American Mosques: Jihad's Incubators

Frank Gaffney 

How's this for a wake-up call: America's most cherished civil liberties and the Constitution that enshrines them are actually enabling Muslim Brotherhood operatives and other Islamists who have the declared mission of destroying our freedoms and government "from within…by [our] hands." Specifically, our enemies are using our tolerance of religion to create an infrastructure of mosques here that incubate the Islamic holy war called jihad.

If this revelation is not exactly news to those who are serious students of the Brotherhood's decades-long, stealthy "civilization jihad" in this country (for more, see the best-selling "Team B II Report" published late last year by the Center for Security Policy: Shariah: The Threat to America), it will almost certainly come as a shock to the average American. Yet, the phenomenon of our rights being used to pursue our destruction has become undeniable – particularly now, thanks to an assiduously researched, peer-reviewed study published on June 6th by the highly respected journal, Middle East Quarterly.

Entitled "Shari'a and Violence in American Mosques," this paper describes an ominous jihadist footprint being put into place across the nation. It is made up of ostensibly religious institutions, entities that, therefore, enjoy constitutional protection. But, according to the data examined by this study, most mosques in the United States are actually engaged in – or at least supportive of – a totalitarian, seditious agenda they call shariah. Its express purpose is undermining and ultimately forcibly replacing the U.S. government and its founding documents. In their place would be a "caliph," governing in accordance with shariah's political-military-legal code.

To be sure, some American mosques are not part of the jihadist enterprise. And most Muslims in the United States, like most adherents of other faiths, are not regular attendees at their places of worship.

Still, according to this study's two formidable authors – my colleague, David Yerushalmi, one of the nation's foremost non-Muslim experts on the totalitarian Islamic doctrine known as shariah, and a highly respected Israeli academic and expert on Islam andArabic culture, Dr. Mordechai Kedar – on-site investigations of a random but representative sample of American mosques in fourteen states and the District of Columbia produced chilling insights into the threat posed by many such institutions.

For the purpose of their analysis, the authors examined data collected by surveyors who "were asked to observe and record selected behaviors deemed to be shariah-adherent. These behaviors were selected precisely because they constitute observable and measurable practices of an orthodox form of Islam, as opposed to internalized, non-observable articles of faith." Such behaviors included, among other readily discernible indicators: "a) women wearing the hijab (head covering) or niqab (full-length shiftcovering the entire female form except for the eyes); b) gender segregation during mosque prayers; and c) enforcement of straight prayer lines."

For the purpose of their study, the authors evaluated support for jihad by considering the presence in mosque bookstores, libraries and among recommended materials "literature encouraging worshipers to engage in terrorist activity, to provide financial support to jihadists, and to promote the establishment of a caliphate in the United States. These materials also explicitly praised actsof terror against the West; praised symbols or role models of violent jihad; promoted the use of force, terror, war, and violence to implement the shariah; emphasized the inferiority of non-Muslim life; promoted hatred and intolerance toward non-Muslims or notional Muslims; and endorsed inflammatory materialswith anti-U.S. view."

Employing this methodology, Mr. Yerushalmi and Dr. Kedar found that:

•More than 80 percent of U.S. mosques advocate or otherwise promote violence. "Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all."

•Mosques that were identifiable using empirical measures "as shariah-adherent were more likely to feature violence-positive texts on site than were their non-shariah adherent counterparts."

•"In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts. The leadership at shariah-adherent mosques was morelikely to recommend that a worshipper study violence-positive texts than leadership at non-shariah-adherent mosques."

•"[O]f the 51 mosques that contained severe materials, 100 percent were led by imams who recommended that worshipers study texts that promote violence."

•"Fifty-eight percent (58%) of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad. The leadership of mosques that featured violence-positive literature was more likely to invite guest imams who wereknown to promote violent jihad than was the leadership of mosques that did not feature violence-positive literature on mosque premises."

[See the website MappingSharia.com for more information on each of the books surveyed, including a breif analysis of each book's importance, excerpts, their availability, and even downloadable PDFs.]

In short, such findings strongly suggest that shariah-adherence is a useful predictor of sympathy for – and, in some cases at least, action on behalf of – jihad, to include both the Islamists' violent or stealthy forms of warfare aimed at supplanting the U.S. Constitution and government. Indeed, the study confirms the anecdotal reports by Muslims themselves and earlier, less rigorous empirical studies of Saudi hate-filled literature permeating mosques in the United States.

The UK government has just announced that, pursuant to a update of its counter-terrorism program known as "Prevent," it now recognizes non-violent forms of Islamist extremism can be every bit as dangerous as the violent kinds. We need to do the same – especially since the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow shariah-adherents are successfully using not only mosques, but academia, the media, financial institutions, political groups and interfaith "dialogue" to pursue their pre-violent yet seditious, and therefore anti-constitutional and illegal, agenda.

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Who Says History Isn't Confusing?

David Limbaugh  

The liberal media's most recent effort to turn Sarah Palin into a dolt over her version of Paul Revere, on which historians are now defending her, has prompted me to share with you some confusing points of European history I have recently re-encountered in my lay study of the subject.

With apologies in advance to professional and amateur historians, here are a few fun "facts."

First, the nutshell version: The Roman Empire is not to be confused with the Roman Republic, except that the latter was an extension of the former and is sometimes included in a broader definition of the former. The Holy Roman Empire is not remotely related to the Roman Empire, other than perhaps through the desire of the former to be favorably associated with the latter. The Byzantine Empire is also not to be confused with the original Roman Empire, though some consider it an eastern extension of the Roman Empire. And the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire are entirely different animals, except that the latter helped to demolish the former and ended up dominating much of the same territory.

Now a humble attempt at clarification. The Roman Republic began in 509 B.C. and continued until 27 B.C., when it became the Roman Empire, which lasted until about A.D. 476. The empire ended when Rome was toppled by Odoacer, a Germanic warlord. So Roman domination of the Mediterranean basin lasted for almost 1,000 years, with roughly the first half under a republic and the second half under an emperor. Under the modern definition of "empire," it was an empire the entire time, in that it ruled over conquered nations and vast territories. What distinguished the republic from the empire was the form of government, the former being more democratically controlled and the latter ruled by an emperor (thus "empire").

Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire until A.D. 330, when the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and moved the capital to Byzantium, whose name he changed to Constantinople (Istanbul today). When Odoacer sacked Rome in 476, the Roman Empire died -- except it didn't altogether, only its western part. It could be said to have continued in its eastern part, as the Byzantine Empire began in its wake and continued until about 1453, when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. So speaking very broadly, you could say that a Roman empire, in some form, existed for some 2,000 years, from 509 B.C. to A.D. 1453, as follows: Roman Republic (509 B.C.-27 B.C.), Roman Empire (27 B.C.-A.D. 476) and then the Byzantine Empire, or "Eastern Roman Empire" (partially overlapping with Roman Empire, A.D. 330-1453). The Ottoman Empire, by the way, continued until the early 1900s.

These geographical empires are not to be confused with the church hierarchies, which is not to say there isn't significant overlap and interplay between the two. Concerning the church, we must now distinguish between the churches resulting from the Great Schism of 1054 (also called the East-West Schism or sometimes even the Schism of the East), when the church in Byzantium split from the church in Rome to form the Eastern Orthodox Church. Henceforth, there would be the Roman Catholics in the west and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the east.

This Great Schism is not to be confused with the Great Schism of 1378 (also called the Schism of the West), which involved only the western church -- i.e., the Roman Catholic Church. When Pope Gregory XI died that year, there was a dispute between the French and Romans as to whether his successor would be French or Roman and whether he would serve in Avignon or Rome. The chaos even resulted in three competing popes for a while, but the schism only lasted 40 years, until a new conclave elected Cardinal Oddone Colonna, from a Roman family, as Pope Martin V in 1417.

Finally, we should not confuse the Roman Empire, in any of its manifestations, with the Holy Roman Empire, which was more Germanic than Roman. It was hardly an empire; it was more a loose confederation of states located in central Europe, not the Mediterranean basin, which the Roman Empire dominated. Its connection to Rome is that the pope bestowed the title of emperor on Charlemagne in 800, though Otto I, crowned emperor in 962, is considered to be the first formal Holy Roman emperor. The Holy Roman Empire continued, with ebbs and flows, until 1806, when Napoleon dissolved it. You might better remember the Germanic nature of the Holy Roman Empire if you recall that it was considered the First Reich. The Second Reich began after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) under William I and his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.

Confused yet? Well, just be glad I don't delve into this paradox: Many historians consider the absolutist emperor Napoleon Bonaparte to be a great liberal reformer.

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Obama's Top Econ Advisor Out

John Ransom 

In the clearest sign that the administration's economic policies have failed, the White House announced Monday night that Austan Goolsbee, Obama's economic recovery guru, is leaving the administration for a teaching job the University of Chicago says the LATimes.



"Goolsbee, one of the White House's primary spokesmen on the economy, will return to his position as an economics professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, the White House said in an announcement Monday night," writes the Times.

"In a prepared statement, Obama said: 'Since I first ran for the U.S. Senate, Austan has been a close friend and one of my most trusted advisors. Over the past several years, he has helped steer our country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and although there is still much work ahead, his insights and counsel have helped lead us toward an economy that is growing and creating millions of jobs.'''

If that were true Goolsbee would stay on the job.

"Mr. Goolsbee has focused on developing the economic arguments for government assistance and public-private partnerships for promoting innovation, research and development, education and infrastructure," reports the New York Times "an area he once taught about, and will do so again — even as the federal government is reducing spending elsewhere to try to rein in the growth of the national debt."

When Bill Daley took over as White House chief of staff he brought with him a penchant for results-oriented government. With the economy on the skids, Goolsbee's out.

The Times reports that tonight House Speaker John Boehner wasted no time in ripping Goolsbee and Obama through a spokesman for the poor performance of economy .

"'With anemic job growth, plunging economic confidence and no real plan to rein in the debt, this departure is just the latest sign that the president has no answers for Americans concerned about the economy,' Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said Monday night." 

Ouch.

The Times points out that turnover amongst Obama's econ team has been high: "Obama has lost [Christina] Romer, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, budget chief Peter Orszag, and Jared Bernstein, who was Vice President Joe Biden's top economic advisor." 

But don't expect Obama's fundemental approach on the economy to change.  

The New York Times says that Obama will likely tap an academic economist this summer to replace Goolsbee. 

That about sums up the definition of economic insanity.  

CNN's Charles Riley, meanwhile, is floating the idea that a do-nothing Congress that took power last January, not President Obama, is responsible for the slowing economy.

It's likely that Riley is floating the idea in order to determine how much wiggle room Obama has in blaming Congress for the poor state of economy.

Instead of reporting the news, media seems determined to act as communications consultants to the president.   

"Economic indicators are pointing to slower growth, writes Riley. "More Americans are looking for jobs, and the housing market is in a confirmed double dip. In another time and place, lawmakers might have responded with economic stimulus measures to get the country back on track. This time around, it's not in the cards."

It's not in cards because the administration pursued economic policies that would not work. Obama bet the farm on wild economics ideas that have been discredited by experience in the last one hundred years.

The auto industry has been nationalized as have banks, healthcare, student loans and mortgages. The Fed is keeping interest rates banks pay artificially low, even though banks aren't loaning money. Americans are getting used to higher prices and a lower living standard.

This is what fairness look like. It stinks equally for all of us.     

Eugene Steuerle, a liberal economist, points out in Riley's piece that because we have run such large deficits we can no longer afford spending even on things we need: "We've boxed ourselves in with these long-run deficits to the point that it's weakened our ability to manage a short-term crisis," says Steuerle told Riley.

But by slanting the article, Riley implies that's it's the GOP's fault. But Obama owns this economy. It's his creation.  

It's not like the GOP didn't tell Obama that we'd end up in the exact place we are now with no jobs, slowing growth and high inflation. His policies were more geared to spending money on presidential friends while punishing enemies. Some get more fairness than others.

And the country has received no return for the money liberal Democrats spent on these special interests.

Riley suggests that the Fed should try to pump more money into the economy by buying back U.S. Treasuries, known as quantitative easing. The second round of easing- known popularly as QE2- is slated to end this month.  While the policy has artificially inflated the prices of things like oil, food and common stock, it's produced no long-last results for the economy

If the types of comments on CNN's site for the story are any indication, readers aren't amused by indications that anyone would suggest extra stimulus measures:

"No it is not in the cards," writes one reader, "over the past 3 years Congress and the President have doubled the national debt, running up an additional $7.5 trillion dollars in pork-barrel deficit spending."

"Obama/Biden/Reid should resign," writes another, "would be the best stimulus. Nightmare over."

"I think Charles Riley needs to explain how stimulus or money printing produces wealth?" says another reader. "Because it doesn't. I'm not sure how Republican[s] complicate matters, unless you believe that money printing and more debt will fix the problem."

CNN isn't the only media outlet that is banging the more-stimulus-now drum.

The Atlantic Monthly coincidently put out a piece today Why Washington Won't Fix the Economy. It reads like a DNC press release.

Atlantic associate editor Derek Thompson says "Washington has done a lot, but it hasn't been enough. TARP stabilized the banks, but financial stability didn't trickle down. The $800 billion stimulus repaired state budgets, but only for a few years. The Federal Reserve's two quantitative easy plans have made borrowing a cinch, but credit is still tight for small businesses. The December tax deal fattened our wallets, but higher gas prices made them thin again."

What-ever, dude. Washington has done way too much, not too little.

The problem is that each of the remedies Thompson described above concentrated money in areas at the top of the financial food chain. There's plenty of money out there. But it's chasing up prices rather than creating jobs.

That's happening because there is less risk in buying things than there is in creating jobs.

And as long as this model persists, prices will remain high along with real unemployment.

Does that seem fair to you? Or just plain foul?

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Leftist Lies and the Media That Enable Them

Robert Knight  

You might have seen the vicious Mediscare video by now entitled "America the Beautiful." If you haven't, you should. It's from folks who just the other day were chanting the mantra of "civility." It's a taste of what the left will be serving up as 2012 approaches.

As the song "America the Beautiful" plays, a man in a dark suit with a likeness to Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) pushes an elderly woman in a wheelchair down a sidewalk. The message on the screen informs us that the Republican Medicare reform proposal will "privatize" Medicare. The man diverts to a steep path as the woman's smile turns to terror. She fights as he pushes her faster. He then dumps her headfirst off a cliff, which we see clearly from the front. The only thing missing is a vampire giving her a hickey on the way down.

Not since Barry Goldwater was smeared in 1964 with the famous "little girl with daisy and mushroom cloud" TV ad has there been such bald-faced character assassination.

The ad was produced by The Agenda Project, a leftist group that earlier made a similarly nasty Tea Party video whose title includes the f-word, and also "Hate Begets Hate", a hateful assault on public figures who oppose the Cordoba House Mosque at Ground Zero in New York City. That one has little Muslim girls crying and being comforted while photos of big, bad (and even some liberal) politicians are quoted. This is propaganda at its rawest. No, wait. They topped it with that lady pushed over a cliff.

The good news is that the left knows that more and more Americans are onto them. So they're resorting to more desperate tactics. The bad news is that, absent a traditional press corps to keep them honest, they're still getting away with it. But their days may be numbered. A rising class of conservative sleuths such as Lila Rose, Hannah Giles, James O'Keefe, CNS News reporters, the Washington Times' Kerry Pickett and author Ben Shapiro are using the new media to great advantage, exposing Planned Parenthood, Hollywood and lying liberal politicians.

The playing field has never been fair. The Left has a broader palette from which to color public opinion. They can use truth if that works, or lies if that works. As Karl Marx said, "the ends justify the means."

Conservatives have to tell only the truth for a couple of reasons. First, there's the commandment not to bear false witness. When you lie, you're messing with God Almighty, not just the people you're fooling. This is not something that most secular leftists lose sleep over. Second, if you're a conservative, you wouldn't get away with it. The media would pursue it mercilessly instead of ignoring it or covering it up.

Over the years, leftist lies and media complicity have done enormous damage. In 1931, New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief Walter Duranty parroted Soviet propaganda while Joseph Stalin systematically starved, shot and tortured to death his opponents. Duranty, who won the Times' first Pulitzer Prize in 1932, looked the other way when Stalin in 1932-1933 forcibly starved to death millions of Ukrainians. Duranty even went so far as to denounce reports of famine by other journalists. British reporter Malcolm Muggeridge, who reported on the famine for The Guardian, called Duranty "the greatest liar I have met in journalism." Stalin went on to murder millions more in Russia, and Franklin Roosevelt referred to him as "Uncle Joe."

Twice, the Pulitzer board has refused to rescind the award despite pleas from Ukrainian groups and a recommendation to do that from an independent report solicited by the New York Times and given to the board. You have to wonder what it would take.

Sometimes, the nature of the crime is reckless denial. Like Obama declaring that under Obamacare, we can keep the health coverage we have now.

Or Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Barney Frank telling a House committee in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in no danger: "I don't see anything in this report that raises safety and soundness problems." Other Democrats accused the Bush Administration of bad motives and even racism for demanding more accountability.

Later, after the "affordable" mortgage-driven housing bubble burst in 2008, driving the economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression, Democrats blamed private "greed" and lack of government oversight. Of course, people can be spectacularly wrong without intending to lie. But either way, why is Barney Frank continuing to make financial policy for the United States?

Sometimes a technically true statement can function as a lie, such as the misleading caption on an Associated Press photo of Sarah Palin during her visit to Haiti in December 2010. Palin's daughter Bristol is adjusting some strands of her mother's hair. Here's how the caption reads: "Sarah Palin, center, has her hair done during a visit to a cholera treatment center .…" This implies that she brought a hairdresser in her entourage, flaunting her before the stricken Haitians. Can anyone say "Marie Antoinette?"

Finally, the mother of all lies was hatched at the U.S. Supreme Court about the circumstances of the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade (1973). Norma McCorvey, who was "Jane Roe," had not been raped as she had alleged. She revealed this in her 1994 autobiography, I Am Roe. Meanwhile, the Roe decision, combined with the Doe v. Bolton ruling the same day, has destroyed the Declaration of Independence's guarantee of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for more than 50 million unborn aborted children and caused harm to millions of women. It's also done enormous damage to the rule of law, with the majority of justices in Roe ignoring the constitutional division of authority and applying what Justice Byron White's Doe dissent termed "raw judicial power."

From pushing fictional elderly ladies over cliffs, misreporting atrocities, distorting research and fudging the facts in landmark cases, the left marches on, confident that the media will not look too closely, ask too many questions or stop acting like cheerleaders.

Conservatives and, it is hoped, honest liberals, will need to be more aggressive and have faith that telling the truth is the right thing to do. We have it on good authority that "the truth will make you free."

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The Stupidest Immigration Reform Idea You Haven't Heard About

Rachel Marsden

As Barack Obama inches toward reforming the immigration mess in America -- whenever that might be -- here's a stunning example of political rhetoric over substance.

The idea comes courtesy of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, a serious contender for the French presidency in next year's elections. That is, until she self-immolated with this doozy.

Le Pen sent a note to all 577 members of French parliament calling for an end to dual citizenship. Her rationale? "The patent failure of dual citizenship has reached various sporting events, after which young French bi-nationals don't wave our flag, but rather that of another nation."

Le Pen also questions whether France would have intervened militarily in Libya if there weren't so many Franco-Libyans on French soil, and considers the disastrous implications of any future French military intervention in Algeria, predicting a "potentially explosive situation" on French soil because of the number of Algerians in France.

First off, people hoisting Third World flags at sporting events in France aren't necessarily dual citizens. They could be residents, or illegals, or maybe even anti-imperialist French (in the same way that Noam Chomsky, who never has anything good to say about America, is 100 percent American). Citizenship doesn't automatically elicit national loyalty or pride, even by birth.

In theory, French naturalization requires five years of residency, an interview and careful selection. If France has failed to properly select in awarding citizenship, then that's the crux of the problem. Fixing it by stripping everyone of every origin of any sort of dual citizenship will hardly force integration. If anything, it's a surefire way to alienate immigrants. Personally, nothing would peeve me off more than moving to a country, fully integrating and wanting to be considered an equal in the eyes of the law, and being told that officially I would always be considered second class. My response to that, as a self-employed entrepreneur, would be to not give that country a cent of my tax dollars and send it all to my country of origin.

This is what politicians forget when they make stupid, sweeping propositions regarding immigrants: Not all are looking for handouts. Some of us come from countries with better handouts if we were really interested, thanks. We are producers, entrepreneurs, wealth creators. Rupert Murdoch is an immigrant. He became a citizen of America for practical business reasons: so he could own TV stations. Highly desirable immigrants often choose to pursue citizenship to avoid all sorts of paperwork hassles and everyday barriers. In France, for example, you can't even get financing for a stereo without citizenship or a 10-year permanent residency card.

If France ever started stripping bi-nationals of their French citizenship or forcing them to choose -- and perhaps they can start with President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife, Carla Bruni, an Italian-born naturalized French citizen, and his father, who was born in Hungary -- it's not like you could ever force them to forget where they came from.

The far right is proposing a superficial solution to a much deeper problem. The answer is in revamping economic policy to attract precisely the kind of immigrants you want.

Stop taxing businesses to death and instead offer them tax incentives for hiring locally so they don't have to import cheap labor for jobs that locals won't do (at least not without one day off out of every three, and incessant whining). To this end, French kids need to be better educated about the value of tradesmanship. A 2007 Ipsos poll revealed that nearly 70 percent of the French would encourage their kids to strive for a job shuffling paper in the civil service. The rest, judging by the popularity of business-management programs, want to sit around running things. That simply isn't feasible, lest the French managers all have to move to China, India or Africa -- or continue to bring in workers from "undesirable" countries for labor that needs to be done on-site.

Facilitating bi-citizenship, rather than threatening to strip it across the board, could in fact help resolve economic and societal woes. Making the process as easy as possible for the right kind of workers would strengthen that country's competitiveness in the global economy and create more wealth and opportunity for others in the long run. And chances are, those people aren't the kind of boors who would feel the need to wave a foreign flag while setting fire to cars in celebration of a sporting win.

And if you're curious about where this idea would place France in relation to the rest of the world on the same issue: more restrictive than America, which doesn't strip dual citizens of their American citizenship, but less restrictive than China and Russia (and Rupert Murdoch's native Australia), which generally only allow you to hold one citizenship at a time. Even the most hardcore anti-subversion attempts related to citizenship are silly, since someone can renounce their citizenship of origin as needed, then reapply for it later. None of this posturing amounts to a solution.

(Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and former Fox News host who writes regularly for major publications in the U.S. and abroad. Her website can be found at http://www.rachelmarsden.com.)

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If the President Had A Medicare Reform Plan, It Would Probably Look Like This

Alex Cortes 

Youth have the greatest stake in the current Medicare reform debate; for we will have to live with whatever results from it for the longest period of time. Tragically, Medicare is set to be bankrupt in 2024 and only the House Republicans have presented a plan that restore' the program's solvency, leaving youth asking: President Obama, Where's YOUR Plan?

While we await the President's plan, that is, if he ever decides reforming Medicare is more important than his golf game, we can almost with certitude conjecture what it would be: a strengthening of ObamaCare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

In short, IPAB is a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats who are paid $160,000 a year to ration the care of seniors. Specifically, the board is empowered with the responsibility of singlehandedly lowering Medicare provider rates to keep the program's spending below a hard spending cap, jeopardizing seniors' access to care in the process.

Despite the Medicare cuts IPAB is already set to make, the program's trustees recently reported that the program will still be bankrupt in 2024, and thus further reforms to the program are necessary to restore its solvency. But why is Obama likely to choose a strengthening of IPAB's power to cut provider rates as his reform of choice?

First because he's outright rejected the alternative route of patient-centered care reform, such as the one Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed where future seniors are empowered to freely choose a plan that fits their needs and desires, and where competition between insurers for these consumers will drive down costs. That leaves the President down the path of government-centered reform, where a few individuals in Washington, DC arbitrarily and drastically slash provider rates without any regard to how it will jeopardize specific individuals' access to care. The only outlying question is who will take this action, an elected Congress or unelected bureaucrats like members of IPAB?

Congress has historically held this role, but the President's creation of IPAB through ObamaCare and calling for empowering the board further in his recent budget speech shows where his current thinking lies. And although a powerful unelected board like IPAB flies in the face of our representative republic, it's understandable why Obama will likely choose this course: he and his fellow Democrats cannot politically afford to be held directly accountable for such deep Medicare cuts, so they set up an unaccountable board do their dirty work for them.

For our part, we have to ask ourselves the question: What kind of future do you want, one where distant bureaucrats effectively decide what services are available to us, or one where you can choose for yourself, as done in every other marketplace? This is the choice we are currently being presented, make sure to let your opinion known to your elected officials.

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7 Responsibilities You Have As An American

John Hawkins 

You hear a lot about "rights" in America. You have a right to an attorney. You have a right to remain silent. You have a right to free speech, a right to "keep and bear arms," a right to "due process," and a right to have "equal protection under the law."

Cruel and unusual punishment? Unreasonable search and seizure? Being tried twice for the same crime? Those would be violations of your rights. We're told that we have a right to privacy, a right to have an education, and a right to worship as we choose.

We hear about individual rights, civil rights, human rights, and constitutional rights. Stop somebody from doing something he wants to do and as likely as not, he'll tell you, "I have a right to do that and you have no right to stop me. After all, it's a free country and I have my rights!"

All that's well and good, but know what you don't hear a lot about anymore?

Responsibilities.

Responsibilities are the flip side of rights. In fact, the only reason we have rights at all is because there are people who fulfill their responsibilities. Yet, if you ask people what their responsibilities as Americans are, you'll usually get vacant expressions and maybe a mumbled statement about jury duty or paying taxes.

With that in mind, here are a few basic responsibilities that you, I, and all of us have as Americans.

1) It's your responsibility to pay your own way. Nobody owes you a living and that includes other taxpayers. You have a responsibility to pay your own bills and not be a leech. That means, over the course of your lifetime, paying as much in taxes as you take out in services and direct payments from the government. If, by some horrible set of circumstances you feel compelled to go on the dole, you should at least be ashamed to take hand-outs from your fellow citizens.

2) It's your responsibility to take care of your children. If you have kids, you have a duty to take care of them. That means paying money to feed, clothe, and house them. It means being a part of their life and doing your best to raise them, teach them right from wrong, and help them have a better life than you've had. This seems to be so simple that it's practically instinctive to most people, but apparently, a lot of people don't get it.

3) It's your responsibility to look out for future generations of Americans. Whether you think of America as "the land of opportunity, "a shining city on a hill," "the land of the free and the home of the brave," or the "last, best hope of mankind," we all have a duty to preserve what's great about this nation so that future generations of Americans can experience it just as we have. How careless, how irresponsible, how unforgivable it would be if our children and our children's children have to grow up in an America that is no longer extraordinary.

4) You have a responsibility to be an informed voter. In recent years there has been a big push to get all Americans to vote. That's sort of like giving everyone a gun and encouraging them to immediately squeeze off a few rounds. If they don't know anything about what they're doing, they're as likely to hurt themselves or someone else as they are to do good. The same goes for voting. Not everyone has to be a political junky, but it would be nice if people took the time to become well-informed about the ins-and-outs of the basic political issues we have to deal with in this country instead of voting on who has the best attack ads. Being an informed voter is a responsibility. Being an uninformed voter is flipping a coin – heads, America wins and tails, it loses.

5) You have a responsibility to support and defend the Constitution. The Constitution is the "set of rules" that we go by as a people and most of the "rights" are guaranteed by the Constitution. Yet, the Constitution is under daily attack in this country by activists and politicians who feel the ends justify the means along with judges who claim to believe in a "living Constitution," which is functionally no different than not having a Constitution at all. You may not win every fight to adhere to the Constitution, but it's a battle worth fighting because no document does more to safeguard the rights of all Americans.

6) You have a responsibility to put America first. The UN, other nations, and "the world" don't really care very much whether you live or die. Not that Americans in Boston are going to shed tears if an American in LA passes on either, but we at least have a certain small, but meaningful level of kinship with each other by virtue of being Americans.

9/11 was a good example of that. Most other nations around the world said a few kind words for us and seemed to have a few days to a few weeks' worth of goodwill towards us over it. But nearly 10 years later, it was other Americans who got revenge for the fallen by putting a bullet in Bin Laden's forehead. You should always look out for your own country because it's the biggest group of people on the planet who might actually care whether you live or die.

7) You have a responsibility to be a good person. As Samuel Adams noted way back in 1779,

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

Honesty, honor, godliness, industry, respect for the law, morality, and truthfulness are the wheels on which our entire republic rides. If the American people are no damn good, then no matter how well the Constitution is written, how well we're governed, or how much good fortune comes our way, we are doomed as a nation.

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Deport California's Illegal Immigrant Prisoners

Chuck Norris  

In the classic movie "The Great Escape," a cluster of Hollywood manly men from yesteryear (including my friend Steve McQueen) played Allied POWs who escape from a German camp during World War II.

Today the great escape may be played out by more than 33,000 incarcerated inmates in California who don't escape the state's 33 prisons but are released by a computer error and the U.S. Supreme Court itself.

Many today say prisoners have too many rights and too many creature comforts while doing time and paying the penalties for their crimes. But the Supreme Court recently upheld the ruling of a district court panel that California prisons are sub-par environments for inmates. A 5-4 majority demanded that Golden State officials grant 33,000 of its 143,335 prisoners golden tickets to freedom because severe overcrowding has led to inadequate medical care.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. "This extensive and ongoing constitutional violation requires a remedy, and a remedy will not be achieved without a reduction in overcrowding," he said.

Really? No remedy is possible without letting prisoners go free? No solution is possible without essentially expunging incarcerated criminals' crimes and penalties and releasing them into society?

It must be great to be an inmate in California, because the U.S. Supreme Court will not only fight for your medical welfare but also essentially pardon you from your crimes!

On the flip side, the court's four conservative justices were concerned that forcing the state to release 33,000 inmates could endanger the public.

You think?

Justice Samuel Alito was correct when he warned that the mass release of inmates would be "gambling with the safety of the people of California. ... I fear that today's decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see." Alito added, "The prisoner release ordered in this case is unprecedented, improvident, and contrary" to federal law.

The fact is that though five U.S. justices fight for the constitutional rights of California inmates, they abandon states' and their own governmental responsibilities, as outlined in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, to protect the lives, liberty and property of U.S. citizens.

Does the high court really believe that California officials can discern 33,000 nonviolent non-repeat offenders? And should we assume that California's liberal judicial system and sanctuary cities won't further coddle these criminals?

Ironically -- or, should I say, tragically -- just two days after the court's edict to release 33,000 California inmates, the Los Angeles Times reported that a computer glitch had prompted California prison officials to mistakenly release about 450 inmates with "a high risk for violence." To add insult to injury, more than 1,000 additional prisoners who possess a high risk of committing drug crimes, property crimes and other offenses were released. No efforts have been made to return any of these criminals behind bars.

While overcrowding and fiscal shortfalls prompt state lawmakers across the country to compromise harsher laws for criminals, I believe that only strictly enforcing law and order will promote deterrence and reduce crimes (and hence incarceration numbers). America's prisons, like our borders, need more reinforcement, not more laxity -- a fact that leads me to pose a possible better solution than the Supreme Court's allowance of inmates being released back into California cities.

Could it be merely coincidental that over the past two decades of California's liberal approach to border control, the state's prison population and economic status have gone down the tubes?

Here are a few statistics that should be entered into this debate:

In 2005, Heather Mac Donald, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security that nearly 25 percent of inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally. If that's true, that number alone exceeds 30,000 illegals in California's prison system.

Moreover, a 2004 report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform concluded that the education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens cost Californians $10.5 billion per year. That's $1,183 annually for every household.

And who can doubt that those figures have increased significantly in the past seven years?

So my question is this: What would the effects be on California's economy and prison population, immediately and in the future, if the illegal immigrants (Mexicans and others) were actually deported? Why can't that "solution" be considered as at least a remedy for the Golden State's economic and incarceration problems?

And if you assume that deportation costs would surpass costs of prisoner release within the state, compare the price of a plethora of one-way bus and plane trips of illegal immigrants with the years of continual costs to human life, property and our courts brought about by 30,000 criminals released on California streets and repeat offenders being re-incarcerated.

To me, it looks as if Californians have a big battle and choice on their hands, which I believe will cross state lines and turn into similar struggles in other states. Do Californians want 33,000 criminals back on their streets or roughly the same number of prisoners who are illegal immigrants deported back to their own countries?

Contact your local representatives and tell them your answer.

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Different Decisions

Thomas Sowell

Two unrelated news stories on the same day show the contrast between government decisions and private decisions.

Under the headline "Foreclosed Homes Sell at Big Discounts," USA Today reported that banks were selling the homes they foreclosed on, at discounts of 38 percent in Tennessee to 41 percent in Illinois and Ohio.

Banks in general try to get rid of the homes they acquire by foreclosure, by selling them quickly for whatever they can get. Why? Because banks are forced by economic realities to realize that they are not real estate companies.

No matter how much expertise bank officials may have in financial transactions, that is very different from knowing the best ways to maintain and market empty houses.

Meanwhile, there was a story on the Fox News Channel about schools that are using their time to indoctrinate kindergartners and fourth graders with politically correct attitudes about sex.

Anyone familiar with the low standards and mushy notions in the schools and departments of education that turn out our public school teachers might think that these teachers would have all they can do to make American children competent in reading, writing and math.

Anyone familiar with how our children stack up with children from other countries in basic education would be painfully aware that American children lag behind children in countries that spend far less per pupil than we do.

In other words, teachers and schools that are failing to provide the basics of education are branching out into all sorts of other areas, where they have even less competence.

Why are teachers so bold when banks are so cautious? The banks pay a price for being wrong. Teachers don't.

If banks try to act like they are real estate companies and hold on to a huge inventory of foreclosed homes, they are likely to lose money big time, as those homes deteriorate and cannot compete with homes marketed by real estate companies with far more experience and expertise in this field.

But if teachers fail to educate children, they don't lose one dime, no matter how much those children and the country lose by their failure. If the schools waste precious time indoctrinating children, instead of educating them, that's the children's problem and the country's problem, but not the teachers' problem.

Sex indoctrination is just one of innumerable "exciting" and "innovative" self-indulgences of the schools. There is no bottom line test of what these boondoggles cost the children or the country.

Incidentally, conservatives who think that schools should be teaching "abstinence" miss the point completely. The schools have no expertise to be teaching sex at all. We should be happy if they ever develop the competence to teach math and English, so that our children can hold their own in international tests given to children in other countries.

Schools are just one government institution that take on tasks for which they have no expertise or even competence.

Congress is the most egregious example. In the course of any given year, Congress votes on taxes, medical care, military spending, foreign aid, agriculture, labor, international trade, airlines, housing, insurance, courts, natural resources, and much more.

There are professionals who have spent their entire adult lives specializing in just one of these fields. They idea that Congress can be competent in all these areas simultaneously is staggering. Yet, far from pulling back-- as banks or other private enterprises must, if they don't want to be ruined financially by operating beyond the range of their competence-- Congress is constantly expanding further into more fields.

Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on into micro-managing automobile companies and medical care.

They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence.

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PAPER: USA has record $61.6 TRILLION in unfunded obligations; $534,000 per household...

U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

The federal government's financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

This gap between spending commitments and revenue last year equals more than one-third of the nation's gross domestic product.

Medicare alone took on $1.8 trillion in new liabilities, more than the record deficit prompting heated debate between Congress and the White House over lifting the debt ceiling.

• STORY: Government's mountain of debt

Social Security added $1.4 trillion in obligations, partly reflecting longer life expectancies. Federal and military retirement programs added more to the financial hole, too.

Corporations would be required to count these new liabilities when they are taken on — and report a big loss to shareholders. Unlike businesses, however, Congress postpones recording spending commitments until it writes a check.

The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $534,000 per household. That's more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.

"The (federal) debt only tells us what the government owes to the public. It doesn't take into account what's owed to seniors, veterans and retired employees," says accountant Sheila Weinberg, founder of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, a Chicago-based group that advocates better financial reporting. "Without accurate accounting, we can't make good decisions."

Michael Lind, policy director at the liberal New America Foundation's economic growth program, says there is no near-term crisis for federal retirement programs and that economic growth will make these programs more affordable.

"The false claim that Social Security and Medicare are about to bankrupt the United States has been repeated for decades by conservatives and libertarians who pretend that their ideological opposition to these successful and cost-effective programs is based on worries about the deficit," he says.

USA TODAY has calculated federal finances based on standard accounting rules since 2004 using data from the Medicare and Social Security annual reports and the little-known audited financial report of the federal government.

The government has promised pension and health benefits worth more than $700,000 per retired civil servant. The pension fund's key asset: federal IOUs.

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HIGH SCHOOL -- 1959 vs 2010

Scenario    1:
Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck's gun rack.
1959    - Vice Principal    comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2010    - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.     


Scenario    2:
Johnny and    Mark get into a fist fight after school.
1959    - Crowd gathers..  Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2010    - Police called and SWAT team arrives -- they arrest both Johnny and Mark. They are both charged with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.


Scenario    3:
Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.
1959    - Jeffrey sent to the Principal's office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class    again.
2010    - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD.


Scenario    4:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his    belt.
1959    - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful    businessman.
2010    - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist.  


Scenario    5:
Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school..
1959 - Mark shares his aspirin with a school buddy that has a headache also.
2010 - The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.  


Scenario    6:
Pedro fails high school English.
1959 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.
2010 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro's English teacher.  English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.     


Scenario    7:
Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant    bed.
1959    - Ants die.
2010    - ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents -- and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny's dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.   


Scenario    8:
Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1959    - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2010    - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison.  Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.     
     
This should hit every email inbox to show how stupid we have become!!

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Ryan-Rubio, Now That's the Ticket!

By Doug Patton

Bill Kristol has always struck me as an aspiring Fox News version of George Will, a kind neoconservative Republican who would inevitably endorse a Mitt Romney or a Tim Pawlenty or a Newt Gingrich. Oh, sure, he has said some nice things about Sarah Palin in his capacity as a commentator, but having worked in the George H.W. Bush administration, it just seemed logical that he would support the establishment candidate who wouldn't rock the Beltway boat too far in either direction. It seems I was wrong.

It all started when I watched Kristol on Fox News Sunday and heard him call for a ticket that made me want to run out and vote for it tomorrow — make that today! I was only half listening, but since I had the program recorded, I backed it up to make sure I had heard him correctly. Did I really hear Bill Kristol endorse a Ryan-Rubio ticket? As in Paul and Marco? Be still my heart! I'm in! Sign me up! Where do I get my early ballot? The election really can't come soon enough.

For those who may be scratching their heads and asking, "Who?" — allow me to explain. Paul Ryan is the idea man Newt Gingrich only thinks he is. As the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Ryan (R-Wis.) has been the anti-Obama for the last two years. Not only has he had the guts to put forth a real budget with real numbers that actually work — something Obama and the Dems only talk about — Paul Ryan has offered up a true fix to save Medicare for today's seniors and reform it for future generations. He is adamantly opposed to Obamacare, which is a ticking time bomb set to destroy the whole Medicare system by robbing half a trillion dollars from it. As a pro-life, pro-family social conservative, he should also be acceptable to that wing of the Republican Party.

Then there is Marco Rubio. Forty years old, newly elected U.S. Senator from Florida, former Speaker of the Florida State House of Representatives, this man is a fiscal and social conservative's dream candidate. A first-generation Cuban-American, his parents knew exactly why they came to the United States — liberty! — and they passed that passion on to their very talented and articulate son. 

Both these men are Roman Catholics, which could be a problem with a certain segment of evangelical Republicans, but think of the sizzle factor. By this I mean that Barack Obama is going to have a billion dollars, the national media and the slickest demeanor in politics going into his 2012 re-election race next year. The GOP desperately needs to nominate a pair of exciting, passionate, charismatic policy wonks — a rare breed, to say the least, but a perfect description of Ryan and Rubio.

Interestingly, Kristol's Weekly Standard has handicapped the race in such a way that the Republican Party almost has to nominate a Ryan-Rubio ticket — or one like it — to win. According to their analysis, of all the current candidates, Ryan would have the greatest geographical advantage against Obama. In fact, to beat the incumbent president, Congressman Ryan would only have to carry GOP-leaning Florida, Ohio and Virginia, as well as his home state of Wisconsin — all of which went to Obama in 2008 — and we will be calling him President Ryan come January 2013. And what better way to lock down Florida than to put its newest favorite son, Marco Rubio, on the ballot?

In 2008, it was tired, old John McCain versus fresh, new Barack Obama. A creative, pro-growth ticket of Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio pitted against the tired old Socialist rhetoric of Barack Obama and Joe Biden would be a stark contrast indeed. In fact, this may be the GOP's only hope. Whomever the Republican Party nominates, they had better represent the future, not the past. 

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© 2011 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns of sage political analysis are published the world over by legions of discerning bloggers, courageous webmasters and open-minded newspaper editors.
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MilesTones Shorts: This Weiner Should Be Grilled

by Rev. Austin Miles

 

Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who is married with a family, got caught posting a lewd photo of himself on the internet. He was wearing only jockey shorts that appear to be fully filled.

 

He then emailed the photo to a few women. This Weiner should be grilled by the house and then get his buns kicked for disgracing public office holders, if that is possible. Those in the house without that syndrom should throw the first kick.

 

The Weiner problem has shadowed Washington, D.C. for years. Recently, politicians like John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and earlier, Newt Gingrich, and a couple of presidents also had the Wiener problem that could not be beaten.

This disease, first discovered in Washington, D.C. has risen dramatically. The problem has been medically defined as; Weiner Syndrome Disaster, or, WSD.

 

We must join forces to fight WSD in order to save this nation. It has become a roving plague that is especially active in politicians whose strong mating instincts can no longer be tamed. Worse still, the disease has now spread overseas and is out of control.

 

The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was considered a front runner to become President of France, suffered the Weiner Problem and tried to rape a maid at a New York hotel. He is now under house arrest…without a maid..

 

Happily, Ireland does not have this problem of married politicians seducing other women. The leading contender for Presdent of Ireland, David Norris, is gay.

 

We must join forces to fight WSD in order to save our nation and the world. Perhaps a couple of shots would help. That would automatically be a go in Ireland.

 

 

Time to go for another walk.

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