Jim McDermott and Sylvester Reyes - Shame On You!

There is no end to the craven attitude of the Obama administration - clearly showing us that it has no love or concern for this great nation or the people who inhabit it. Now they want to criminalize the CIA officers who use harsh interrogation techniques. what's next? That we should house the terrorists in a plush hotel and give them breakfast in bed while our soldiers in that Middle East hell-hole have to hold their fire if there is even one civilian among the enemy?

...Thanks to the vigilance of a couple of bloggers and House Republicans — Rep. Peter Hoekstra, in particular — the $50 billion intelligence authorization bill was stripped of a last-minute amendment that would have made criminals of many U.S. intelligence agents.

Specifically, the Democratic amendment sought to impose prison time and huge fines on CIA and other intelligence operatives who treated their captives in a "cruel, inhuman and degrading way."

Sounds very high-minded. But of course, "cruel, inhuman and degrading" are in the eye of the beholder.

Among the transgressions the bill would have outlawed were "exploiting the phobias of the individual," "depriving the individual of necessary food, water, sleep, or medical care," or even "cramped confinement" or "prolonged isolation."

These are so vague as to be meaningless. A lawyered-up terrorist suspect, working through one of Attorney General Eric Holder's lenient civil courts, could have a field day with this new law.

Think about it: Virtually any agent who in the line of duty did anything to anyone — ranging from shaking a suspect to handcuffing someone in an uncomfortable position to even keeping the air conditioner too low during a terrorist's interrogation — could serve hard time for the crime.

And yes, we do mean hard time. The minimum prison sentence under the bill was 15 years. Imagine spending a quarter of your adult life behind bars because you shoved some terrorist dirtbag a bit too hard into a CIA paddy wagon.

The real outrage is that no one even knew this was in the bill. It was slipped in at the last moment by Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott, obviously with the connivance of the Democratic leadership and Intelligence Committee Chairman Sylvester Reyes...
Read the whole article at IBD "A Craven Congress Criminalizes The CIA"

159 Ways the Senate Bill Is a Government Takeover of Health Care

There are 159 point showing how our Government is going to take over our Health Care. I've got 25 below - go to the website to see the other 134 ways.

Courtesy of the Senate Republican Policy Committee:

Here is a list of new boards, bureaucracies, and programs created in the 2,733 page Senate health care bill, which serves as the framework for President Obama’s health proposal:

1. Grant program for consumer assistance offices (Section 1002, p. 37)
2. Grant program for states to monitor premium increases (Section 1003, p. 42)
3. Committee to review administrative simplification standards (Section 1104, p. 71)
4. Demonstration program for state wellness programs (Section 1201, p. 93)
5. Grant program to establish state Exchanges (Section 1311(a), p. 130)
6. State American Health Benefit Exchanges (Section 1311(b), p. 131)
7. Exchange grants to establish consumer navigator programs (Section 1311(i), p. 150)
8. Grant program for state cooperatives (Section 1322, p. 169)
9. Advisory board for state cooperatives (Section 1322(b)(3), p. 173)
10. Private purchasing council for state cooperatives (Section 1322(d), p. 177)
11. State basic health plan programs (Section 1331, p. 201)
12. State-based reinsurance program (Section 1341, p. 226)
13. Program of risk corridors for individual and small group markets (Section 1342, p. 233)
14. Program to determine eligibility for Exchange participation (Section 1411, p. 267)
15. Program for advance determination of tax credit eligibility (Section 1412, p. 288)
16. Grant program to implement health IT enrollment standards (Section 1561, p. 370)
17. Federal Coordinated Health Care Office for dual eligible beneficiaries (Section 2602, p. 512) 18. Medicaid quality measurement program (Section 2701, p. 518)
19. Medicaid health home program for people with chronic conditions, and grants for planning same (Section 2703, p. 524)
20. Medicaid demonstration project to evaluate bundled payments (Section 2704, p. 532)
21. Medicaid demonstration project for global payment system (Section 2705, p. 536)
22. Medicaid demonstration project for accountable care organizations (Section 2706, p. 538)
23. Medicaid demonstration project for emergency psychiatric care (Section 2707, p. 540)
24. Grant program for delivery of services to individuals with postpartum depression (Section 2952(b), p. 591)
25. State allotments for grants to promote personal responsibility education programs (Section 2953, p. 596)

Mr. Gore Call Your Attorney - Your In Big Trouble For Making Billions From the Big Lie of Global Warming

Senator Inohoff from Oklahoma deserves much credit for sticking with this story about Climategate. He started investigating the allegations at least 10 years ago when no one was listening to him. He has been vindicated. Inohoff says that the United States pays 25% of the United Nations bill! Could that be possible? Deserves investigation in my opinion. Why are we funding this corrupt organization?

So we have the criminal conduct of James Hanson, a climate scientist with NASA. Penn State University Michael Mann's Hockey stick of warming has been debunked, then there are charges against Columbia University and of course there's East Anglia University in the UK where Phil Jones cooked his data.

The to top all this criminal conduct off? Al Gore may be called to testify before congress about his scaremongering movie which has been completely refuted. But he's a billionaire. He should donate all the money to Haiti or he should return it to their owners.

"What Separates a Normal Human Being From a Politician is an Enormouse Amount of Gall"

This article is clear and easy to understand. The article is non-partisan, ...neither anti-republican nor anti-democrat. Rather, it defines quite clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgements made that impact each one of us every day. It was written by Mr. Reese who apparently has been a journalist for 49 years. Nevertheless, whoever wrote this the words are all true and deserve to be read by all Americans.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.

545 PEOPLE--By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems, and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits..... The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power..
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees...
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

Here is a list of taxes you and I have to pay to appease the power-hungry Gods in Washington.
The inheritance tax..
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service FeeTax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids. (I got this essay and list of taxes from an email that has gone viral ....Please forward this to your friends and family and let's vote these power grabbing politicians out of office and get back our America - the one that has freedom - remember?

Reconciliation - Pure Corruption

Abuse Of Power: The White House has threatened to ram through radical health reform by abusing the budget reconciliation process. That would mean a new chapter on corruption for the history books.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told reporters Monday that Democrats, ignoring the will of the American people, will try to pass a big government health reform bill through the "nuclear option" of reconciliation. In so doing, they'd be circumventing a Republican filibuster in the Senate and need only 51 votes.

In response, House Minority Leader John Boehner said the president had "crippled the credibility" of the health "summit" planned for Thursday "by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected."

He said the bill "doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes and slash Medicare benefits" and called the meeting "a Democratic infomercial."

"Using reconciliation," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell charged last week, "would be an acknowledgment that there is bipartisan opposition to their bill."

But it would actually be something far more arrogant. The reconciliation procedure was hatched out of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to limit filibustering on budget bills — in other words, to prevent fiscally conscious senators from curbing Congress' big spending ways...(READ at IBD - "No Nuclear Option"

Obama Needs More Money - Your Ira and 401k

Could this be next? Raiding our IRA's and 401(k)'s? Why not? Just imagine over a trillion dollars just sitting there for those Washington politicians to get their grubby hands on.

You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on "the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams."

In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

They will tell you that you are "investing" your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.

This "conversion" may start out as an optional choice, though you are already free to buy Treasury bonds whenever you want. But as Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker Web site reports: "'Choices' have a funny way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market — so they will effectively tax you by forcing your 'retirement' money to buy them." Read at IBD Here

The Importance of Calling a War A War

"That offers a reminder of what it takes to win a war on terror. Miranda warnings, civilian trials and shaking down blue-haired ladies at airports don't do it. Hunting and killing terrorists do."

Investment Business Daily has a good article today about how Indonesia has lowered their terrorism rate since they started fighting them with the intention of winning....Doing whatever it takes to win and calling it a WAR! Why are we telling our soldiers that they cannot fire on terrorists in Afghanistan if they are hiding among civilians? How can we win with one hand tied behind our back? It's disgusting. It's OK for our soldiers to die but we mustn't kill an Afghan who supposedly is not a fighter? What????

Terrorism: Indonesia has fallen off the map of the most-terror-prone places on Earth, corporate intelligence forecasters say. How did that happen in a nation once plagued by Bali's bombers? By annihilating the enemy.

This week, Britain's Maplecroft group, an assessor of corporate risk, dropped Indonesia from its top 10 nations most likely to experience a mass-casualty terrorist attack. The group bases its Terrorism Risk Index entries on frequency and intensity of terror attacks and a nation's history.

Likewise, the Swedish National Defense College has concluded that there's a diminishing threat in Indonesia.

If that sounds academic, consider that Indonesian and U.S. officials said no significant security risks threaten President Obama ahead of his weeklong trip to Indonesia next month.

Now, to be sure, terrorism isn't completely gone from Indonesia. But there's been a lot of silence recently from that island country on the terror front. For a nation that experienced some fearsome terror attacks in past years, each quiet month is a sign of victory.

The reason isn't hard to recognize:Last September, Indonesian commandos blew away a Malaysian terrorist named Noordin Mohammed Top, who had a hand in every major Indonesian terror attack since the first Bali bombing of 2002.

It says something that getting rid of a single terrorist kingpin could have such an impact on Indonesia's outlook. But it did.

That offers a reminder of what it takes to win a war on terror. Miranda warnings, civilian trials and shaking down blue-haired ladies at airports don't do it. Hunting and killing terrorists do. Read at IBD "Indonesia Cuts Terror"

"Himalayan Glaciers Are NOT Going to Melt Anytime Soon"

It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.

Since the climategate email story broke in November, the standard defense is that while the scandal may have revealed some all-too-human behavior by a handful of leading climatologists, it made no difference to the underlying science. We think the science is still disputable. But there's no doubt that climategate has spurred at least some reporters to scrutinize the IPCC's headline-grabbing claims in a way they had rarely done previously. Read at WSJ " The Continuing Climate Meltdown"

Greens Want To Protect Squirrels That Aren't There

Even Schwarzenegger has had enough of the environmentalists. WOW! Finally he is standing up to these nut cases. Read the article below from WSJ and have a good laugh. We should all just laugh at the ridiculous environmentalists especially the Californian ones. Maybe the governor has found courage to defy environmentalists because of the "outing" of the lying "global warming" Gore and crew. The house of cards is crumbling.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is as green as any governor, from promoting alternative fuels to imposing carbon limits on California to fight climate change.

But even he's had enough of the mindless interference with development that characterizes the actions of many environmentalists. In a state where one out of eight workers is unemployed, Mr. Schwarzenegger is asking the legislature for more authority to fast-track projects after they have undergone an environmental impact study.

"Right now the way it's written, a lot of those laws, it's an invitation to misuse them," he told reporters last week. "And it holds up projects for too long a period of time, especially now."

Mr. Schwarzenegger singled out environmental obstacles that are blocking construction of alternative energy farms in the Mojave Desert. Some of his green allies have become "fanatics," he said, and "go overboard." He then launched an extended riff explaining why he thought environmental objections to the Mojave Desert projects on the grounds they could hurt endangered species were, well, specious.

"So the environmentalists . . . are confused because they want to have renewable energy but then when it comes to the permitting process, creating that renewable energy and building the solar plants, they are then in the way. And they then talk about, 'You cannot go and destroy this squirrel.'"

"I say, 'What squirrel? I was out there, I didn't see a squirrel.'

"They say, 'Well, there could be a squirrel coming very soon.
'
"So I say, 'But there's no squirrel there right now.'

"'But you've got to protect things that could be there.'"...READ at WSJ - Terminator Vs Squirrel.

"Mr. Freeze"

Leadership: As politicians spend America into the fiscal abyss, Republican Gov. Chris Christie has a novel idea: Freeze spending. For such statesmanship, watch him be demonized like no one before.

In his first inaugural, President Reagan noted the spending constraints that individuals face and asked, "Why then should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" And in the most famous line from that speech: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

New Jersey's new governor, the successor of so many corrupt chief executives, is taking action that will make him, like Reagan, the focus of pure hate from those who think what taxpayers earn is Monopoly money to be treated according to the whims and desires of politicians, bureaucrats, union bosses and other power players.

"We must, and we will, shrink our government," Christie pledged as he addressed the legislature on Thursday...

..."New Jersey does not have a revenue problem," Christie told the lawmakers. "We already have higher taxes than any other state in the union. . . . What has it given us? 10.1% unemployment, a dormant economy and a failure of hope for growth in our future. Higher taxes (are) the road to ruin."

IMAGINE SUCH A NOVEL IDEA - TO TIGHTEN ONE'S BELT AND LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS! WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK THIS!

Read at IBD

"The U.S. Goes Wobbly On Russia"

Iran's Dictators Feel Secure Too

...Massive U.S. borrowing, and the false sense of liquidity it produces, is currently all that is supporting large swaths of the debt-ridden Russian economy by providing cheap credit to the overextended oligarchs. Mr. Putin's cronies and other leaders sitting on failed economies benefit as America continues to move from Keynesian to Ponzian economics, desperate to postpone the inevitable reckoning. Runaway inflation in the U.S. is being put off because dollars are making their way out of the country—not by creating jobs or industry, but by boosting gains in the speculative stock and currency markets.

The Obama administration seems to be engaged in an endless campaign to make people believe these problems can and will be solved eventually instead of taking the tough steps required to solve them. It is true that doing what must be done can be a thankless task and that telling the truth does not always poll well. But promises are for candidates. Fulfilling promises is for leaders. (Read the Entire article here).

Mr. Kasparov, leader of The United Civil Front in Russia, is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

"Pick The Target, Personalize It, Freeze It and Polarize It"

The Obama democrats are Saul Alinsky community organizers - for what? For radical change. To change America from a freedom loving people to a nation of sheep led by the "Rules For Radicals" left as the title of Alinksy's book implies. They are currently attacking Paul Ryan's ideas to get America on the road to recovery.

His agenda stymied and his approval numbers sinking, President Obama has realized this year's midterm election is shaping up as a referendum on failed Democratic governance. The new White House plan? Change the discussion, talk about Republicans, and frighten the nation about GOP ideas.

This is the way to read Mr. Obama's sudden re-embrace of his opposition—his unexpected appearance at the House Republican retreat, and his more recent invitation to Republicans to a "bipartisan" health-care summit. And it's the way to understand the recent Democratic targeting, freezing, personalizing and polarizing of Rep. Paul Ryan.

The idea-driven Wisconsin Republican first released his "Roadmap for America's Future" in 2008. The nation can argue about its particulars, but what is inarguable is that Mr. Ryan's plan is a real attempt to solve America's biggest problems, with bold tax, health and entitlement reforms to put the country back on the path to solvency.

At the time, Democrats could barely muster a yawn. So imagine the surprise when, after Mr. Ryan re-released his plan in late January, it became a sudden sensation. Two days later Mr. Obama used his visit to the Republican retreat to thrust it into the national spotlight. The cameras rolling, the president praised Mr. Ryan for putting forward a "serious proposal." He in fact singled out the congressman at least three times. Having done his spotlight bit, Mr. Obama then left it to the rest of the Democratic Party to systematically distort and trash the road map. Read "Obama's Attack Machine II" by Kimberly Strassel at Wall Street Journal.

The Greatest Swindle of All Time - Global Warming

Margaret Wente at "The Globe and Mail" has a great article on the crash and burn of the Global Warming scam. This is definitely the most important news event of 2009. The most important news event of 2010 will be the National unmasking of the farce of the Obama Presidency.

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty…

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

…Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

And now, the science scandals just keep on coming. First there was the vast cache of e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia, home of a crucial research unit responsible for collecting temperature data. Although not fatal to the science, they revealed a snakepit of scheming to keep contradictory research from being published, make imperfect data look better, and withhold information from unfriendly third parties. If science is supposed to be open and transparent, these guys acted as if they had a lot to hide. ..READ AT The Globe And Mail

He's Increasing the Deficit Into the Trillion-sphere and He's Doing It On Purpose

The Wall Street Journal comes the closest in naming the evil intentions of this administration - take the country to bankruptcy and have us all beholden to Washington for our every need. If this isn't evil I don't know what is anymore.

One rule of budget reporting is to watch what the politicians are spending this year, not the frugality they promise down the road. By that measure, the budget that President Obama released yesterday for fiscal 2011 is one of the greatest spend-while-you-can documents in American history.

We now know why the White House leaked word of a three-year spending freeze on a few domestic accounts before this extravaganza was released. No one would have noticed such a slushy promise amid this glacier of spending. The budget reveals that overall federal outlays will reach $3.72 trillion in fiscal 2010, and keep rising to $3.834 trillion in 2011.

As a share of the economy, outlays will reach a post-World War II record of 25.4% this year. This is a new modern spending landmark, up from 21% of GDP as recently as fiscal 2008, and far above the 40-year average of 20.7%.

In the "out years" in mid-decade, the White House promises that spending will fall all the way back to 23% of GDP. Even if you choose to believe such a political prediction, that still means Mr. Obama is proposing a new and more or less permanently higher plateau of federal spending.

And here you thought the "stimulus" was supposed to be temporary. This is also before the baby boomers retire and send Medicare and Social Security accounts soaring.

If this budget is Mr. Obama's first clear demonstration of his long-term governing priorities, then it's hard not conclude that this spending boom is deliberate. It is an effort to put in place programs and spending commitments that will require vast new tax increases and give the political class a claim on far more private American wealth...Read at WSJ

The United States Has A Constitution That Has Served Us Well- Let's Keep It

We could be on the road to losing our sovereignty just as the Europeans have when the European Union was created. With Obama, an internationalist at heart, we should all educate ourselves about this critical issue and ask ourselves do we want to remain Americans? Or do we want to become one state in a supranational body? I know I want to remain an American living in the United States of America, a sovereign nation beholden and bowing to none. Read Jeremy Rabkin's "The Constitution and American Sovereignty" in Hillsdale College's IMPRIMIS published in the July/August 2009 issue.

“WOULD WE be far wrong,” President Lincoln asked in a special message to Congress in 1861, “if we defined [sovereignty] as a political community without a political superior?” Maybe that’s not exhaustive, but it comes on good authority. And notice that for Lincoln, sovereignty is a political or legal concept. It’s not about power. Lincoln didn’t say that the sovereign is the one with the most troops. He was making a point about rightful authority.

By contrast, sovereignty wasn’t an issue in the ancient world. Cicero notes that the ancient Romans had the same word for “stranger” as for “enemy.” In the ancient world, people didn’t interact with foreigners enough to think about their relation to them except insofar as it meant war. Nor was sovereignty an issue in medieval Europe, since the defining character of that period was overlapping authority and a lot of confusion about which authority had primary claims. No one had to think about defining national boundaries. This became an issue only in the modern era, when interaction between different peoples increased.

The first important writer to address sovereignty was Jean Bodin, a French jurist of the late 16th century. In his work, Six Books of the Republic, Bodin set out an understanding of sovereignty whereby the King of France represented an independent political authority rather than owing allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor or to the Pope. In the course of developing this argument, Bodin also advocated religious toleration and insisted that a monarch can neither seize property except by law nor raise taxes except by the consent of a representative body. He was in favor of free trade, and he insisted on the monarch’s general obligation to respect the law of nature and the law of God. His main practical point was that the government must be strong enough to protect the people’s rights, yet restrained enough not to do more than that. Subsequently, I might add, Bodin wrote a book about witchcraft—which he very much opposed. Witches are people who think they can make an end run around the laws of nature and of God using magical spells, and Bodin saw them as a menace.

It was not until the 17th century that the word “sovereignty” became common. This was also when people first came to think of representative assemblies as legislatures. Indeed, the word “legislature” is itself a 17th century term reflecting the modern emphasis on law as an act of governing will rather than impersonal custom. It is therefore related to the modern notion of government by consent. Significantly, it was also in this same era that professional armies came into being. Before the 17th century, for instance, there was no such thing as standard military uniforms. Uniforms indicate that soldiers have a distinct status and serve distinct governments. They reflect a kind of seriousness about defense.

The 17th century is also the period when people began thinking in a systematic way about what we now call international law or the law of nations—a law governing the relation of sovereign nations. The American Declaration of Independence refers to such a law in its first sentence: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them . . . .” The Declaration assumes here that nations have rights, just as individuals do.

Got a Job For An Unemployed Global Warming Alarmist?

It's taken a while but finally the lies and distortions surrounding the so-called "Global Warming" are unraveling for all honest people to see.

Climate Change: Professional global warming alarmists better think about looking for new jobs. It looks like they're in for a long, cold winter — and a frigid spring and summer as well.

Those who've been spreading global-warming fears must be waking up each morning and asking themselves: What's going to happen today? A new revelation about the corruption of climate science has become almost a daily event.

On Thursday, the U.K.'s Telegraph reported that India was pulling out of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and forming its own agency to study global warming. Why? Because the Indian government feels it can't depend on the IPCC's work.

And why should it? The concerns about the IPCC's accuracy are justified. A day after India's announcement, the Netherlands asked the U.N. to explain why the IPCC had said in its 2007 report that 55% of the country was below sea level when the Dutch themselves have reckoned that only 26% of the nation is that low.

This is the same IPCC that said in the same 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 — though there's no scientific study to confirm the claim. It was based on the hunch of one scientist who expressed his opinion to a reporter.

The IPCC withdrew the assertion when it became widely known that it was bogus. But if the panel hadn't been called out, we suspect it would have kept mum... READ the rest at IBD

For the First Time The United States Does NOT Qualify As A Free Economy

Free Economies Tend to be More Prosperous Economies. The Heritage Foundation publishes "The Index Of Economic Freedom" every year. It looks at freedom in different economies around the world. Watch this video at WSJ.

Texas Governor Rick Perry Says No To Obama Education Department's "Race to the Top" Initiative

When it comes to the creeping socialism stretching from President Barack Obama’s Washington, D.C., Texas Governor Rick Perry has a three word response, “No, thank you.” On January 13, Perry announced that Texas would not participate in the U.S. Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” competition....(Read the rest at Center for Individual Freedom)

Al Gore In Washington Investigating Why There's So much Snow?

I love satire. It points out the absurd, the non-sensical and idiocy. Here's a good satire of Al Gore's much discredited "Global warming" written by Timothy Lee at the Center For Individual Freedom.

Is Al Gore in Washington, D.C. this weekend?

That would only be fitting, given Mother Nature’s gesture of laughter toward the global warming hysteria industry in the form of potentially record snowfall for the DC/Baltimore area. Meteorologists are predicting between 20 and 30 inches of snowfall in Washington, which could surpass the record 28 inches the nation’s capital received in the 1928 “Knickerbocker Storm.”

Notably, this forecast doesn’t come in isolation. Rather, it follows by approximately one month a similarly paralyzing December snowstorm whose rock-solid remnants hadn’t yet disappeared from DC landscapes.

All of this begs the question: Where in the world is Al Gore this weekend?

It’s not merely the delicious thought of Gore snowed inside his house, either. There he’d sit, pathetically gazing out his window at the frigid snowfall, unable to expand his already-gigantic carbon footprint by galavanting in his private jet or SUV convoy to his latest Chicken Little global warming speech. It goes beyond that wonderful irony.

Believe it or not, this storm actually presents a novel fundraising opportunity for him and his increasingly-discredited movement. Read more at CFIF.

America Must Continue Exploration

Knowledge must move forward not backward. Mr. Obama do not do anymore damage to our great country. Let's continue exploring the universe and increase our knowledge of the world around us.

Rich Canadians Cross the Border for Health Care But The Poor Can't - This is The United States' Future

Health Care: A Canadian premier, Danny Williams, said Tuesday he was headed for the U.S. for heart surgery. That's a bit ironic, given that Democrats hail Canada-care as a model for the U.S. and call our system "broken."

The provincial governor of Newfoundland and Labrador didn't seem to think so when his deputy, Kathy Dunderdale, told the National Post: "He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done."

She didn't disclose exactly where, but she assured Canadians that his prognosis was excellent and she'd fill in for him during his three- to 12-week recovery period. "Ultimately, we have to be the gatekeepers of our own health," Dunderdale said.

Now, someone like Williams, who's both an elected official and independently wealthy, ought to be able to get world-class medical care in Canada. But he couldn't. Because Canada's single-payer health care system reduces the quality and quantity of care.

A physician can't just go into business in Canada. He or she is joined at the hip to Canada's health care system as paymaster, with any private care placed under strict government price controls.

That means long lines of rationing as well as lower-quality care. It's so bad that even the premier prefers to head to the States.

He's not alone. Other premiers, including Quebec's Robert Bourassa in 1990, have sought that care, as has Member of Parliament Belinda Stronach in 2007. According to the Fraser Institute, 41,000 Canadians, or 1% of the population, were referred by their own doctors for nonemergency medical care abroad in 2009, a rise of about 10% from a year earlier.

Thousands more don't even wait for a referral, leaving the country to seek treatment on their own. Clinics in U.S. cities like Buffalo, Seattle and Detroit do a booming business with Canadian medical tourists. Canadian newspapers are filled with U.S. doctors advertising their services.

For the wealthy Williams, U.S. health care paid for out of pocket is a viable option. Not so for Canada's poor. If the U.S. moves to a Canadian-style health care model, not even the rich will be able to run from the unpleasant side effects of a socialist system. Read "Canada-Care's Secret" at IBD.

Chavez Is Closing The Fence - Cuba Is The Model

Let's remember that Chavez was voted into office. This thugs model for governing is Cuba. Cuba is a totalitarian country - Complete rule by Castro. Ms O'Grady reports how he is closing down the few remaining TV stations left in Venezuela. We should pay attention and fight the creeping signs of dictatorship over the past year in our own country: Government takeover of Healthcare, dictating to our Banks, Cap and Trade, growth of the Unions, increasing the national debt to soaring unheard of amount and on and on... By the way do you hear Obama protest against Chavez moves to total power? Not a peep ....

The US -"They Don't Lead Morally and Politically Anymore" Lech Walesa

From the Gdansk Lenin Shipyards to the city of the Back of the Yards, Lech Walesa, former President of Poland, and preeminent community organizer, attended a fundraiser on Friday, January 29, to endorse Adam Andrzejewski (an gee eff skie) who is one of six Republicans seeking the nomination of his party for Governor of Illinois.

Walesa , who led trade union strikes in Poland in the early 1980s, managed to bring about needed economic and political change for laborers without resorting to violence.

He led the Solidarność or Solidarity, a broad anti-Soviet social movement. Its activities included workers taking to the streets to demand the right to self-govern in a communist country.Eventually, Solidarity claimed victory, and the Polish people elected Walesa as president in 1990.

In a video-taped interview by a group known as foundingbloggers.com, Walesa indicated that the U.S. was heading toward socialism because of two factors:

The issue with the banks; and the government wastes all the money; they build a bureaucracy; just for itself.

He went on to reassure:
"But we will not let you devolve to communism here. " The American Thinker