Roskam: Why Did You Tell the ABA About IRS Scandal Before Congress?
[Breitbart.com]
May 17, 2013
Live Updates
Former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Acting Commissioner Steven Miller, who only took over in November and resigned this week at President Barack Obama’s behest, will testify before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday on his role in targeting Tea Party and conservative groups for audit or excessive review.
Miller was the first senior IRS official to be disciplined in the scandal, though the problems began before he took over the IRS, and other senior officials were aware of the problem and appear to have misled Congress.
Though Miller’s resignation was reported as a decisive step by the president, his term had been due to expire in early June. Joseph Grant, had been appointed only several days before as Acting Commissioner of the IRS’s tax exempt and government entities division, has also resigned.
Other current and former IRS and Treasury officials have yet to be held accountable, including Lois Lerner, who first acknowledged the scandal on May 10, and former IRS Douglas Shulman, who told Congress in 2012 that Tea Party groups were not being targeted.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced earlier this week that the Department of Justice (DOJ) would begin a criminal investigation of the IRS. Congressional Republicans have indicated that they will not be satisfied with a DOJ probe or the internal Treasury investigation released earlier this week, but will seek answers independently as they attempt to uncover who was responsible for the abuse and how widespread it has become. There are suspicions that the problem extends beyond the IRS alone and includes other federal agencies.
Internal IRS Mandate: ‘Be on the Lookout’ for ‘Organizations Involved In … Educating on Constitution and Bill of Rights’
[CNSNews.com]
First Lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – A timeline of Internal Revenue Service activities that was developed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and provided to congressional staff indicates that early last year–as the nation was headed toward a presidential election–the IRS issued a “be on the lookout order” (BOLO) for officials in its “Determinations Unit” to ferret out for heightened scrutiny organizations applying for tax exempt status that were involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”
The inspector general’s timeline indicates that as early as March 2010 the IRS’s “Determinations Unit” had begun targeting for special scrutiny organizations that used in their tax-exempt applications the words “Tea Party” or “Patriots.”
The IG’s timeline says that in March-April 2010: “The Determinations Unit began searching for other requests for tax exemption involving the Tea Party, Patriots, 9/12 and I.R.C. § 501(c)(4) applications involving political sounding names, e.g., ‘We the People’ or ‘Take Back the Country.’”
In July 2010, according to the IG’s timeline: “Determinations Unit management requested its specialists to be on the lookout for Tea Party applications.”
But by the beginning of the 2012 election year, the IRS had adjusted its “be on the lookout order” to more generally target groups that were involved in teaching people about the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Chemtrails: Geoengineering or a Vehicle for Mass Genocide?
[CWNewsONLINE.net]
Posted: May 6, 2013
By: Justin Waldman
This story begins as I was discussing chemtrails and contrails with a friend. The “chemtrail” stories have, generally, not surfaced in the national mainstream media news, yet. Yes, there are some markets that have run their stories on the lasting impressions of these sky phenomenon. Some news outlets have had discussions with qualified meteorologists, geologists, and former military experts.
The difference between “contrails” and “chemtrails” is very different. Contrails refer to gasses and condensation that is expelled from an aircraft jet, or other, engine. Chemtrails refer to aircraft spreading specific gasses, particles, or substances that are being deliberately spread over the atmosphere in certain areas to accomplish a scientific experiment. This difference between the two is that contrails evaporate and and quickly dissipate. Chemtrails, on the other hand, are said to linger for hours or days over the sky leaving (sometimes) a hazy-white fog in the midsts of what would otherwise be blue sky.
Geoengineering for the good of the planet (i. e. cloud seeding for rain, specific attempts to control certain rays from the sun through reflective means, or other non-lethal means) is said to be a science to accomplish certain specific experiments or tests to help our society in specific ways. There are scientists doing research for the good of our planet. Yet, there are skeptics that believe it is a government attempt at reducing our population.
Nevertheless, how do we know the “intent” of government or scientific research if we are not made aware of it? There are some conspiracy theorists that have successfully launched investigative work towards finding the truth about this phenomenon.
Holder Threatens Kansas Over Gun Control Nullification Law
[WesternJournalism.com]
May 3, 2013 by Breaking News
Photo Credit: European Parliament Creative Commons
On Thursday, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback received a letter from Federal Attorney General Eric Holder threatening action against the state should it enforce SB102 which Brownback signed into law last month.
The new law states, Any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the government of the United States which violates the second amendment to the constitution of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in the state of Kansas
The bill also provides for criminal penalties against federal agents who attempt to enforce specific federal laws on guns manufactured in the state of Kansas and sold within the state – as the state takes the position under the new law that the federal government does not “interstate commerce” authority over such items.
In his letter, Holder didn’t take too kindly to such a proposition.
‘Obamacare’ Poll Finds 42% of Americans Unaware It’s Law
[ABCNews.com]
A new poll finds that many Americans are confused about the health care overhaul legislation commonly called “Obamacare. ”The Kaiser Family Foundation released results of a non-partisan study today finding more than 40 percent did not even know the law was in place.“Four in ten Americans (42%) are unaware that the ACA [Affordable Care Act] is still the law of the land,” the report says, “including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court and 23 percent who say they don’t know enough to say what the status of the law is.”
The survey showed public opinion on Obamacare is at its second-lowest rating in the past two years. Less than half – 40 percent – of adults viewed the ACA favorably, whereas 35 percent said they viewed it unfavorably. Another 24 percent said they did not know or refused to answer.
Mitch McConnell Joins Filibuster Against Gun Control
[Breitbart.com]
by AWR Hawkins CWN Post: April 09, 2013
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says he will join GOP Senators to filibuster a bill expanding gun control regulations if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) brings it up for a vote this week.
This puts McConnell shoulder-to-shoulder with Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and eight other Senators who have said they will block a push for gun control in the Senate.
Currently, Reid’s gun control package focuses on instituting universal background checks and new laws against gun trafficking. Reid has made it clear he will allow also amendments establishing an “assault weapons” ban and Sen. Richard Blumentahl (D-CT) has made it clear he will also try to add a “high capacity” magazine ban as an amendment.
McConnell says he now stands with Paul, Cruz, Lee, Rubio, Inhofe, and the other Senators who have vowed to oppose any “motion to proceed to any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for additional gun restrictions.”
President Obama Reluctantly Embraces President Obama’s Idea
[Townhall.com]
- Kevin Glass
Managing Editor, Townhall.com
April 05, 2013
President Obama’s budget proposal is due out next week. We’ve already got a relatively good idea of what he’s going to propose – more spending, more taxes, maybe some hints of deficit reduction. It also looks like President Obama will propose a statistical adjustment to Social Security’s adjustment formula – moving to the chained consumer price index (C-CPI) – that the Obama Administration has long portrayed as an important entitlement reform.
What is a C-CPI reform, exactly? It would peg Social Security cost-of-living adjustments to a different – and, economists say, more accurate – form of inflation. The practical effects of this are that there would be modest benefit cuts and modest tax increases over what’s currently projected for Social Security. Over a ten-year period, the CBO projects, there would be a $127 billion spending cut to Social Security and a $123 billion dollar tax hike. Liberals dislike the C-CPI reform due to the spending cuts and conservatives dislike it because of the tax hikes.
A “senior administration official” told the Huffington Post that President Obama’s plan is “not the President’s ideal deficit-reduction plan” and characterizes the C-CPI proposal as a “key Republican request… not the President’s preferred approach.”
This is a dishonest framing at best. As the Washington Post reports, it has consistently been the Obama Administration pushing for a C-CPI reform to Social Security. This is from a WaPo report on December’s fiscal cliff negotiations [emphasis mine]:
Liberal Democrats, too, were on edge about Obama’s offer on the inflation measure, known as the chained consumer price index, or chained CPI. Obama tentatively embraced the change in budget negotiations with Boehner in the summer of 2011.
DHS Seeks Millions More Rounds of Ammunition
[PrisonPlanet.com]
Market survey asks companies if they can provide 2 million bullets within 30-60 day period
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
May 3, 2013
The Department of Homeland Security has released a market survey asking companies if they are able to provide 2 million rounds of ammunition within a short time period, increasing concerns that the federal agency is continuing its arms build up in preparation for domestic unrest.
With the DHS already having committed to purchasing over 1.6 billion bullets over the course of the last year, a “request for information” on “reduced hazard training ammunition” posted on the FedBizOpps website quizzes bullet manufacturers on how fast they can supply large quantities of ammo;
- Are you capable of producing large quantity orders of any training caliber specified with a short turnaround time of 30-60 days?
- What would your lead time be for an order of 2 million rounds of a single type listed above?
- If you were awarded a contract for some of the calibers listed above, submitted a production lot of one million rounds and that lot or portion of the lot was not accepted, would you be able to replace that order with an additional one million rounds within 60 days?
US plan calls for more scanning of private Web traffic, email
[Reuters.com]
Joseph Menn and Deborah Charles
Posted: March 21, 2013
The U.S. government is expanding a cybersecurity program that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of defense contractors to include far more of the country’s private, civilian-run infrastructure.
As a result, more private sector employees than ever before, including those at big banks, utilities and key transportation companies, will have their emails and Web surfing scanned as a precaution against cyber attacks.
Under last month’s White House executive order on cybersecurity, the scans will be driven by classified information provided by U.S. intelligence agencies — including data from the National Security Agency (NSA) — on new or especially serious espionage threats and other hacking attempts. U.S. spy chiefs said on March 12 that cyber attacks have supplanted terrorism as the top threat to the country.
The Department of Homeland Security will gather the secret data and pass it to a small group of telecommunication companies and cyber security providers that have employees holding security clearances, government and industry officials said. Those companies will then offer to process email and other Internet transmissions for critical infrastructure customers that choose to participate in the program.
DHS as the middleman
By using DHS as the middleman, the Obama administration hopes to bring the formidable overseas intelligence-gathering of the NSA closer to ordinary U.S. residents without triggering an outcry from privacy advocates who have long been leery of the spy agency’s eavesdropping.
The telecom companies will not report back to the government on what they see, except in aggregate statistics, a senior DHS official said in an interview granted on condition he not be identified.
“That allows us to provide more sensitive information,” the official said. “We will provide the information to the security service providers that they need to perform this function.” Procedures are to be established within six months of the order.
The administration is separately seeking legislation that would give incentives to private companies, including communications carriers, to disclose more to the government. NSA Director General Keith Alexander said last week that NSA did not want personal data but Internet service providers could inform the government about malicious software they find and the Internet Protocol addresses they were sent to and from.
“There is a way to do this that ensures civil liberties and privacy and does ensure the protection of the country,” Alexander told a congressional hearing.
Fears grow of destructive attack
In the past, Internet traffic-scanning efforts were mainly limited to government networks and Defense Department contractors, which have long been targets of foreign espionage.
But as fears grow of a destructive cyber attack on core, non-military assets, and more sweeping security legislation remained stalled, the Obama administration opted to widen the program.
Last month’s presidential order calls for commercial providers of “enhanced cybersecurity services” to extend their offerings to critical infrastructure companies. What constitutes critical infrastructure is still being refined, but it would include utilities, banks and transportation such as trains and highways.
Under the program, critical infrastructure companies will pay the providers, which will use the classified information to block attacks before they reach the customers. The classified information involves suspect Web addresses, strings of characters, email sender names and the like.
Not all the cybersecurity providers will be telecom companies, though AT&T is one. Raytheon said this month it had agreed with DHS to become a provider, and a spokesman said that customers could route their traffic to Raytheon after receiving it from their communications company.
As the new set-up takes shape, DHS officials and industry executives said some security equipment makers were working on hardware that could take classified rules about blocking traffic and act on them without the operator being able to reverse-engineer the codes. That way, people wouldn’t need a security clearance to use the equipment.
Civil liberties implications
The issue of scanning everything headed to a utility or a bank still has civil liberties implications, even if each company is a voluntary participant.
Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that the executive order did not weaken existing privacy laws, but any time a machine acting on classified information is processing private communications, it raises questions about the possibility of secret extra functions that are unlikely to be answered definitively.
“You have to wonder what else that box does,” Tien said.
One technique for examining email and other electronic packets en route, called deep packet inspection, has stirred controversy for years, and some cybersecurity providers said they would not be using that. In deep packet inspection, communication companies or others with network access can examine all the elements of a transmission, including the content of emails.
“The signatures provided by DHS do not require deep packet inspection,” said Steve Hawkins, vice president at Raytheon’s Intelligence and Information Systems division, referring further questions to DHS.
The DHS official said the government is still in conversations with the telecom operators on the issue.
The official said the government had no plans to roll out any such form of government-guided close examination of Internet traffic into the communications companies serving the general public.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
Obama meets with House Republicans, downplays ‘immediate’ debt crisis
[FoxNews.com]
Published March 13, 2013
Pro-Obama group picks up president’s sequester…
President plays defense on the sequester
President Obama met Wednesday with House Republicans in an apparent bid to find consensus on fiscal policy, even as he seemed to antagonize the other side by claiming there’s no “immediate crisis in terms of debt.”
His statement would be sharply at odds with a core Republican principle that the debt must be addressed soon — and which underpinned the cost-cutting GOP budget released Tuesday. The president also acknowledged, in an interview aired earlier in the day, that differences with the GOP might be “too wide” to bridge.
Still, the president made the rare visit with House Republicans on Capitol Hill as part of what some are calling his charm offensive. The president is making a renewed effort to meet with Republican leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers amid overlapping budget battles and a series of deadlines on the horizon.
The president is trying to find common ground with Congress in order to halt the sequester spending cuts, which have already taken effect — as well as pass a stopgap budget bill in order to avert an end-of-the-month government shutdown, pass a bona fide budget for next year and once again raise the debt ceiling.
A source in the room during the meeting with Republicans told Fox News that Obama told them he’s looking for bipartisanship on a range of issues, including fiscal matters, immigration, gun regulation and foreign policy.
One skeptical source told Fox News, “we shall see.” Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., though, later emerged saying the president “did himself some good.”
Obama went into the meeting with his aides and allies ripping House Republicans for their newly introduced budget, which aims to balance the country’s finances in 10 years. In an interview with ABC News, the president declared that there is no “immediate” debt crisis and that “for the next 10 years, it’s going to be in a sustainable place.”
That message is likely to rile Republicans, who cite widespread economic warnings in saying the debt — which is nearing $17 trillion — must be addressed.
“We are addressing the most predictable debt crisis in this country’s history,” Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Tuesday while introducing his budget plan.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that “everybody” recognizes there is a “long-term debt challenge.”
And he said the president “believes that bipartisan cooperation is possible.”
Senate Democrats were unveiling their budget proposal Wednesday afternoon, in response to the House Republican plan introduced Tuesday.
The Republican plan touts longstanding party proposals to cut funding for domestic programs, repeal Obama’s health care reform law and overhaul the Medicare health care program for the elderly. It would balance the federal budget in 10 years with steep spending cuts alone — a nonstarter with Democrats.
“Ultimately, it may be that the differences are just too wide,” Obama said in the interview broadcast Wednesday.
If Republicans insist that their only solution is to avoid tax hikes and “gut” entitlement programs, “then we’re probably not going to be able to get a deal,” he said.
Obama has continued reaching out to lawmakers in hopes that he can somehow reach a “grand bargain” that reins in deficit spending without hurting the economy and stops Washington from lurching from one self-induced fiscal crisis to another.
The fence-mending campaign started with an unusual dinner Obama hosted last week at a hotel near the White House for a dozen Senate Republicans and continues Wednesday with his meeting with House Republicans.
Obama, who also will meet with Senate Republicans and House Democrats on Thursday, has shown a willingness to reduce spending on big entitlement programs but has not agreed to the kinds of changes Ryan and other Republicans have sought.
Republicans, however, object to any more tax increases, insisting that Obama got his way with tax hikes on top earners in the New Year’s Day deal that averted the “fiscal cliff.” That last-minute deal prevented automatic tax hikes for all federal income tax payers, but merely delayed $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts.
The parties were unable to reach a compromise on a deficit-cutting plan, so the automatic spending cuts began taking effect March 1 and are set to continue through the decade.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Citizens, Subjects and The Greatness of Rand Paul’s Filibuster
[RedState.com]
For a Day, Just For a Single Day – It Felt Like We Had An Actual US Senate
By: Repair_Man_Jack (Diary) | March 7th, 2013 at 12:00 PM
Keeping The Subjects From Getting Uppity Since 2009
There are two ways you can relate to the entity that governs you. You are either a citizen or you are a subject. There is a significant difference between the two. This difference involves the number of rights you enjoy and the amount of freedom of action and thought you get to exercise. Tupac Shapur sums it succinctly: Real n—– do they wanna do, b—- n—– do what they can.
In a philosophical sense, Senator Rand Paul just asked Attorney General Eric Holder which class we, the average American fit. Can we do what we want or do we what we can? Or more directly; can the people in charge of the government do what they want? Because if the government can do what it wants, then the people are not citizens, they are subjects, they have to do what they can.
WSJ’s Henninger: Obama Living in ‘Alternative Universe’
[Newsmax.com]
Thursday, 28 Feb 2013 09:50 AM
By Lisa Barron
President Barack Obama is living in an “alternative universe” where crisis looms but all he does is give speeches rather than tackle the problem, The Wall Street Journal said Thursday.With $85 billion in automatic spending cuts due to hit on Friday, Obama has made no effort to speak to Congressional leaders to avert the so-called sequester, writes the paper’s Daniel Henninger.“Barack Obama gives his State of the Union speech, the sequester looms, and the president flies around the country giving speeches. He’s had virtually no contact on the sequester with the legislative branch. Now he’s going to meet with them after the sequester happens. This is unusual. We need to look outside normal politics for explanations,” Henninger, the Journal’s deputy editorial page editor, writes in his weekly “Wonderland” column.“We are in the fifth year of the Obama presidency, and Washington is still dead in the water. Four straight years in which the government of the United States of America fails to enact a budget is, well, amazing,” he says.Henninger posts that Obama is “creating an alternative universe, the Obamaian Universe.”
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!
Discord and Disarray Won’t Help Obama Legacy
[Townhall.com]
February 28, 2013
Barack Obama is said to believe that he can win the political fight over the sequester. That’s certainly the conventional wisdom.
And there is some evidence to support it. When you ask voters who will be to blame if the sequester occurs, Obama or “congressional Republicans,” they’re much more likely to say they’ll blame the latter.
Obama also comes out on top when you ask whether they will blame “Obama and congressional Democrats” or “congressional Republicans.” Voters are not always good predictors of their future attitudes.
Gun dealers report striking ammunition shortages
[DailyCaller.com]
February 18, 2013
Gun owners are stockpiling ammunition in the midst of the ongoing national dialogue about gun-control legislation.
The USA Today reports that ammunition prices have skyrocketed in the last year, with some gun dealers limiting the quantity of ammunition that customers can purchase.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation — which represents ammunition makers, retailers, hunters and sport shooters – attributes the shortages in part to the increased popularity of sport-shooting and hunting. In fact, hunting license sales increased 9 percent from 2006 to 2011, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Participation in skeet shooting is also growing 3-5 percent annually.
However, retailers largely attribute the increased demand for ammunition to expected or threatened policy changes. Owners and sellers of guns say that the run on ammunition began around the time of President Barack Obama’s re-election.
Jon Stewart Grills Susan Rice on Obama Admin’s Alleged Mismanagement of Benghazi Terror Attack
[TheBlaze.com]
Questions continue to swirl surrounding the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead. Among the most confounding factors were inaccurate comments made by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice in the wake of the assault. The embattled administration official appeared last night on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” to discuss the government’s handling of the crisis.
During the exchange, the host challenged Rice on some of the confusing and contradictory information that emerged in the wake of the terror attack. The ambassador also issued some tough words for those who still believe the Obama administration is hiding key information.
Stewart wasted no time launching into his questioning. Almost as soon as Rice sat down, he asked the ambassador why she was selected to speak out on Sunday morning shows and pondered why someone else more appropriate (i.e. Hillary Clinton or another official) wasn’t chosen. The ambassador gave this long-winded answer:
“I’ve spent many-a-Sunday doing the Sunday shows. In this case, Secretary Clinton, who had been asked originally to do it, felt that she didn’t want to, couldn’t do it that week, having been through quite an intense week with the loss of our colleagues in Benghazi, the violence against our embassies all over the Arab and Muslim world and then — also that Friday having to join President Obama in greeting the families of our fallen colleagues and bringing their bodies back.”
Food Stamp Rolls in America Now Surpass the Population of Spain
[CNSNews.com]
(AP Image)(CNSNews.com) – Since taking office in 2009, food stamp rolls under President Barack Obama have risen to more than 47 million people in America, exceeding the population of Spain.
“Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity,” said Obama during his first joint session address to Congress on Feb. 24, 2009.
Since then, the number of participants enrolled in food stamps, known as the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP), has risen substantially.
When Obama entered office in January 2009 there were 31,939,110 Americans receiving food stamps. As of November 2012—the most recent data available—there were 47,692,896Americans enrolled, an increase of 49.3 percent.
President Obama’s Deficit Problem
[Townhall.com]
Kevin Glass
Managing Editor, Townhall.com
Jan 20, 2013 03:38 PM EST
Republicans are reportedly ready to vote to hike the debt ceiling without any of the major deficit-related concessions they’ve been pushing for from Democrats, and budget-watchers will soon turn their attention to the looming sequestration spending cuts (from the Budget Control Act, or BCA) scheculed to take place on March 1 and the expiration of the continuing resolution budget that the federal government has been operating on, scheduled to take place March 28.Progressives, however, have been declaring the deficit problem “mostly solved.” A report from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that, including all BCA cuts and the additional tax revenues from the January 1 fiscal cliff legislation, the U.S. is close to being on a stable ten-year budget path.
EPA chief Jackson resigns amid transparency investigations
[DailyCaller.com]
Posted: December 28, 2012
A Washington attorney says that Environmental Protection Agency Chief Administrator Lisa Jackson’s resignation and investigations into the EPA’s use of secret email accounts are not coincidental.
“Life’s full of coincidences, but this is too many,” Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Chris Horner told FoxNews.com. “She had no choice.”
The Justice Department also plans to release emails Jan. 14 in which EPA Chief Jackson’s alias account discusses coal regulation. According to Horner, this clearly is a factor
behind Jackson’s decision to leave the agency.
“Two full committees and one investigative subcommittee of the House of Representatives have asked several federal agencies, including EPA and the White House,” Horner said in a press release, adding that the Department of Justice acknowledged “12,000 emails from Lisa Jackson’s ‘secondary’ email account that discuss the Obama administration’s war on coal, in response to litigation we have filed over this practice.”
Could Obamacare Go the Way of McCain-Feingold?
[American Spectator]
By David Catron on 11.30.12 @ 6:10AM
The “Affordable Care Act” might die a death of a thousand legal cuts.
Last June, upon learning that the Supreme Court had ruled Obamacare’s individual mandate constitutional, many observers were forced to concur with the Dickens character who opined, “If the law supposes that… the law is an ass.” Yet, the increasing number of anti-PPACA lawsuits that have been receiving serious attention from the courts suggests that the legal system may not be as irrational as it seemed when Chief Justice John Roberts began braying from the bench on June 28. If this seems Pollyannaish, consider the fate of McCain-Feingold.
Supreme Court orders new look at Liberty University’s health care challenge
[FoxNews.com]
Associated Press
Published November 26, 2012
The Supreme Court has revived a Christian college’s challenge to President Obama’s health care overhaul.
The court on Monday ordered the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to consider the claim by Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., that Obama’s health care law violates the school’s religious freedoms.
A federal district judge rejected Liberty’s claims, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the lawsuit was premature and never dealt with the substance of the school’s arguments. The Supreme Court upheld the health care law in June.
The justices used lawsuits filed by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business to uphold the health care law by a 5-4 vote, then rejected all other pending appeals, including Liberty’s.
The school made a new filing with the court over the summer to argue that its claims should be fully evaluated in light of the high court decision. The administration said it did not oppose Liberty’s request.
Exclusive — Ryan to Obama: Get ‘Revenue Through Growth,’ Not Taxes
[Breitbart.com]
November 14, 2012
House Budget Committee chair Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has rejected President Barack Obama’s demand to raise taxes as part of Obama’s proposal to achieve $1.6 trillion in additional tax revenues to avoid the “fiscal cliff.”
Instead, Ryan backed Speaker John Boehner’s position, which is that any new tax revenues must be achieved without passing higher tax rates.
In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News, Ryan specified that new revenues should come through economic growth and tax reform, not tax hikes:
Speaker Boehner has outlined a bipartisan way forward to avoid the “fiscal cliff” and get our economy growing: common-sense entitlement reform coupled with pro-growth tax reform. We can find common ground on responsible spending restraint and greater revenue through economic growth, but we have yet to see either a serious plan or leadership from President Obama. Speaker Boehner and House Republicans have delivered both.
Earlier today, President Obama signaled an openness to tax reform, but said that “closing loopholes in deductions” would not cover the cost of extending the current tax rates for the top two percent of earners.
Obama reiterated that he interpreted last week’s election results as a mandate to raise taxes as a means to balance the federal budget. Ryan told ABC News yesterday that the electorate had not voted for higher taxes, since Republicans had retained control of the House of Representatives after opposing tax hikes.
Ryan’s support for Boehner signals growing unity among House Republicans behind the Speaker’s refusal to consider new taxes. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also made a firm commitment to prevent tax hikes in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News last week. Bipartisan talks on the “fiscal cliff’ begin Friday.
Supreme Court opens door to another challenge to Obamacare
[FoxNews.com]
Published October 01, 2012
Tucked inside the Supreme Court’s lengthy list of orders on Monday was an indication that the fight over President Obama’s health care law soon could be back before the high court.
Since the court’s June decision upholding the law’s individual mandate to buy insurance, one of the first Obamacare plaintiffs has been fighting for a new hearing on challenges to other portions of the law.
Liberty University, a Christian college in Virginia, has been fighting the employer mandate since the law was enacted, while challenging the law on other constitutional grounds. The school got as far as the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which refused to hear the merits of the case. That federal court decided that the original Liberty University lawsuit was barred because of the Anti-Injunction Act, which would block any challenge to a “tax” before a taxpayer actually pays it, in this case referring to the penalties associated with failing to obtain health insurance.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Anti-Injunction Act did not serve as a barrier to lawsuits challenging the health care law. On that basis, Liberty University immediately petitioned the court to allow it to renew its original case.
Exclusive – Sarah Palin: Did Joe McGinniss Condemn an Innocent Man?
[Breitbart.com]
by Sarah Palin 17 Sep 2012, 7:29 AM PDT
I don’t normally read “true crime” books, and I’ve certainly never written a review of one, but Errol Morris’ new book, “A Wilderness of Error,” isn’t typical of the genre. It’s much more interesting and I think important. It’s a book about the failings of a legal system administered by very fallible human beings, and it’s a book about how we buy into false media narratives that tidy up uncomfortably complex stories and give us permission to call off any further search for truth – and, yes, Morris argues with refreshing clarity that objective truth is real and worthy of being sought after despite the pretentious nonsense preached in faculty lounges about all truth being relative. In fact, he argues passionately that the search for truth is what journalism and justice is all about.
Morris describes how false narratives can become a sort of prison. He opens by reminding us of the story of “The Count of Monte Cristo” – the novel about an innocent man who escapes from the seemingly inescapable island prison he was sent to. Morris writes that today we have an even worse prison than that fictional one – only ours is “built out of newsprint and media. A prison of beliefs. You can escape from prison, but how do you escape from a convincing story? After enough repetitions, the facts come to serve the story and not the other way around. Like kudzu, suddenly the story is everywhere and impenetrable.”
Obama’s DOJ Grants ATF New Gun Grab Authority
[FreedomOutpost.com]
by Tim Brown
September 12, 2012
The Obama administration via the Department of Justice has given authority to the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to “seize and administratively forfeit property involved in controlled-substance abuses.” This means now that people who are not dealing illegal drugs, just using them and anyone who might associate with them in the same residence or be in a vehicle can have their God-given right of keeping and bearing arms revoked by the government god. In fact, no conviction is even required in these instances.
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