Forgive me for questioning the network known for "fake but true" and the most transparent administration ever, but without evidence this isn't "Operation shiny object", I'll treat this story as the bull it most likely is.

Hard to say. What's the provenance of the various emails?

Ask Dan Rather about the integrity of documents See-B.S. uses. 

Puffington Host analysis:

2 out 3 second appeals court justices found to be racist and waging war on women....

This just in, second appeals court justices receive audit notices from IRS.

I think Kaplan must be doing Hunter S. Thompson levels of drugs to come up with that last article.

Puffington Host is good analysis? You are such a kidder, BD! 

Are your political opinions ObamaCare compliant?

Learn more at IRS.gov

http://pjmedia.com/blog/immigrating-to-america-is-not-an-entitlement/?singlepage=true

Immigrating to America Is Not an Entitlement

Immigration law may be broken but you don't fix it by rewarding law breakers.



by
Ying Ma


As the drumbeat for comprehensive immigration reform grows louder, the related public debate has not become any more edifying.  Self-serving Democrats, delusional Republicans, and shameless illegal aliens (who prefer to call themselves “immigration rights activists”) insist that legalizing some 11 million illegal immigrants in this country is the right thing to do and label those who disagree as anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic.
 

Amid the finger pointing and political intimidation, some fundamentally flawed assertions have repeatedly surfaced. Below is some common sense that highlights the absurdity of the faulty assumptions.
 

Immigrating to the United States is a privilege, not a right. It certainly is not an entitlement program.
 
 
 
Proponents of comprehensive immigration reform like to emphasize that America’s immigration system is broken, and they are right. Yet they often justify illegal immigration by pointing out that even if aspiring immigrants wanted to get in line for legal immigration, many do not have a line to get into — because they do not have relatives in this country with whom to reunite or they cannot qualify for a limited number of visa categories (such as those for work, education, or investment).
 

Few acknowledge that in life, reality is by nature more unpleasant than our most fervent wishes. Just because people really, really want to come to the United States does not mean they have the right to do so.
 

By numerous measures, America’s tax system is broken as well, and supporters of limited government resent the fact that their tax dollars are extracted to fund a bloated welfare state they despise. Nevertheless, these individuals continue to pay their taxes. Similarly, those who wish to move to America should not be excused from respecting this country’s laws.
 

Certainly, changes to the existing system should be made. For instance, proposals to increase the flow of high-skilled labor make perfect sense. But America’s broken immigration system is not a justification for illegals to walk across the border or overstay their visas.
 

Do not let anyone obfuscate the difference between legal and illegal immigration. Denouncing the latter does not mean being hostile to the former.
 

This country has a legal immigration process in place. It is by no means perfect and imposes cumbersome restrictions. Nevertheless, that process is the law of the land. Numerous individuals from around the world follow it out of respect for the rule of law and for the country they wish to adopt as their new home. They make huge sacrifices, incur heavy financial costs, and wait patiently. Husbands are separated from their wives for years; siblings wait over a decade to be reunited; and high-skilled laborers whose visas are not renewed end up returning to their home countries. Reform efforts to ease the restrictions for these legal applicants are sensible, but amnesty for those who have violated U.S. immigration laws not only rewards bad behavior; it dishonors and dismisses the persistence and sacrifice of legal immigrants.
 

No matter how politicians spin it, offering provisional legal status to illegals is rewarding them with amnesty.
 
 
 
The right to live and work in the United States is a precious commodity. It is also precisely what the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight proposes to offer to illegal aliens who are already here. Although these individuals must wait ten years to apply for a green card and 13 to apply for citizenship, they would be eligible for provisional legal status almost immediately.
 

To be sure, these illegal immigrants would have to pay a fine, pay taxes, and not have a serious criminal record before they qualify for provisional legal status, but these conditions hardly amount to a stiff punishment for lawbreaking behavior. In fact, they form the baseline of what America demands from immigrants who seek to enter this country legally.
 

More importantly, legal status in America — even if short of a green card or citizenship — is a status coveted by millions around the world. Impoverished men and women in sub-Saharan Africa, unemployed or under-employed college graduates in China or India, political and religious dissidents who are persecuted by authoritarian governments from Tehran to Moscow, or even scientists from Canada or Europe would gladly accept provisional legal status TODAY if it were offered to them. Numerous legal immigration applicants who are currently standing in line would do the same, especially since many have waited and will continue to wait for years.
 

But it is America’s existing illegal immigrants who will receive preference for the right to live and work in the United States.
 
 
 
Offering a pathway to citizenship to illegal aliens who arrived in America when they were young only strengthens the incentives for more illegal immigration.
 

Republicans and Democrats have been falling all over themselves to offer a pathway to citizenship to young illegal immigrants who are known as Dreamers. According to President Barack Obama, these are “young Americans in all but name.” Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has written that these are “children who were brought here illegally have committed no crime and in most instances know no other country.” Thanks to Obama, these young illegals have now received a two-year reprieve and a chance to apply for work permits, assuming they have no criminal records, are successful in school, or have served in the military. The Senate’s Gang of Eight has proposed offering Dreamers a fast track to citizenship, which begins with a five-year path to a green card.
 

Before politicians on both sides of the aisle gush about their effort to create new Americans, let’s not forget that in the immigration experience, children are not just innocent bystanders of an illegal act. Rather, they are often the primary reason for a family to leave one life to seek another in a foreign land. They are the impetus for adults to work at sub-minimum-wage jobs and the reward for a family’s hard work and shared sacrifice. It is for their brighter future that immigrants — both legal and illegal — fight. By rushing to give them amnesty, Congress would be strengthening, not weakening, the incentives for illegal immigration.
 

Moreover, the absurdity of this mad rush to amnesty would only be compounded by the even more absurd minimal requirement that such young illegals have attended school and will continue to do so. Getting an education in America, just like living and working here, is a privilege sought by millions around the world. Unlike joining the military, going to school is not a sacrifice that requires fighting and dying for America. It is not even a social service that young illegals have somehow provided for their adopted home and for which they now deserve a reward.
 

If the U.S. immigration policy is meant to be a vehicle of American altruism, there are more qualified recipients than the citizens of Mexico.
 

Amnesty proponents like to harp on the heart-wrenching personal stories of illegal immigrants who leave destitution and desperation in their home country to seek a new life in America. Some have even suggested that rejecting such immigrants would be un-American. If poverty and tragedy were to serve as the core criteria for which America should expand its legal immigration flow (and this is a debate policymakers need to have), there are many more individuals around the world who would be more deserving of legal status in America than many of those who are currently here illegally.
 

At the moment, a majority of the illegal immigrants in America are Hispanic and most of them hail from Mexico. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, unauthorized immigrants from Mexico made up 58 percent of America’s illegal immigrant population in 2010. Yet however touching their stories or however painful their journeys, illegal immigrants from Mexico are not the only ones who harbor aspirations for a life in America; they are not even most in need of it.
 

While the World Bank reports gross national income (GNI) per capita for the world’s least developed countries (such as Myanmar, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Tanzania) as $748 in 2011, the GNI per capita for Latin America and Caribbean countries was $8,575 for the same year. It is to this latter, richer set of countries that Mexico belongs. If charity were a key goal of U.S. immigration policy, why not expand immigration privileges to citizens of the world’s poorest countries (including some that are south of the border)? Citizens from these countries lack the ability to just walk across America’s southern border, but their plight is in many ways far more wretched. No doubt they would gladly immigrate to the United States for provisional legal status and work hard for the American Dream.
 

The media has now taken to raving regularly about illegal Hispanic high school students who earn 4.0 plus GPAs, but does a boy suffering from starvation in Senegal or a girl suffering from malnutrition in Uganda deserve less of Americans’ sympathy or less of a chance to have a home and an education in the United States? Certainly, Americans do not believe that such children are any less capable of earning a 4.0 GPA.
 

Just because you’re illegal does not make you inhuman, but it does mean that you are a lawbreaker who should face the risk of deportation.
 

Americans do not have the heart or the resources to deport all 11 million plus illegal immigrants who live in this country, especially since almost two-thirds of them have lived here for over a decade and nearly half are parents of minor children. But reasonable Americans have the right to ask why their government has failed to enforce immigration laws in decades past and why it now continues that failure by refusing to arrest and deport those who flagrantly flaunt their illegal status in public.
 

Already, the Obama administration prohibits Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, under most circumstances, from carrying out two crucial elements of the country’s immigration laws: 1) apprehending persons solely for entering the United States illegally, and 2) apprehending persons for overstaying their visas in the United States. As such, illegal immigrants in America not only receive de facto amnesty, they proudly call themselves “immigration rights activists” and grant interviews to the New York Times, testify before Congress, openly protest on the streets, and otherwise brazenly spit in the face of America’s rule of law — and face no legal consequences. It is no surprise that America’s immigration system is broken and continues to provide incentives for more illegal immigration.

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/03/foghorn/breaking-details-of-shumers-mandatory-background-check-bill-s-374/

BREAKING: Details of Schumer’s Mandatory Background Check Bill (S. 374)

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Nick Leghorn



 
We’ve finally gotten a look at Chuck Shumer’s proposed mandatory background check bill, and the truth is that this thing is ridiculous. The bill is overly broad, has some crazy penalties, and cracks the door WIDE open for government abuse. The full text of the bill is here, and since it’s in that terrible bill-speak legalese, I’ll try to summarize it for you . . .
 


The main provision of the bill is that any transfer of a firearm, no matter how fleeting, needs to go through an FFL and the transferee needs to have a background check performed through the NICS system. There are some exceptions, but they aren’t very good ones. Page 11 starts off the meat and potatoes for those following along at home.
 
In order to qualify for an exception to the rule of all transfers going through an FFL, the following requirements must be met:
 1.The temporary transfer takes place at the owner’s house
 2.The gun can’t be moved from the property
 3.The transfer must last less than 7 days
 
There’s also a poorly worded exception for hunting and “sporting purposes,” as well as gifts to family members. What that means is if you go on a trip for more than 7 days and leave your guns at home unattended with a roommate, its now a felony under this law. And if I’m reading this right, this applies if you leave your guns with your spouse, but don’t transfer them as a gift.
 
There’s also no exception for lending guns to friends for the afternoon on the range. I regularly loan out my older competition guns to friends who want to compete in local matches, as the guns can be expensive and its easier to figure out if competition shooting is right for you if you can give it a try. Under this new bill, that would be illegal.
 
It also appears that it would be illegal to hand a firearm to someone other than the owner, effectively killing range trips with friends.
 
I quote from the bill the definition of “transfer” includes:
 

shall include a sale, gift, loan, return from pawn or consignment, or other disposition
 
Broad much? The only exception appears to be handing a gun to a potential buyer to evaluate and lending guns at a shooting range but ONLY IF:
 

at a shooting range located in or on premises owned or occupied by a duly incorporated organization organized for conservation purposes or to foster proficiency in firearms and the firearm is, at all times, kept within the premises of the shooting range;
 
So, only facilities where the stated purpose in the incorporation documents is conservation (hunting) or firearms proficiency. And if you’re shooting on your own private property, or on BLM land, ANY lending of guns EVEN IN THE PRESENCE OF THE OWNER for recreational shooting would be illegal.
 
As one of the provisions designed to “alleviate the fears” of the gun-owning public, it looks like there’s a provision in here that permanently sets the price of all FFL transfer fees to the same amount. That number will be set by the Attorney General, which these days is still Eric Holder. The current speculation is that this FFL fee will be used to do what the NFA tax was originally designed to do — make buying or transferring a gun so expensive that almost no one can do it.
 
In addition to the transfer requirements, it also makes it a federal felony to fail to report a lost or stolen firearm. If the gun isn’t reported to the authorities within 24 hours, that’s a 5-year stretch in a federal pokey you just earned yourself.
 
The bill also specifically removes the ability for people with state permits to skip the NICS check. Currently in Texas, those with a concealed handgun license can purchase a gun without a NICS check as they’ve already passed a more stringent background check than NICS provides. This puts more strain on the FFL as well as the NICS system.
 
As written, this bill is a trainwreck. It creates felons out of people who may not have been aware that their roommate (on their month long trip through Asia) even owned a firearm, much less that there was one in the house. It allows the government to regulate the price of background checks, enacting a mandatory fee (read tax) to be paid every time you want to exercise a right guaranteed by the Second Amendment, and lets the government set the fee at whatever level they choose with no recourse. It also creates de facto registration through the NICS checks as well as the paperwork preservation requirements already in place.
 
You don’t have to pay a fee to vote, as the supreme court ruled that unconstitutional. But for Chuck Shumer, its okay to charge a fee to exercise your Second Amendment right. And he’ll tell you how much to pay.

Gee, panic liquidation of assets boosts taxes received for now...

Bet you won't see this trend continue.

IRS official Lerner speedily approved exemption for Obama brother’s ‘charity’
 
5:06 PM 05/14/2013

Charles C. Johnson

Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for years.
 
According to the organization’s filings, Lerner approved the foundation’s tax status within a month of filing, an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations that have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval.
 
Lerner also appears to have broken with the norms of tax-exemption approval by granting retroactive tax-exempt status to Malik Obama’s organization.
 
The National Legal and Policy Center filed an official complaint with the IRS in May 2011 asking why the foundation was being allowed to solicit tax-deductible contributions when it had not even applied for an IRS determination. In a New York Post article dated May 8, 2011, an officer of the foundation admitted, “We haven’t been able to find someone with the expertise” to apply for tax-exempt status.
 
Nevertheless, a month later, the Barack H. Obama Foundation had flown through the grueling application process. Lerner granted the organization a 501(c) determination and even gave it a retroactive tax exemption dating back to December 2008.
 
The group’s available paperwork suggests an extremely hurried application and approval process. For example, the group’s 990 filings for 2008 and 2009 were submitted to the IRS on May 30, 2011, and its 2010 filing was submitted on May 23, 2011.
 
Lerner signed the group’s approval [pdf] on June 26, 2011.
 
It is illegal to operate for longer than 27 months without an IRS determination and solicit tax-deductible contributions.
 

The ostensibly Arlington, Va.-based charity was not even registered in Virginia despite the foundation’s website including a donation button that claimed tax-exempt status.
 
Its president and founder, Abon’go “Roy’ Malik Obama, is Barack Obama’s half-brother and was the best man at his wedding, but he has a checkered past. In addition to running his charity, Malik Obama ran unsuccessfully to be the governor of Siaya County in Kenya. He was accused of being a wife beater and seducing the newest of his twelve wives while she was a 17-year-old school girl.
 
Sensing something wrong when he and a group of Missouri State students visited Kenyan in 2009, Ken Rutherford, winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on banning landmines, determined that Malik Obama was an “operator” and elected to give a donation of 400 pounds of medical supplies to a local clinic instead.
 
“We didn’t know what he was going to do with them,” Rutherford told the New York Post in 2011.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/14/irs-official-lerner-approved-exemption-for-obama-brothers-charity/

http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-monsters-that-walk-among-us/?singlepage=true

The Monsters that Walk Among Us

If you sat next to Ariel Castro in a movie theater, you would never guess how evil he was.



by
Jack Dunphy


I remember the first person I arrested for murder.  I had been out of the LAPD academy only a month or two, and my training officer and I were assigned a radio call known as a “welfare check.” These calls most often arise when someone is unable to contact an elderly relative or friend.  We went to the house in question, the home of an elderly widow, and found no evidence of a forced entry or any other outward sign of trouble.  But given the woman’s age and the accumulation of mail and newspapers at her front door, and as none of her neighbors had seen her in some time, my partner made the decision that we should break in.  We did so, expecting to find the woman dead of a heart attack, a stroke, or any of the other natural causes that claim people her age.
 
Yes, she was dead all right, but there was nothing natural about what had killed her.

 


When the homicide detectives arrived and assessed the scene, they told us it appeared that the woman had been raped and then stabbed to death with a kitchen knife.  The killer, having worked up an appetite, cooked and ate a meal as the woman lay dying in the next room.  To this day I am haunted by the thought of the terror she must have felt in those final moments of her life.  Who could have done such a thing, I wondered.
 
Later, with the detectives still sifting the crime scene for evidence, there was little for my partner and me to do but stand near the yellow crime-scene tape and keep the curious at bay.  A young man of about 20 approached and asked us what was going on, and in the most perfunctory of terms we told him that the woman in the house had died.  A detective in the house contacted us by radio and told us to step out of earshot from the man, and when we had done so the detective informed us we had been talking with the likely killer.
 
As an eager rookie, my inclination was to slap the handcuffs on him as quickly as I could.  My partner, with his greater experience and accompanying wisdom, played it differently.  He continued to engage the man in small talk, cleverly eliciting some admissions that would later prove valuable in the murder case against him.  We would come to learn that the woman had befriended the killer — a neighbor — some years before and often hired him to perform odd jobs around the house.  He had completed one such job before raping and killing her.
 
While the man struck me as a bit odd, to my then-untutored eye there was nothing in his demeanor that suggested he was capable of the horrible crime he had just committed.  In speaking with other neighbors later, I didn’t find one who wasn’t completely shocked by what the man had done.
 
Which brings us to the unfathomable, decade-long ordeal of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, the three women recently freed from their kidnapper in Cleveland.  How, we wonder, could one man kidnap and hold in captivity even one person for so long without being discovered?  How twisted must a man be to carry out such a crime not just once but three times?  And how can so twisted a person move among us without our detecting the depth of his malevolence?
 
We want to comfort ourselves with the delusion that we can spot the dangerous people in our midst.  We look at the man accused in the Cleveland case, Ariel Castro, and we tell ourselves we would have known something was amiss behind the walls of his ordinary looking clapboard home.  Never in my neighborhood, we say.
 
But the truth is that most of us haven’t a clue about what goes on inside our neighbors’ homes, even in those neighborhoods described, like Ariel Castro’s, as “tight-knit.”  As anyone who reads the papers knows, this term is most often a press euphemism for “poor” or “crime-plagued,” and indeed the Cleveland Police Department’s crime map reveals that officers in Castro’s neighborhood are kept busy.  Zoom in on the map to the area just south and west of the I-90/I-71 interchange, expand the date range from the last seven days to the last 30, 60 and 90, and watch the dots on the map multiply like so many poisonous spores in a Petri dish.
 
I’ve spent most of my police career in Los Angeles working in similar neighborhoods, and even in those that genuinely are “tight-knit” there are always those few individuals who, like Ariel Castro, are themselves at varying stages of coming unraveled.  I’ve arrested murderers who had been living right under the noses of people who couldn’t bring themselves to believe that their friend, neighbor, or even family member had shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned someone to death.  Once he washes the blood off his hands, your typical murderer looks much the same as anyone else.
 
Did the police make mistakes in their handling of the three women’s disappearances?   Perhaps.  Michelle Knight’s name was dropped from an FBI database of missing persons only 15 months after her disappearance, but there is little cause to believe her continued presence in the database would have led to her recovery.  After all, Amada Berry’s and Gina DeJesus’s names were in the same database the entire time they were held, to no effect at all.  And as for those who say the police should have done more to find the women, one must ask: What more could they have done?  In all three abductions the police had no witnesses to describe a suspect and no crime scene from which to pluck forensic evidence.  And there was nothing about Ariel Castro that would have offered police cause to suspect him in the cases or to search his home.
 
No, it isn’t easy to spot the evil person next door.  Witness the various characterizations of the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, whom most acquaintances described as ordinary young men incapable of such a horrific crime.  And now we know that the brothers have been implicated in a 2011 triple murder in Waltham, Mass., not far from the Watertown neighborhood where the elder brother was killed in a shootout with police and the younger one was captured.  How many of their friends suspected they were such cold-hearted killers?  How many of the strangers they encountered every day saw even a hint of the darkness in their souls?  None of them, I’m sure.
 
So it is with Ariel Castro.  Yes, now that he’s been identified as the proprietor of the Seymour Avenue Dungeon, his neighbors are making claims that they suspected him of bad things all along.  There was a naked woman chained up in the backyard, went one report, but the police failed to investigate.  All of these tales were concocted after the rescue, police say; there was nothing about Ariel Castro or his house that would have offered the slightest hint at what he was doing behind his closed door.
 
Ariel Castro is accused of unspeakably evil acts, but like the Tsarnaev brothers, like that murderer I arrested years ago, like all those killers on the loose in Chicago and most other cities you could name, he went unrecognized until the evidence of his crimes leapt out and grabbed someone’s attention.
 
Not every criminal — or even every murderer — sinks to the level of depravity occupied by the likes of the Tsarnaev brothers and Ariel Castro.  But consider: The Boston Globe reported that police solved 43 percent of the city’s murders in 2012, leaving 57 percent of the killers out and about and free to kill again.  In Ariel Castro’s Cleveland the police do a better job of things, with a 2012 murder clearance rate of 69 percent, but that still leaves 31 percent of its killers on the loose.  And in Chicago, a mere 132 of the city’s 507 murders that occurred in 2012 were solved, for a clearance rate of just 26 percent.  That’s a lot of killers running around out there going to restaurants and the movies and partaking in all the other pleasures the less homicidally inclined enjoy, maybe even sitting in the theater right next to . . . you.
 
Enjoy the show.

If something bad is going down, use your cell to dial 911, and start feeding intel to dispatch in real time as you move to act. You should be sure to ID yourself and give your physical description so hopefully it gets passed on to the responding officers. If the bad guy(s) whack you, at least the inital responder have some idea what's going on.

Don't be visibly armed when responding officers get there. Meaning reholster, if possible.

If you are confronted by officers, comply. This is not the time to debate while being taken down at gunpoint. Drop your gun. I don't care if it's a $5,000 Nighthawk Custom. You can buy a new gun, you can't buy a new head.

https://www.facebook.com/LarryConnersKMOV/posts/10151393396885544

Larry Conners KMOV


 
Shortly after I did my April 2012 interview with President Obama, my wife, friends and some viewers suggested that I might need to watch out for the IRS.
 I don't accept "conspiracy theories", but I do know that almost immediately after the interview, the IRS started hammering me.
 At the time, I dismissed the "co-incidence", but now, I have concerns ... after revelations about the IRS targeting various groups and their members.
 Originally, the IRS apologized for red-flagging conservative groups and their members if they had "Tea Party" or "patriot" in their name.
 Today, there are allegations that the IRS focused on various groups and/or individuals questioning or criticizing government spending, taxes, debt or how the government is run ... any involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, or social economic reform/movement.
 In that April 2012 interview, I questioned President Obama on several topics: the Buffet Rule, his public remarks about the Supreme Court before the ruling on the Affordable Care Act. I also asked why he wasn't doing more to help Sen. Claire McCaskill who at that time was expected to lose. The Obama interview caught fire and got wide-spread attention because I questioned his spending.
 I said some viewers expressed concern, saying they think he's "out of touch" because of his personal and family trips in the midst of our economic crisis.
 The President's face clearly showed his anger; afterwards, his staff which had been so polite ... suddenly went cold.
 That's to be expected, and I can deal with that just as I did with President George H. Bush's staff when he didn't like my questions.
 Journalistic integrity is of the utmost importance to me. My job is to ask the hard questions, because I believe viewers have a right to be well-informed. I cannot and will not promote anyone's agenda - political or otherwise - at the expense of the reporting the truth.
 What I don't like to even consider ... is that because of the Obama interview … the IRS put a target on me.
 Can I prove it? At this time, no.
 But it is a fact that since that April 2012 interview ... the IRS has been pressuring me.

The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.

Plan accordingly.

I like it.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/insurers-predict-100-400-obamacare-rate-explosion/article/2529523

Insurers predict 100%-400% Obamacare rate explosion

May 13, 2013 | 3:02 pm


Paul Bedard

Washington Secrets
The Washington Examiner


Internal cost estimates from 17 of the nation's largest insurance companies indicate that health insurance premiums will grow an average of 100 percent under Obamacare, and that some will soar more than 400 percent, crushing the administration's goal of affordability.

New regulations, policies, taxes, fees and mandates are the reason for the unexpected "rate shock," according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released a report Monday based on internal documents provided by the insurance companies. The 17 companies include Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kaiser Foundation.
 

The report found that individuals will face "premium increases of nearly 100 percent on average, with potential highs eclipsing 400 percent. Meanwhile, small businesses can expect average premium increases in the small group market of up to 50 percent, with potential highs over 100 percent."

One company said that new participants in the individual market could see a premium increase of 413 percent when new requirements on age rating and required benefits are taken into account, said the report. "The average yearly cost for a new customer in the individual market grows from $1,896 to $3,708 -- a $1,812 cost increase," it added.

The key reasons for the surge in premiums include providing wider services than people are now paying for and adding less healthy people to the roles of insured, said the report.

It concluded: "Despite promises that the law will lower costs, [Obamacare] will in fact cause the premiums of many Americans to spike substantially. The broken promises are numerous, and the empirical data reveal that many Americans, from recent college graduates to older adults, will not be able to afford the law's higher costs."

http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/05/13/meet-the-irs-team-in-charge-of-exempt-organization-reviews/?singlepage=true

Meet the IRS Team in Charge of Exempt Organization Reviews

May 13th, 2013 - 3:00 pm





Their work is in the news, so let’s meet the leadership team at the Internal Revenue Service that was in charge of reviewing those Tea Party applications for 501 (c) status.

Lois Lerner is the director of Exempt Organizations.  All of the mischief which occurred at the IRS took place under her supervision.

 
 

Prior to joining the IRS, Lerner was a bureaucrat at the Federal Election Commission.  Beginning in 1981, she served as an assistant general counsel, and was appointed in 1986 to head the Enforcement Division. Prior to joining the FEC, she was a staff attorney in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. She is a graduate of Northeastern University in Boston and received her Juris Doctor from Western New England College of Law in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Nan Downing is the director of Examinations.  She helped implement a “Fast Track Settlement” process for 501(c) applicants.



It must not apply to any conservative or Tea Party groups because they have been waiting for determinations for years after multiple intrusive questions about volunteers and donors.

David Fish is the acting director of Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements at the IRS.



Fish helped implement electronic applications for exempt status.  The electronic applications apparently didn’t speed up the process for Tea Party groups who have been waiting years for determinations.

Melany Partner is the IRS director of Customer Education and Outreach for Exempt Organizations.



Her job is (presumably) to help applicants like the many dozens of Tea Party groups understand and navigate the IRS 501(c) application process. Obviously there’s some room for improvement, to say the least.

Also read: White House Counsel Knew in April of IRS’s Targeting of Conservatives

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/05/13/a-few-of-the-crazy-things-the-irs-asked-conservative-groups-to-divulge/

A Few of the Crazy Things the IRS Asked Conservative Groups to Divulge Add Up to a Pattern and Purpose





by
Bryan Preston

Mary Katherine Ham rounds up 10 of the crazy things that the IRS sought from conservative and Tea Party groups during its abusive phase. I’ll focus on a few of those.
 
1. The IRS wanted every bit of information that these organizations had on their members.

 




Much of that information would allow the IRS to identify individual members of the targeted groups. Not just staff and donors, but members.
 
2. The IRS wanted information on the groups’ past and present employees and their relationships, with a special focus on familial relationships.
 



3. Just in case Point 2 wasn’t clear enough, yes, family members must be included.
 



4. Everything you turn over to the IRS will go public.
 



The information that the IRS sought went well beyond what it could reasonably have been seeking in the name of determining whether the groups qualified for the tax exemption. It was seeking enough information to build out a full network of every one of the conservative groups and be able to database them and cross-link them with each other. That the information would have been public is a tell of one place it would have ended up: In the computers of the data-driven Obama campaign and its allies. Anyone else seeking it would probably have had a tougher time getting their hands on it, but the Obama campaign, the Media Matters crew, any Democrat opposition researcher — they would have gotten it.
 
Based on the Obama campaign’s love of all things data and its behavior toward Romney donors, it’s pretty clear that gathering the information through the IRS was not the end game, it was a stop on the way to an end: Public exposure, humiliation and attack against the individuals that the IRS had scooped up on these forms — donors, staff, members, and their families. Secondarily, anyone thinking about donating to or working with any of the targeted groups would have to think twice about the consequences that might follow their exercise of their free speech rights. There are a lot of people out there with messy divorces, bankruptcies and other skeletons in their closets. Just ask Jack Ryan how sensitive Obama and company are with unflattering private information.
 
It’s clear from the questions above that while the IRS may not have had an enemies list when its intrusive questioning regime began in 2010, it was building one, and a very large and sophisticate one at that.

Not All Muslims imprison, torture two men for helping someone convert to Christianity
 
7:57 AM 05/13/2013
 

Jim Treacher

 
This post is racist because it contains facts about what some Muslims did. The following incident has nothing to do with any other incidents, past or future.
 
AFP:
 

A Saudi court jailed a Lebanese man for six years and sentenced him to 300 lashes after convicting him of encouraging a Saudi woman to convert to Christianity, Saudi dailies reported Sunday.
 
The same court sentenced a Saudi man convicted in the same case to two years in prison and 200 lashes for having helped the young woman flee the ultra-conservative, US-backed Sunni kingdom, local daily Al-Watan said.
 
A court delivered the verdict in Khobar in the kingdom’s east, where the woman and the two accused worked for an insurance company…
 
The woman, known only as “the girl of Khobar,” was granted refuge in Sweden where she lives under the protection of unspecified NGOs, according to local press reports…
 
Saudi women are banned from travelling without their guardians’ permission.
 
Which would be bad, if she wasn’t being subjugated by members of a Designated Victim Group. In the byzantine calculus of political correctness, Islam > feminism. It’s only a War on Women when Republicans refuse to pay for other people’s birth control, not when an entire gender is subjugated by a religion we’re not supposed to criticize because it’s exotic.
 
We have to respect their cultural differences, because they’re not conservative Caucasians with cash. And if Not All Muslims decide to blow up some more people at a marathon or someplace, well, we should’ve thought about that before we decided to be evil Americans.
 
Any questions? Good. Get back to work. You’ve got taxes to pay.
 
(Hat tip: Eugene Volokh)
 
P.S. Boston bombers’ mosque recommended men beat their wives. Which has nothing to do with anything, racist. Racist.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/not-all-muslims-imprison-torture-two-men-for-helping-someone-convert-to-christianity/

The IRS admits to ‘targeting’ conservative groups, but were they also ‘leaking’?
 
9:42 AM 05/13/2013
 

Matt K. Lewis
 
A little over a year ago, I reported that, ”It is likely that someone at the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney’s political action committee to the National Organization for Marriage, says the group.”
 
Now — on the heels of news the IRS’s apology for having targeted conservative groups — NOM is renewing their demand that the Internal Revenue Service reveal the identity of the people responsible.
 
“There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law,” said NOM’s president Brian Brow, in a prepared statement. “The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. We and the American people deserve answers.”
 
Recent reports indicate the IRS may have begun targeting conservative groups as early as 2010.
 
In a 2012 speech, Sen. Mitch McConnell noted, “The head of one national advocacy group has released documents which show that his group’s confidential IRS information found its way into the hands of a staunch critic on the Left who also happens to be a co-chairman of President Obama’s re-election committee. The only way this information could have been made public is if someone leaked it from inside the IRS.”
 
And so, the next question may be this: If the IRS was targeting conservative groups — as they now admit to doing — were they also leaking information?
 
UPDATE: In December of 2012, ProPublica wrote that they had obtained the application for recognition of tax-exempt status for Crossroads GPS, filed in September of 2010.
 
As the ProPublica story noted:
 
“‘As far as we know, the Crossroads application is still pending, in which case it seems that either you obtained whatever document you have illegally, or that it has been approved,’ Jonathan Collegio, the group’s spokesman, said in an email.
 
 
 
“The IRS sent Crossroads’ application to ProPublica in response to a public-records request. The document sent to ProPublica didn’t include an official IRS recognition letter, which is typically attached to applications of nonprofits that have been recognized. The IRS is only required to give out applications of groups recognized as tax-exempt.
 
 
 
“In an email Thursday, an IRS spokeswoman said the agency had no record of an approved application for Crossroads GPS, meaning that the group’s application was still in limbo.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/the-irs-admits-to-targeting-conservative-groups-but-were-they-also-leaking/

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/payroll-data-plough-horse-recovery-continues-westbury-145748548.html

This month's edition of the Most Important Number Ever came out better than expected, sending stocks to all-time highs and pushing the S&P 500 (^GSPC) over 1,600 for the first time ever. The move was driven by Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) coming in at a better than expected 165k vs official estimates of 140k and unofficial expectations that were much worse than that.
 
Brian Wesbury of First Trust Portfolios says the numbers were consistent with the glacial pace of the recovery investors have come to expect. "We've described it as the plough horse economy," Westbury explains in the attached video. "We have the Kentucky Derby this weekend, [but] this horse is not going to win the Kentucky Derby. Not even close."
 
After a spate of weak data heading into the non-farm payrolls release, analysts were expecting evidence that the recovery was ready for the glue factory. Pessimists have been expecting the economy to drop back into a recession at any moment since the March 2009 stock market lows. When mediocrity is a pleasant surprise, the odds favor a bullish reaction to data.
 
The fly in the ointment was labor participation. At 63.5%, the number of Americans opting out of the labor market is stuck at levels last seen more than 30 years ago. Wesbury thinks the participation is a function of an aging population coupled with some unknowable expansion in the so called "grey market" jobs where workers are paid in cash or trade to avoid taxes.
 
Although "we're not booming," Wesbury concludes this isn't an economy that's "going to fall back into another recession" either.
 
For at least the moment that's good enough for the stock market.

Click on the link to read the comments

http://www.examiner.com/article/american-community-survey-101-and-can-you-go-to-jail-for-ignoring-it

American Community Survey 101 and can you go to jail for ignoring it?
American Community Survey
April 2, 2011
By: D. Christian Moore


There has been a significant uptick in chatter on the internet and talk radio related to the “American Community Survey” (ACS). Much of this talk has centered on the “invasiveness” of the questions and the reported penalties for non compliance. There have also been many local news stories regarding complaints about the tactics used by those compiling survey data. As one might expect, some of the information which is generally available is good, some is incomplete, some is conjecture and some is just plain wrong or misleading.

The ACS is a survey conducted annually by the Department of Commerce under the auspices of the Census Bureau. At the Census Bureau’s website they have an ACS page with information related to how the data is used, the methodology behind the data collection and how participants are chosen each year. The Constitution authorizes a census to be taken every ten years, but the ACS was developed to collect annual data and capture changing trends during the intervening years between census data collections. The survey asks for names, ages, religious and ethnic categorizations of people living in the household. It also asks for employment and financial information of everyone in the house and the names and addresses of family members and employers. There are many other questions but I think the point about the detailed nature of the survey has been made. According to the Census Bureau, the data is used by government agencies and private businesses to determine infrastructure needs, resource allocation and population trends. A quick search through the Census Bureau’s ACS webpage revealed no information related to penalties and fines for refusing to complete the survey.
 
Opponents of the survey have complained the information is extremely invasive. To address privacy concerns the Census Bureau makes a point to demonstrating the steps they take to protect the data collected from unauthorized use or disclosure. To opponents however, it is not as much the fear of identity theft which motivates them but a general level of discomfort with providing so much personal information to the government, or anyone for that matter. This is a legitimate concern. Many opponents of the detailed statistical gathering state that according to the Constitution, the only information you are required to provide to the government is the number of people living at your address. Many also point to 4th Amendment protections against warrantless searches.

The Census Bureau actually addresses this on their website with a page discussing the legal precedents which have upheld their authority to collect more detailed information as part of the decennial census. That being said, the 2010 census form sparked controversy by asking for information beyond simply the number of people who live at a given address. Still left unclear is the constitutional authority to conduct ACS or any annual data collection separate from the decennial census. Given this controversy, it is not surprising that the ACS continues to elicit an almost visceral reaction from privacy advocates and citizens concerned about the size, scope and power of their government.
 
Much of the information available on the internet “reports” that the survey comes with a reminder that under Title 13 United States Code, failure to comply with the ACS, or providing false responses, will result in fines of $5,000 and even as high as $10,000. Though the Census Bureau does not list fines and penalties related non-compliance on the ACS webpage. Enough reputable news sources do report the existence of such penalties, along with potential incarceration for refusing to pay the fine’s that I think it is safe to say that the fines could technically be assessed. However, I have not been able to locate anyone who was actually fined for refusing. I suspect the Census Bureau includes the information to encourage survey participation.

The internet is also awash with stories of overzealous Census Bureau employees harassing citizens with late night door knocks and threatening phone calls. Some are on standard news sites and others are on sites with an agenda towards limited government but there are enough to suggest that some data collectors are stepping over the line. A common thread seems to be that when citizens push back, contact a reporter or complain to their congressional representative, the Census Bureau backs down. I should also point out that unless the person at your door is escorted by an actual law enforcement representative and a court order, you the citizen are under no legal obligation to speak to them.

**Remember, Obama forbids local level law enforcement from inquiring if someone is here illegally.**

http://www.gao.gov/decisions/other/289852.htm


Legal Authority for American Community Survey, B-289852, April 4, 2002



 
B-289852
 
 
 
April 4, 2002
 
 The Honorable Bob Barr
 Vice Chairman
 Committee on Government Reform
 House of Representatives


 Subject:  Legal Authority for American Community Survey
 
Dear Mr. Vice Chairman:
 
 This responds to your letter regarding the legal authority of the U.S. Census Bureau (Bureau) to conduct the American Community Survey (ACS), a monthly survey of a sample of households that, beginning in 2003, is intended to replace the long form questionnaire for the decennial census in 2010.  You asked us to provide (1) the legal authority under which the Bureau is conducting the ACS, including any legislative history concerning the development and implementation of ACS, (2) the Bureau's legal authority to require recipients to respond to the ACS, and (3) information on any other federal government questionnaires or surveys that require similar specific, detailed personal information be provided to the government.
 
 In order to respond to your questions, we examined various legislative materials such as public laws, committee reports and hearings, and the Congressional Record for references to the ACS, requested and received comments from the Department of Commerce (Commerce), and met informally with Commerce and Bureau officials to discuss these issues.  We also searched an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) database for surveys that require specific detailed personal information.  As discussed in detail below, we find that the Bureau has the authority under 13 U.S.C. §§ 141 and 193 to conduct the ACS.  Although there is little legislative action tracking this Bureau initiative, the Bureau clearly has authority to require responses from the public to this survey.  See 13 U.S.C. § 221.  The Bureau must still receive clearance for the ACS through the Paperwork Reduction Act process.  Finally, we found no other government surveys that respondents are required to respond to that ask specific, detailed personal information similar to that required by the ACS.
 

 BACKGROUND
 
 According to Commerce, the ACS, which is designed to replace the long form portion for future decennial censuses, tracks the questions asked in the long form questionnaire from the 2000 Census.  The long form questionnaire asked a sample of persons and households for information on population topics, such as ancestry, veteran status, disability, labor force status, and income, and housing topics, such as value of home or rent paid, size and age of structure, plumbing and kitchen facilities, and expenses for utilities, mortgage, and taxes.
 
 The Bureau began conducting supplementary surveys of selected counties under its authority at 13 U.S.C. § 182 in 1996 using the ACS methodology to test the operational feasibility of collecting long form type data in a different methodology from that of the decennial census.  Beginning in 2003, the Bureau plans to expand the ACS nationwide in a yearly sample of three million households (250,000 each month) as part of its decennial census in order to move from a once-every-ten years activity to continuous data collection and data dissemination.  By starting in 2003, data will be available for areas and population groups of 65,000 or more beginning in 2004 and for small areas and population groups of less than 20,000 people beginning in 2008.[1]  According to Bureau officials, this will provide information on a timelier basis than is now currently available.  For example, the most current long form information available from the Bureau is from the 1990 Census, since the 2000 Census data will not be available until this summer.
 
 According to Commerce, the ACS information will provide more current data to a number of federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Food and Nutrition Service of the Department of Agriculture.
 
 DISCUSSION
 
 Article I of the United States Constitution requires an enumeration of the population every ten years "in such Manner as they [Congress] shall by Law direct."  U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 3.  To implement this Constitutional requirement, Congress enacted 13 U.S.C. § 141, which requires "a decennial census of population as of the first day of April of such year . . . in such form and content as he [the Secretary of Commerce] may determine . . . .  In connection with any such census, the Secretary is authorized to obtain such other census information as necessary."  Section 141 also authorizes the decennial census to include the use of sampling procedures and special surveys.[2]  The uses of census data have grown significantly beyond congressional apportionment of representatives in Congress into many other areas such as managing federal agencies, allocating federal aid and assistance, assisting local governments, and helping businesses.[3]  The courts have generally viewed the authority of Commerce and the Bureau to gather census information broadly.[4]   In a recent court decision, Morales v. Evans,[5] the court held that the questions and the long form from the 2000 census are constitutional.
 
 In Morales, the court first reviewed both the short form and the long form questions from the 2000 Census and traced the origin of each question from prior censuses.  The court noted the authority of the Bureau to collect more than headcount information, and then specifically addressed whether such collection violated the plaintiffs rights under the Fifth Amendment (due process), First Amendment (protection against compelled speech), and Fourth Amendment (unreasonable and illegal search).  In each instance the court found the collection of information related to governmental purposes and there was no basis for holding such collection unconstitutional.
 
 While Census clearly has authority to conduct the ACS, we found no public laws, committee reports, or other congressional actions in which Congress has required the Bureau to develop and implement the ACS.  Two oversight hearings were held in 2000 and 2001 concerning the ACS,[6] and Congress has provided funding over the past several years for this program under the caption of "continuous measurement."[7]  Commerce states that testing of the ACS has been part of the President's budget since 1996 and a pilot program has been funded since that time.  Commerce also points out that it has regularly kept Congress informed of the development and intended implementation of the ACS in the annual budget justification that accompanies the President's budget.  It is clear that Census was not reacting to congressional direction in developing the ACS but acting on its own initiative to address the costs associated with the collection of data in the decennial census and the timeliness of that data.
 
 On the basis of the statutory authority cited above and the discretion recognized by the courts, we conclude that Commerce and the Bureau have the legal authority to conduct the ACS under 13 U.S.C. §§ 141 and 193.  This finding does not address the question of whether the data should be collected, but only whether there is sufficient legal authority to conduct this annual survey.[8]
 
 With regard to the question of whether the Bureau may require recipients to respond to the ACS, Bureau officials stated that the ACS is conducted under sections 141 and 193, cited above, and that because responses to Census Bureau censuses and surveys are required under 13 U.S.C. § 221, responses to the ACS are mandatory.  Section 221 subjects recipients of a survey to monetary penalties for failure to answer questions on any survey conducted by the Bureau under certain authorities found in Chapter 5 of Title 13 of the United States Code.  These authorities include censuses of manufacturers and other businesses under section 131, the decennial census of population under section 141, and interim current data for collection of population data between each census under section 181.  Section 225 permits application of penal provisions in certain cases.  For example, the provision for imprisonment does not apply to the interim current data surveys under section 181, although it does apply to the decennial census.  13 U.S.C. § 225(b).  We note that the courts have held that there is a sufficient governmental interest to require the collection of census data and to assess penalties for the failure to comply.[9]  We conclude therefore that the Bureau may require responses to the ACS survey.
 With regard to providing statutory references for each question on the survey which is "required by federal law to manage or evaluate government programs," Commerce noted that each federal agency submits to the Interagency Committee for the ACS, led by OMB, its legal justifications for agency-specific topics and questions, and the questionnaire content is reviewed by the Interagency Committee.  Commerce has provided an extensive table of statutory authorities to justify each question, but the response from Commerce notes that additional information may be added or corrected by the agencies as Commerce prepares its submission of the ACS questionnaire under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) clearance process.[10]  Since this process for development of the ACS questionnaire is still underway, we cannot state as a matter of law whether the requisite statutory authority supports each question.  However, Commerce and the Bureau will be required under the provisions of 44 U.S.C. §§ 3506 and 3507 to demonstrate that this collection of information is necessary, is not duplicative, and is understandable to those who are to respond.
 
 Finally, to determine what other federal government surveys require specific, detailed personal information, we used information provided by federal agencies on Form 83-I, the Paperwork Reduction Act submission to OMB.[11]  Agencies requesting clearance to collect information are required to report on this form the various characteristics of the collection including the following:  who the collection affects-e.g., individuals or households, businesses, or the federal government; whether responses to the collection are voluntary, required to obtain or retain benefits, or mandatory; and the purpose of the collection--e.g., program evaluation, general purpose statistics, regulatory, or compliance.
 
 Using information provided by OMB, we found no other government surveys that respondents are required to fill out that request specific, detailed personal information similar to that required by the ACS.  The only information collections that met the conditions of being required or mandatory and affecting individuals or households for statistical or research purposes were those related to the 2000 decennial censuses, including the ACS.
 
 CONCLUSION
 
 For the reasons set forth above, the Bureau has authority under 13 U.S.C. §§ 141 and 193 to conduct the American Community Survey.  The Bureau also has authority to require responses from the public to this survey. 
 
 We trust that this responds to your request.  Should you have any questions, please contact Ms. Susan A. Poling at (202) 512-2667.  We are sending an identical letter to The Honorable Dan Burton Chairman, Committee on Government Reform.
 
 Sincerely yours,
 Anthony H. Gamboa
 General Counsel
 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1]
"What is the American Community Survey?", www.census.gov/acs, visited on March 18, 2002.
[2] The authority of Commerce and the Bureau to gather census information has been viewed broadly by the courts except in one particular area--how data is gathered for purposes of the enumeration for the apportionment of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.  See Department of Commerce v. United States House of Representatives, 525 U.S. 316 (1999), which held that sampling may not be used in the enumeration for apportionment purposes.
 
[3] See Decennial Census, Overview of Historical Census Issues, GAO/GGD-98-103 (1998); Douglas A. Kysar, Kids & Cul-De-Sacs: Census 2000 and the Reproduction of Consumer Culture, 87 Cornell L. Rev. 853, March 2002 (book review).
[4] Wisconsin v. City of New York, 517 U.S. 1, 17 (1996).
[5]116 F. Supp. 2d 801 (S.D. Tex. 2000), aff'd 275 F.3d 45 (5th Cir. 2001), cert. denied, 122 S. Ct. 1079 (Mem) (2002).
[6] The American Community Survey--A Replacement for the Census Long Form? : Hearing before the Subcomm. on the Census of the House Committee on Government Reform, 106th Cong. (2000); The Census Bureau's Proposed American Community Survey: Hearing before the Subcomm. on the Census of the House Committee on Government Reform, 107th Cong. (2001).
[7] See, e.g., H. Rep. No. 105-207, at 66-67 (1997).  See also Fiscal Year 2003 Budget Appendix, pp. 213-214 (2002).
[8] 13 U.S.C. § 141(f) directs Commerce to report to Congress three years in advance of the decennial census on the subjects to be covered and two years in advance on the questions to be asked in the decennial census.  Commerce and Bureau officials indicated to us that they intend to initiate the ACS in October 2002 if funding is available, even though they will not have time to provide the information contemplated by subsection 141(f).
[9] See Morales, discussed above; United States v. Rickenbacker, 309 F.2d 462 (2nd Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 371 U.S. 962 (1963); United States v. Little, 317 F. Supp. 1308 (D.Del. 1970).
[10] See the request for comments on the proposed collection of information under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13, 67 Fed. Reg. 2186, Jan. 16, 2002.
[11] The key requirements under the Paperwork Reduction Act are set forth in Appendix II of Information Resources Management:  Comprehensive Strategic Plan Needed to Address Mounting Challenges, GAO-02-292, February 2002.

Exactly.

Wesbury would try to spin a zombie apocalypse into "good news for the plowhorse".

At least they were able to decide that ObamaCare was a tax, which the IRS will of course administer in a fair and impatial way.

Enemies list.

Bwahahahahahaha!!

 

Were they plumbers? 

Yeah, mega federal bureaucracies where you can't scratch your ass without filling a dozen forms and getting approval from Washington suddenly just happen to have a sudden rash of rogue low level employees who just happen to target Buraq's enemy list. Funny how that works.

What does Wesbury's infomercial say? No negative results from using the magical money machine?

There should be criminal investigations regarding this conduct. Didn't Nixon do this?

From Jay Leno: When it comes to Benghazi, Obama has a new slogan. Hope, and change the subject.

Was the SCOTUS created by the founders with the intent that they rule on constitutional issues using some sort of strategy?

 
I'm curious what the excuse is for the record number of Americans on food stamps and disability, given the amazing economy Wesbury sees.

Too bad Andrew can't lecture them on the peaceful and benign nature of islam. Funny how many muslims seem to not know this.....

I bet there are only 10,000 foreign websites hosting the plastic gun program now....
   

Remember when the left was outraged at Gitmo?

Then their guy got into office and suddenly: Yawn....

Someone is about to get a dose of the Woodward treatment.

The economy is Wesbury-riffic!!!

 
There is a critical difference between being "pro-business" which can mean "pro-big contributors who bought access to public funds and get laws passed to suppress competition" and pro-free market.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/26/news/economy/gdp-report/index.html?iid=SF_E_Lead

U.S. economy revved up, but it's probably temporary
 By Annalyn Kurtz

 @AnnalynKurtz April 26, 2013: 11:36 AM ET


NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
 
The U.S. economy accelerated at the beginning of the year, but don't get too excited. Economists aren't very optimistic that trend will continue in the months ahead.
 
Gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of economic output -- rose at a 2.5% annual pace in the first three months of the year, driven largely by a pick-up in consumer spending, the Commerce Department said.





Consumer spending, which alone accounts for roughly two-thirds of GDP, rose at a 3.2% annual pace, the fastest pace since the end of 2010.

At first glance, that's pretty remarkable, since most workers saw their take-home pay drop in January, following the end of the payroll tax cut.

But the data also shows that consumers funded that spending in part by saving less. Americans saved an average of 2.6% of their disposable income in the first quarter, down from 4.7% at the end of 2012.

"Households are drawing down savings, and they are borrowing to continue spending," said Steve Cunningham, director of research and education for the American Institute for Economic Research. "That won't last forever."

What were people buying? Primarily, more services. That too could be partly temporary in nature.

Americans spent more on housing and utilities, which rebounded after slumping following Hurricane Sandy in the prior quarter. This March was also the coldest since 2002, a weather patten that boosted the demand for heating.

Consumer spending on durable goods like autos also contributed to stronger economic growth, but to a lesser extent.

On the business side, investment in equipment and software added slightly to growth. An even bigger boost, however, came as businesses restocked their shelves and warehouses after drawing down their inventories in the fourth quarter. That effect is also likely to be temporary, Cunningham said.

Related: The global economy is losing steam

Meanwhile, cuts in government spending, mainly related to defense, dragged on the economy in the first quarter.

The last two quarters marked the biggest six-month contraction in the federal government's economic activity since the months following the Korean War, which ended in 1953, noted Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist of Capital Economics.

Spending by federal, state and local governments is now lower than it was in mid-2007, before the recession began.

Given the fiscal squeeze, Ashworth said it's rather impressive that the economy still grew 2.5% in the first quarter. Since the recovery began in mid-2009, the economy has grown an average of 2.1% a year. Once you strip out the government's spending, though, that growth looks more like 3.1%.

"It's becoming more and more clear that the public sector is the real thing holding the economy back now," he said.

Public-sector cutbacks are likely to continue dragging on the economy through the rest of the year as the federal government alone cuts $85 billion over a seven-month period.

Economic growth isn't likely to be as strong in the second quarter. Other economic data already shows the economy may have lost some steam starting in March.

Job growth slowed, retail sales slumped and the manufacturing sector showed signs of weakness.

Overall, the first quarter GDP report was a bit of a letdown. Economists had been expecting the economy to grow at an even stronger rate of 2.8%.

"Even this weaker-than-hoped-for growth rate exaggerates the true underlying momentum in the economy," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit.

U.S. stocks were mixed Friday morning, following the report.

Jim Rogers: ‘Race To Insanity’ Producing ‘Artificial’ Market Gains
 



Wednesday, 24 Apr 2013 01:32 PM
 
By Michelle Smith
 

With central banks printing like never before, legendary investor Jim Rogers warns that markets and economies are likely to get hurt in the aftermath.

“This is the first time in recorded history where nearly all the central banks in all countries are pumping out lots of money, debasing their currencies, printing money. I've never seen this in history, and now we've got everybody — or nearly everybody — doing it,” he told Money Morning.

 Japan's central bank dominated headlines when it announced an unprecedented stimulus program that devalues the yen. This action was said to be an effort to battle deflation.


Central bank policies that weaken national currencies are seen as competitive. When other nations do not follow suit, they essentially become less competitive because a weaker currency results in cheaper exports.

Countries’ efforts to competitively weaken their currencies is commonly called the race to the bottom.

Rogers told Money Morning that instead it is a “race to insanity.”

While the gains in the U.S. and Japanese stock markets may be euphoric now, Rogers warns that they are “artificial” and likely to lead to pain.

“The central banks are determined to keep printing money. But, underneath that, eventually there are going to be more and more skeptics. I'm not going to be the only one. And more and more people will start heading for the door. And by the time they stop, printing the damage may already have been done to the markets,” Rogers noted.

But similar statements have often raised the comeback question — when will the stimulus stop? Many argue that there is little reason for investors to be concerned about that now if it will happen much later.

Even Rogers admits that though the market gains are artificial, the bubble may not burst anytime soon. Investors could continue to see soaring markets for some time.

Central banks’ policies could cushion any sell off, he explained to Money Morning. But ultimately, the ending is still a bad one — the results of that type of distortion could be a “slow-speed crash,” not only for the markets, but also for the broader economies.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.moneynews.com/InvestingAnalysis/Rogers-US-Japan-markets/2013/04/24/id/501187

http://cnsnews.com/blog/joe-schoffstall/record-number-households-food-stamps-1-out-every-5


Record Number of Households on Food Stamps-- 1 out of Every 5



 April 25, 2013

By Joe Schoffstall


The latest available data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows that a record number 23 million households in the United States are now on food stamps.
 
The most recent Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) statistics of the number of households receiving food stamps shows that 23,087,886 households participated in January 2013 - an increase of 889,154 families from January 2012 when the number of households totaled 22,188,732.

The most recent statistics from the United States Census Bureau-- from December 2012-- puts the number of households in the United States at 115,310,000. If you divide 115,310,000 by 23,087,866, that equals one out of every five households now receiving food stamps.
 
As CNSNews.com previously reported, food stamp rolls in America recently surpassed the population of Spain. A record number 47,692,896 Americans are now enrolled in the program and the cost of food stamp fraud has more than doubled in just three years.

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/opinion/article_1c144792-b36d-11e2-8ac6-001a4bcf887a.html?TNNoMobile

Snell: Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned

Posted: Friday, May 3, 2013 12:00 am | Updated: 12:48 am, Fri May 3, 2013.

By Barry Snell, barry.snell@iowastatedaily.com
 



Along with bombs and bombers, guns seem to be all the media wants to talk about these days. Death is sexy to our miscreant media, especially when people are killed on purpose. And when that happens, it’s all the newspapers and news stations will print and broadcast, in turn making these events appear worse than they are in reality. 

To understand this, one need only look at the difference in coverage between the Texas fertilizer plant explosion, which killed at least 14 confirmed people and injured 200 more at the time of writing this, versus the coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing, which only killed three and injured a hundred others. Texas was on TV for a day, tops, while we’re still hearing about Boston and will for many weeks to come.

Where the media really didn’t care too much about the Texas incident, once a kid was killed at a race, the Boston bombing is now a foil for everything from gun control to immigration in the wake of Sandy Hook, with both sides of the political spectrum using it against the other. What about Texas, you ask? Nothing but crickets chirping from the mainstream media at the moment. Recent studies have shown that people who consume large amounts of mass media often feel more insecure, are less informed, or can’t distinguish between news and what passes as news, what with all the opinion you’ll find in news today.

But when it comes to something as deadly serious as guns and crime, Americans can’t afford the media hyperbole, misinformation and disinformation.

We have a lot of liberal columnists working for the Daily. As a conservative, I’m fine with that; they’re the ones who apply for the job, and conservatives usually don’t. Free market, baby, deal with it. But many of our liberal columnists are my friends, with whom I have spent time outside of work, too. And they, along with everyone else it seems, have an opinion about guns, as you can see by glancing through the last few weeks of the Daily’s Opinion section.

It’s been an eye-opening experience for me. As assistant opinion editor and friend, my columnists are important to me both professionally and personally. It’s all the more clear to me now after doing this job that people often opine a whole lot about stuff they don’t have any personal experience with or expertise on. Like guns.

Every time a gun issue comes up in conversation around Daily people or during a Daily editorial board meeting, opinion editor Michael Belding almost always tells me, “you should write a column about that!” I hesitate in doing so and have so far resisted the urge mostly; I wrote three gun-related columns back in 2011 and early 2012, and that was enough to brand me the “gun guy” by some folks who use such terms as epithets.

The desire of others for me to write gun columns is reasonable, though, and I understand it. I’m as much of a “gun expert” as you’re likely to find around here, so having me write about guns in the paper is perfectly rational. I won’t bore you with my “gun resume,” but suffice it to say that prior to coming to Iowa State in 2011, I made a living with firearms in one way or another for several years of my life, and have a few pieces of paper laying around that say I know a bit about them, too.

Today, however, I’m going to break my silence on the gun issue and speak out once more — and for the last time. This is my final column for the Iowa State Daily.

No experience necessary

In the gun debate, I’ve discovered that one cannot be expert enough about guns. Indeed, when it comes to the gun issue, opinion rules. There doesn’t seem to be any opportunity for any genuine, honest debate on guns, and even liberals would agree with that. I’ve often wondered about this over the years. Is it because my side of the debate is actually loony? I don’t think so; at least, I think I’m pretty normal. Sure, we’ve got some oddballs we all wish would go away, just like any group does. 

But all the pro-gun people I know are normal people too — people so normal that nobody knows they’re gun people until they’re told. In fact, there are so many gun owners that if we are all crazy like some suggest, the daily crime rate in America would look more like our crime rate for the entire decade combined, and CNN would actually have something to report on other than the latest gossip.

That is to say, there’s a hundred million of us, owning a few hundred million guns combined, and we contribute to society peacefully every day. Many of us even literally protect society for a living, or used to.

I’ve come to realize after the Sandy Hook shooting that the reason we can’t have a rational gun debate is because the anti-gun side pre-supposes that their pro-gun opponents must first accept that guns are bad in order to have a discussion about guns in the first place. Before we even start the conversation, we’re the bad guys and we have to admit it. Without accepting that guns are bad and supplicating themselves to the anti-gunner, the pro-gunner can’t get a word in edgewise, and is quickly reduced to being called a murderer, or a low, immoral and horrible human being.

You might think that’s hyperbole too, but I’ve experienced it personally from people I considered friends until recently. And every day I see it on TV or in the newspapers, from Piers Morgan to the Des Moines Register’s own Donald Kaul, who among others have actually said people like me are stupid, crazy or should be killed ourselves. YouTube is full of examples, and any Google search will result in example after example of gun-owning Americans being lampooned, ridiculed and demonized by the media and citizens somewhere. 

Hell, it’s even gotten so bad that a little kid was expelled from school recently for biting a Pop Tart into the vague shape of a handgun during lunch break (it looked more like Idaho to me).

Liberals always make the common plea, “We need to get some experts to solve this problem!” for any public policy issue that comes along, which is a good thing. But when it comes to the gun issue, gun expertise is completely irrelevant to the anti-gunner — people who probably have never fired a gun or even touched one in real life, and whose only experience with guns is what they’ve seen in movies or read about in bastions of (un)balanced, hyper-liberal journalism, like Mother Jones. That a pro-gun person might actually know a lot about their hobby or profession doesn’t stand up against the histrionic cries of the anti-gunner.

How can we “gun people” honestly be expected to come to the table with anti-gunners when anti-gunners are willfully stupid about guns, and openly hate, despise and ridicule those of us who own them? There must first be respect and trust — even just a little — before there can be even the beginnings of legitimate discussion of the issue.

Death by a thousand cuts

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because anti-gunners always talk about 90 percent of Americans supporting this gun control measure, or 65 percent supporting that one, as if a majority opinion is what truly matters in America. We don’t trust anti-gun people because you think America is a democracy, when it’s actually a constitutional federal republic. In the American system, the rights of a single individual are what matters and are what our system is designed to protect. The emotional mob does not rule in America. 

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they keep saying they “respect the Second Amendment” and go on about how they respect the hunting traditions of America. We don’t trust you because you have to be a complete idiot to think the Second Amendment is about hunting. I wish people weren’t so stupid that I have to say this: The Second Amendment is about checking government tyranny. Period. End of story. The founders probably couldn’t have cared less about hunting since, you know, they just got done with that little tiff with England called the Revolutionary War right before they wrote that “little book” called the Constitution.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they lie to us. President Obama directly says he won’t tamper with guns or the Second Amendment, then turns around and pushes Congress to do just that. We don’t trust anti-gunners because they appoint one of the most lying and rabidly (and moronically) anti-gun people in America, Vice President Biden, to head up a “task force” to “solve” the so-called “gun problem,” who in turn talks with anti-gun special interest groups instead of us to complete his task.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they tell us they don’t want to ban guns, only enact what they call “common sense gun laws.” But like a magician using misdirection, they tell everyone else they want to ban every gun everywhere. While some are busy trying to placate us with lies, another anti-gunner somewhere submits a gun ban proposal — proposals that often would automatically make us felons for possession. Felons, for no good reason. And you anti-gunners can roll up your grandfather clauses and stuff them where the sun don’t shine. If it ain’t good enough for our grandchildren in 60 years, it ain’t good enough for us right now.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they make horrifying predictions about how there will be blood in the streets, gunfights on every street corner and America will become the Wild West again if citizens are allowed to carry concealed firearms. We don’t trust anti-gun people because we know that despite the millions of Americans who have carry permits, those who carry guns commit crimes at a much lower rate than people who don’t. We know because we know ourselves and we’re not criminals. We know because concealed carry is now legal nearly everywhere, and guess what? Violent crime continues to go down. What a shocker.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they say gun control is about crime control. Anti-gunners claim that ending crime and “saving children” is why they want to ban so-called “assault weapons.” Yet our very own government says that assault weapons are used in less than two percent of all gun crimes and Department of Justice studies say the last assault weapons ban had little or no effect on crime. Other studies suggest gun control may even make crime worse (one need only look to high crime rates in places where there’s a lot of gun control to see the possible connection).

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because when it comes to their “We need gun control to save the children” argument, many of us can’t understand how an anti-gun liberal can simultaneously be in favor of abortion. Because you know, a ban on abortion would save a child every single time. I’m personally not rabidly against abortion, but the discongruence makes less sense still when the reason abortions are legal is to protect a woman’s individual rights. That’s great, but does the individual rights argument sound familiar? Anti-gunners think that for some bizarre reason, the founding fathers happened to stick a collective right smack dab at the top of a list of individual rights, though. Yeah, because that makes sense.

Truth, treason and the empire of lies

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they are purposely misleading to rile the emotions of the ignorant. We don’t trust anti-gunners because they say more than 30,000 people are killed each year by guns — a fact that is technically true, but the key piece of information withheld is that only a minor fraction of that number is murder; the majority is suicides and accidents. We don’t trust anti-gunners because we know accidents and suicides don’t count in the crime rate, but they’re held against us as if they do.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because suicide is the only human-inflicted leading cause of death in America, and that violent crime has been on the decline for decades. We also know that 10 people die daily in drownings, 87 people die daily by poisoning, more than 20,000 adults die from falls each year, someone dies in a fire every 169 minutes, nearly 31,000 people are killed in car accidents annually and almost 2,000 are stabbed to death. People even kill each other with hammers. Yet fewer than 14,000 people are killed by guns of any kind each year.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because not only is the violent crime rate approaching historic lows, but mass shootings are on the decline too.  We don’t trust anti-gun people because they fail to recognize that mass shootings happen where guns are already banned — ridiculous “gun-free zones” which attract homicidal maniacs to perpetrate their mass shootings. 

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because school shootings have been happening forever, but despite them being on the decline, the media inflates the issue until the perception is that they’re a bigger problem than they really are. We don’t trust anti-gunners because they’re busy riling up the emotions of the ignorant, who in turn direct their ire upon us, demonizing us because we object to the overreaction and focus on the wrong things, like the mentally ill people committing the crimes.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they look down on us for defending the Second Amendment as vigorously as they defend the First Amendment — a fight we too would stand side-by-side with them on otherwise. We don’t trust anti-gunners because someone defending the First Amendment is considered a hero, but a someone defending the Second Amendment is figured down with murderers and other lowlifes. Where the First Amendment has its very own day and week, both near-holy national celebrations beyond reproach, anti-gunners would use the First Amendment to ridicule any equivalent event for the Second Amendment, like they did for a recent local attempt at the University of Iowa.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because anti-gun people put us down with dismissals like “just another dumb redneck with a gun.” We are told all over the Internet that we deserve to be in prison for being awful, heartless people; baby-killers and supporters of domestic terrorism, even. We don’t trust anti-gun people because even our own president says people like me are “bitter” and “cling to our guns and religion.” One need only go to any online comments section of any recent gun article in any of the major newspapers to see all this for themselves.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they seek to punish us for crimes we didn’t commit. We don’t trust anti-gunners because we know that the 100 million of us are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who love this country and our society as much as the next liberal. Yet when one previously convicted felon murders someone with a stolen gun five days after his release from prison, or things like the Newtown shooting happen, guns are blamed — and therefore lawful gun owners too, as there is guilt by association, apparently.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because when things like the Boston Marathon bombing happen, everyone correctly blames the bomber, not the bomb. Nobody is calling for bomb control because killing people with bombs is already illegal — just like killing people with guns is illegal too.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they’re fine with guns protecting the money in our banks, our politicians and our celebrities, but they’re against us using guns to protect ourselves, our families, or even our children in schools. Legislative trolls like Dianne Feinstein cry havoc about me protecting my life, while standing comfortably behind armed guards —and the .38 Special revolver she got a California carry permit for. We don’t trust anti-gunners because they tell us our lives aren’t important, or at least are less important than the life of some celebrity like Snooki, who can have all the armed guards her bank account can afford.

A dangerous servant and fearful master

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they completely ignore the fact that true conservatism is about, in part, the preservation of traditions and long-standing principles. We don’t trust anti-gunners because the American Revolution was kicked off by an attempt at gun control when the British marched to Concord to seize the colonists’ muskets and powder. Since the shot heard ‘round the world was fired on Lexington Green, the possession of a firearm has been the mark and symbol of a citizen, distinguishing them from a subject of a monarchy or tyrannical government. We don’t trust anti-gunners because they prefer the post-modern world where anything means anything, and they therefore don’t understand the power of or need for the preservation of traditions — or at least, ones of which they don’t personally approve.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because in a single breath they tell us that the Second Amendment is irrelevant today and should be repealed because semi-automatic weapons didn’t exist when the Bill of Rights was written, then turn around and say the First Amendment protects radio, television, movies, video games, the Internet, domain names, Facebook and Twitter. Carrying liberal logic on the Second Amendment through to the First Amendment, it would only cover the town crier, and hand-operated printing presses producing only books and newspapers, and nothing else.  Even anything written with a No. 2 pencil or ballpoint pen would not be included. And those of you belonging to religions that formed after the 1790s? You’re screwed under liberal logic, too.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because, while liberals seek to expand government regulation and services — things that may not be bad or ill-intended on their own — they simultaneously try to curtail the Second Amendment. We don’t trust anti-gun people for this reason because history shows us that every genocide and democide is preceded by expansion of government power and gun control. We don’t trust anti-gunners because here in America, gun control is rooted in slavery and racism, with some of America’s modern anti-gun laws being direct copies of former Nazi laws that banned gun possession for Jews, blacks, gays and other “undesirables.”

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because anti-gunners tell us that the police and military are the only people who should have guns (which is a joke in itself), and that we need to give up our own guns and trust the government. We don’t trust anti-gunners because we know that hundreds of millions of people have been killed by their own governments in the last century, and not a single law seeking to ban the government from possessing guns has ever been submitted. Yet when but a few thousand people are killed by civilian criminals, tens of millions of American citizens like myself who did not commit any crimes at all are subjected to gun restrictions and personal persecution at the hands of emotional anti-gun bigots.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because anti-gunners insult us for our opposition to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (aka the “ATF”). We don’t trust anti-gunners because we know the ATF is hardly a law enforcement agency but is really a glorified tax collection agency that has abused, ruined the lives of, or murdered dozens of innocent gun owners through overzealous enforcement of gun-related tax and paperwork regulations. Just ask Louis Katona, Patty and Paul Mueller, John Lawmaster, Tuscon Police Lt. Mike Lara or any of the dozens of other victims of criminal ATF agents. Where was the ACLU for all that? And it doesn’t help that President Obama tried to appoint known anti-gunner Andrew Traver to be the ATF director. Check out the ATF’s “Good Ol’ Boys Roundup,” “Project Gunrunner” scandal and their loss of department guns for a little F-Troop entertainment sometime, too.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they always bemoan the NRA, claiming the NRA is the source of all their anti-gun legislation problems. We don’t trust anti-gunners because it never occurs to them that perhaps it’s not the NRA per se that has the power, but the millions of members that belong to it, and the millions more Americans who otherwise support it and its mission. The NRA is probably the largest private organization in America; maybe that has something to do with its influence...? We also don’t trust anti-gunners because they’re too ignorant to understand that the NRA only represents a minority of us anyway.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because while they were crying about the victims of 9/11 or Aurora or Sandy Hook, and thanking God they weren’t there, I and many other gun people like me were crying because we weren’t there, and asked God why we couldn’t have been. Many of us wish we were on one of the 9/11 airplanes, and not because we have a death wish but because we have a life wish. Because when we sit in silence and the world’s distractions fall away, the thought creeps in: Could I have made a difference?

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because I and many of us are what they call “sheepdogs” and we’re proud of that. Yet anti-gunners make fun of us, calling us “cowboys” and “wannabes” for it. Wanting to save lives and being willing to sacrifice one’s own to do it used to be considered a virtue in this country. Anti-gunners think they have the moral outrage, but the moral outrage is ours. I have never expressed any of these feelings openly to anyone because they are private and deeply personal. Screw you for demeaning us and motivating me to speak them.

Do unto others

No, anti-gunners, we don’t trust you. And you’ve given us no reason to, either. We gun owners obey the law each and every day, same as you. We defend your nation, protect your communities, teach your children, take care of you when you’re sick, defend you when you go to court or prosecute those who do you wrong. We cook and serve your food, haul and deliver your goods, construct your homes, unclog your sewers, make your electricity, and build or fix your cars.

We are everywhere and all around you, and we exist with you peacefully. You are our friends, neighbors and countrymen, and we are these things proudly. We mourn with you when radicals crash airplanes into our buildings, when hurricanes destroy the lives of our people, or when the criminal and mentally ill kill dozens of our school children. We cheer with you when USA wins the gold medal, when terrorists like Bin Laden are brought to justice, or when we land a machine built by American hands on Mars.

So what more can we do to earn your trust, your love and your acceptance other than surrender our rights, bow down to you and take your non-stop attacks?

Anti-gunners label people like me “gun nuts” even though we're anything but nutty. Our enjoyment of firearms doesn’t define us; it is but a single value and right we enjoy and cherish, among many other rights and values we enjoy and cherish — including the very same ones anti-gunners do too — like the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights.

No, anti-gunners are absolutely right: There can be no rational debate on this issue anymore. Anti-gunners don’t understand guns, they don’t understand crime, they don’t understand American history and traditions, they don’t understand gun owners and don’t care to understand us, and they reduce people like me to a debasing label or a number they’ve got no clue about. 

Anti-gunners reject our passions, our traditions, our knowledge, our experiences, our beliefs, our wisdom, our rights. Anti-gunners reject our very individuality by reducing us to labels, stereotypes and false or distorted statistics. Screw you for destroying that individuality and denying our humanity.

I am proudly one of many: a caring, friendly, loyal and loving human being.  I am an educated and intelligent person, and while I may not be the best-looking guy, friends tell me I have a great personality (yay?). Perhaps more importantly though, I am a proud citizen of this country, and I’d perform any sacrifice for others so that they may not themselves have to sacrifice. 

And unlike most anti-gunners, it seems, I have served my community and nation in various roles throughout the years — roles that, ironically, often entailed guns. Where I was once given a uniform and a gun, and trusted with it to ensure the safety and security of others, I am now a pariah among many of the very people I sacrificed for. I am sadly one of many here, too. What a terrible, hurtful insult and betrayal!

An anti-gunner reads a book though, or sees a documentary on TV — or perhaps worst of all, gets a degree — and suddenly they have the almighty authority and expertise to tell us how we ought to live our lives, replying to our objections to their onslaught by throwing pictures of dead kids in our faces and commanding us to shut up, because we’re just a bunch of stupid radicals and liberals alone know what’s best for America.

You anti-gunners out there will lead us down a path you do not want to go down. Your lack of care and understanding of those who abide by America’s oldest and deepest-rooted tradition will cause a social rift in this country of the likes we have never seen in America’s young history. Your lack of understanding chances causing a civil war — a civil war that will be far worse, more acrimonious, more prolonged and more deadly than the last one.

Anti-gunners may think the military could prevent such a thing — an argument often used against us pro-gunners — but with only a few million people in the military, and with the United States containing 300 million citizens spread across nearly four million square miles, many of whom are themselves veterans, well, military occupation of this country is impossible. It doesn’t help that most street cops (opposed to their politician bosses) are pro-gun, too. And what happens when the civilian industries that support the military stop producing the supplies our military needs?

The rift is already beginning. We must mend fences...Now.

Sleeping dragons and terrible resolve

I do not want to live through a war in my own backyard. I do not want our children to grow up in such an America, either. So anti-gunners: Please stop, I beg you. See the writing on the wall before it’s too late. 

Yes, there is a terrible crime problem, and yes, that problem sometimes involves guns — but it is the perpetrator that is the problem, not the instrument. Yes, there is a great divide between liberals and conservatives on the issue of guns. And while I will be the very first person to criticize the Republican Party on its many and frequent mistakes, and even stand with my democratic friends in my disfavor of those things, on the gun issue it is not the conservatives who are mostly in the wrong this time.

We want the crime and killings to stop as much as you do, so to my fellow citizens who are anti-gun I say: So long as you deny our humanity, so long as you malign our dignity, intelligence and wisdom, so long as you seek to shade us under a cloud of evil that we do not partake in or support, so long as you tell us that because we own guns we are terrible people, you will prove yourselves absolutely right in that we won’t come to the table to talk with you.

And there will be no hope for resolution but through victory by force initiated by one side or the other, God help us, for we will not plow for those who didn’t beat their swords into plowshares.

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Barry Snell is a senior in history and political science from Muscatine, Iowa.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/05/creepy-or-cool-portraits-derived-from-the-dna-in-hair-and-gum-found-in-public-places/

Very interesting.

Obama abandons Israel ? Who could have seen this coming?

Rising lead levels in the U.S. from 1950 through the 1970s neatly track increases in violence 20 years later, from the '70s through the '90s. (Violence peaks when individuals are in their late teens and early 20s.) As lead in the environment fell in the '70s and '80s—thanks in large part to the regulation of gasoline—violence fell correspondingly. No other single factor can account for both the inexplicable rise in violence in the U.S. until 1993 and the precipitous drop since then.

Or, as the baby boomers aged, they stopped committing so many crimes, as crime is generally a young male thing.

Genetics and environment may work together to encourage violent behavior. One pioneering study in 2002 by Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt of Duke University genotyped over 1,000 individuals in a community in New Zealand and assessed their levels of antisocial behavior in adulthood. They found that a genotype conferring low levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), when combined with early child abuse, predisposed the individual to later antisocial behavior. Low MAOA has been linked to reduced volume in the amygdala—the emotional center of the brain—while physical child abuse can damage the frontal part of the brain, resulting in a double hit.

Or, being abused tends to make one prone to acting out of rage, and having had antisocial behavior modeled by one's parents, an abused child might then follow those behavior patterns of the parent when they become adults.

So what explains coldblooded psychopathic behavior? About 1% of us are psychopaths—fearless antisocials who lack a conscience. In 2009, Yaling Yang, Robert Schug and I conducted structural brain scans on 27 psychopaths whom we had found in temporary-employment agencies in Los Angeles. All got high scores on the Psychopathy Checklist, the "gold standard" in the field, which assesses traits like lack of remorse, callousness and grandiosity. We found that, compared with 32 normal people in a control group, psychopaths had an 18% smaller amygdala, which is critical for emotions like fear and is part of the neural circuitry underlying moral decision-making. In subsequent research, Andrea Glenn and I found this same brain region to be significantly less active in psychopathic individuals when they contemplate moral issues. Psychopaths know at a cognitive level what is right and what is wrong, but they don't feel it.

Would a brain scan show that the author of this piece is prone to seeing 27 as a meaningful number for an alleged scientic study of neurology and criminal behavior?