The HSI-SRT is not shy about their role in American society but a story in this morning’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune caught my attention and caused me to take a step back and review what other toys and roles they have taken on. In the story titled “The law enforcement agency you’ve probably never heard of” written by Shannon McFarland, a strange reference as to the size of the HSI having 6,700 plus special agents caused me to realize that this was a far more powerful group than initially indicated. In fact the DHS website about the HSI states: Read More

Dem Congressman Admits Obama Admin’s Talking Points On Benghazi Were “Absolutely False”…

May 5, 2013

Issa Reveals Explosive Details From Benghazi Whistleblowers

May 5, 2012
breitbart.com

Corrupt Government In The Cesspool

The man behind the Benghazi cover-up?

May 5, 2013
americanthinker.com
By Ed Lasky

"Not long ago, Rhodes was one of the obscure guys who wrote Obama's campaign speeches in Starbucks and played video games into the early morning hours. Now he attends national security meetings and takes writer's refuge in a secret office on the third floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building."

Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard has a must read column regarding the Benghazi cover-up by White House officials.

CIA career officials clearly and repeatedly identified Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-linked Islamic terrorists as the culprits behind the murder of four Americans.

Of course, this would cause embarrassment for the Obama team, especially in the few weeks before the election. They had been boasting for years that Al Qaeda had been decimated, the "tide of war" was receding; they had been on a mission to whitewash the prospect of Islamic terrorism as a threat to America (see Lauri Regan's superb column ("Can a President who has promised to stand with Muslims protect America? ). Obama's Cairo speech before an audience that included Muslim Brotherhood officials that he compelled Egypt to include, was a paean to Islam. It was also, to a great extent, a work of fiction that included grandiose and subsequently disproven claims about the positive contributions Islam has made to America and the world.

That speech was written by Obama's foreign policy speechwriter and now National Security Council team member, Ben Rhodes.

That is the man who Hayes "outs" as a key person behind the Benghazi cover-up. Read More

How can Obama speak about guns in Mexico with a straight face

May 4, 2013
americanthinker.com
Silvio Canto, Jr.

President Obama's Mexico trip has just taken a turn for the bizarre.This is what President Obama told Mexicans:

"...I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States. It's the right thing to do,...." (RCP

First, the Obama administration put 2,000 high powered weapons in the hands of Mexican cartels. Did President Obama forget about that little tragic episode from his first term? We hear that 200-plus Mexicans were killed by these weapons. Why didn't President Obama apologize to the soldiers' families? Or the widows? Or the orphans?

Second, cartel leaders, or criminals in the US, will continue to have guns because outlaws always do. Can someone remind President Obama of what is happening in Chicago? President Obama's hometown has very strict gun laws but Juarez is Disneyland compared to the killings in Chicago!

Third, all of these guns are already outlawed in Mexico and in the US.

How do you say "The Twilight Zone" in Spanish? I think that it's "La dimension desconocidad," i.e. the unknown dimension literally. Read More

The Great Education Power-Grab

May 4, 2013
americanthinker.com
By E. Jeffrey Ludwig

Did you know that reformers intent on implementing the Core Curriculum (National Standards) have invaded public education? They do not care about kids or about individuals. Armed with statistics and vast software systems, their intent is to establish one-size-fits-all curricula and success parameters in public education nationwide. The scope of their ambitions leads this educator to the conclusion that their underlying impulse is totalitarian.

These reformers are driving toward the six- or seven-class-a-day high school teaching load, the 9-5 schedule for the schools (or longer), school provided free and compulsory for ages 2 to 22 (or 26), the six- or seven-day school week, and the 12-month school year (with two- or three-week vacation breaks scattered throughout the school year), all controlled by a vast bureaucracy nationwide and justified by the implementation of "national standards." A database of answers to 400 questions by all U.S. students K-20 will be compiled and maintained at a tremendous cost to the public. Forty-six states are already on board. This 20-plus years of control and indoctrination will, if implemented, become a cornerstone of statist control.mic

Who's doing it? These reforms are led by Bill Ayers, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York City. They are also led by educational publishers such as Cengage, Pearson, McGraw Hill, and McDougal Littel. They have a host of supporters including, but not limited to, the Coalition of Essential Schools, New Visions, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and other NGOs that want to bring equality and progress [sic] to institutions supposedly failing to their very core. These "reformers" are being abetted by their so-called adversaries, the education unions: UFT, AFT, NEA, and NYSUT. Claiming to object to some of the teacher hostility expressed by the "reformers," these unions actually are 100% in tune with the political and social agenda of those reformers. Why? Because the movement toward "national standards" by these reformers means increased membership and dues for the unions, consolidation of power, and national promotion of their left-wing agenda. The education unions become junior partners in one of the greatest power plays in the history of this country.

The key to their vision, if one can call this Brave New World and 1984 nightmare a "vision," is to bring in a whole new class of school administrators. These administrators do not have teaching experience. Teaching experience tends to breed respect for the individual. Instead, the drive of national standards is to collectivize, to standardize, and to establish one-size-fits-all educational benchmarks, goals, and curricula. The new mandarins of education are people in their twenties or early thirties who are to come in and uproot the supposed garbage of the past. Likewise, pressures are being brought to bear on older teachers and experienced administrators to get out of the way of the "agenda of change." Read More

Watch Ted Cruz’s NRA-ILA Leadership Forum Speech

The Percentage Of Self-Employed Americans Is At A Record Low

They Are Murdering Small Business: The Percentage Of Self-Employed Americans Is At A Record Low

May 3, 2013
economiccollapse.com
By Michael Snyder

 The percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has never been lower in the history of the United States.  Once upon a time, the United States was a paradise for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but now the control freak bureaucrats that dominate our society have created a system that absolutely eviscerates them.  This is very unfortunate, because by murdering small business, the bureaucrats are destroying the primary engine of job growth in this country.  One of the big reasons why there are not enough jobs in America today is because small business creation is way down.  As I mentioned yesterday, entrepreneurs and small businesses are being absolutely devastated by rules, regulations, red tape and by oppressive levels of taxation.  If anyone doubts that small business in the United States is dying, just look at the charts below.  Sadly, this is what the bureaucrats that run things want.  They don’t want us to be independent of the system.  Instead, they are much more comfortable when as many of us as possible are heavily dependent on the system in one way or another.  If all of us have to go running to the government or to one of the big corporations for a job, then we are much easier to control.  But as the control freaks continue to construct their bureaucratic utopia, they are also killing off what once made the U.S. economy so great.  Read More

Radicalizing the Military

May 3, 2013
americanthinker.com
By Jeffrey T. Brown

American armed forces. "Duty, Honor, Country". "Semper Fidelis". "Service Before Self". "Honor, Courage, Commitment". "This We'll Defend". "Semper Paratus". These are words that denote selfless dedication to a higher calling than the gratification of one's own desires. The men and women who have served our country in the past, and who serve now, are without a doubt the finest of us. They are the face of America around the world, and we are blessed beyond measure that they serve our country with such grace and courage under the worst of external conditions.

Presently, however, they are under threat from within, and one cannot help but notice that our military is being forced, against centuries of American tradition, morals and example, to become a reflection of the left. This appears to be part of the plan to fundamentally transform the United States, and it carries dire consequences for our long-term survival. Read More

Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith

May 3, 2013
a4cgr.wordpress.com

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: “Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense…Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis…”.

The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith.

(From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians–including chaplains–sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military are guilty of “treason,” and of committing an act of “spiritual rape” as serious a crime as “sexual assault.” He also asserted that Christians sharing their faith in the military are “enemies of the Constitution.”) Read More

Obama...The Fall

May 2, 2013
washingtonpost.com
By Charles Krauthammer

Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination.

And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his reelection success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co. with nothing but naked tax hikes.

Thus emboldened, Obama turned his inaugural and State of the Union addresses into a left-wing dream factory, from his declaration of war on global warming (on a planet where temperatures are the same as 16 years ago and in a country whose CO2 emissions are at a 20-year low) to the invention of new entitlements — e.g., universal preschool for 5-year-olds— for a country already drowning in debt.

To realize his dreams, Obama sought to fracture and neutralize the congressional GOP as a prelude to reclaiming the House in 2014. This would enable him to fully enact his agenda in the final two years of his presidency, usually a time of lame-duck paralysis. Hail the Obama juggernaut.

Well, that story — excuse me, narrative — lasted exactly six months. The Big Mo is gone. Read More