Monday, June 25, 2012

POLITICAL DIGEST 06/26/2012 CONSERVATIVE

Supreme Court rejects much of Arizona immigration law
Excerpt: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected much of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, but upheld other provisions, giving a partial victory to the Obama administration. … However, the court upheld the part of the law that requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they detain, if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is unlawfully in the United States.

My “I Stand With Arizona” Tee Shirt

55% Want U.S. Supreme Court to Uphold Arizona Immigration Law
Excerpt: Most voters still want an immigration law like Arizona’s in their own state and hope the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the legality of the Arizona law this week. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters would like to see the Supreme Court uphold the law that Arizona adopted to reduce illegal immigration in the state. Just 26% would like to see the high court overturn the law. (Will they Remember in November? ~Bob.)

Supreme Court: Both Parties Claim Victory in Arizona Immigration Law Ruling. By Carol E. Lee
Excerpt: The Supreme Court ruling on Arizona's tough immigration law reignites a political debate over a divisive issue that already has Republicans and Democrats at odds in a presidential election year. Both sides claimed victory Monday after the ruling, in which the court upheld the most controversial part of the law, a provision that allows police to check the immigration status of people they stop.

54% Still Favor Repeal of Obama’s Health Care Law
Excerpt: With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to decide the fate of President Obama’s national health care law, most voters still would like to see the law repealed. It’s indicative of how steady support for repeal has been that this week’s finding is identical to how voters felt in the first survey after the law’s passage by Congress in March 2010. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 54% of Likely U.S. Voters at least somewhat favor repeal of the health care bill, while 39% are at least somewhat opposed. This includes 43% who Strongly Favor repeal and 28% who are Strongly Opposed to it.

Spin doctors prepare to pounce on health care decision --Supreme Court ruling expected this week
Excerpt: With the nine Supreme Court justices poised to announce the fate of President Obama’s health care law this week, Washington is bracing for the long-awaited ruling that is expected to rattle the political fault lines leading up to the November election. While activists on both sides huddled over how to spin the decision in their favor, the Obama administration focused on highlighting the most popular parts of the Affordable Care Act and Republicans stuck to their message that no matter how much of the law the court upholds, they will still work to repeal the rest of it.

Obama Quote from NRO’s Morning Jolt with Jim Geraghty
The Barack Obama sold to us in 2008 would have cared about how something like Fast and Furious happened on his watch. The fact that Obama invoked executive privilege to protect his guys at the Department of Justice is just one more big red flashing-neon-sign that when he said things like, "Make no mistake, we need to end an era in Washington where accountability's been absent, oversight has been overlooked," it was . . . well, just words. (That was on October 1, 2008.)

Excerpt: ‘This is not the best scenario I anticipated,’ said Sarah Kamal, a liberal activist who was in Tahrir Square when Morsi’s victory was announced.” Really? Not the best scenario? Are you suggesting, Ms. Liberal Activist, that this is not a good credo for a country’s president to be bound to: “God is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations?” 

‘Repudiate the Muslim Brotherhood’: Allen West Calls for Obama to Immediately Cut All American Foreign Aid to Egypt Following Election Results. By Madeleine Morgenstern
Excerpt: Congressman Allen West (R-Fla.) on Sunday called for President Barack Obama to immediately cut off all American foreign aid to Egypt and to denounce the results of its presidential election after Muslim Brotherhood-backed candidate Mohammed Morsi’s victory…. “A year ago there were those of us who warned the Obama administration of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt,” West wrote. “We were castigated as alarmists and loose cannons.”

Egypt's secular parties blame U.S. pressure
Excerpt: Egyptian secular and liberal parties sounded dissatisfaction over the reported support of the US for Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate, Mohamed Mursi, but affirmed they would accept the results of the elections due to be announced Sunday. (It wasn't just the US, it was the entire Western world that foisted radical Islam on Egypt.
--Don Hank)

CNN: Islamic terrorist met with top Obama admin. officials at the White House
Excerpt: CNN reported yesterday that an Egyptian lawmaker who admits on his official Facebook page that he is part of a known Islamic terrorist organization, Gama al-Islamiyya, was given a visa and allowed into the country with other Egyptian lawmakers to meet with top officials of the Obama administration, including Deputy National Security Advisor Dennis McDonough at the White House. (Video)

Abuse Of Taxpayer Monies And Political Corruption Uncovered
Excerpt: An Illinois State agency responsible for the almost bankrupt College Illinois!® Pre-Paid Tuition Program spent tens of thousands in taxpayer money for political purposes. 243 pages of official state emails document activities of five State Agency Directors requiring state worker attendance at a political rally in Chicago where House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi endorsed Jesse Jackson, Jr. for Congress. (Abuse of Taxpayers in The Chicago way. ~Bob.)

Hill Poll: Voters: Obama over-reached blocking Fast and Furious docs
Excerpt: A clear majority of likely voters believes President Obama has exercised his executive power inappropriately — particularly in blocking the release of documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious, according to a new poll for The Hill. But in a sign that the electorate’s frustration extends to Capitol Hill, voters by a significant margin also feel Congress has behaved in an obstructionist manner toward the president. (yup. That’s what I want them to do-Obstruct Obama. ~Bob.)

Opinion: Some Dems turning on Obama. By Juan Williams
Excerpt: Last week the three most powerful Democrats in the state of West Virginia — Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, Senator Joe Manchin and Rep. Nick Rahall – made a public display of turning their backs on President Obama by announcing plans to skip the Democratic National Convention. … The same political distancing act is on display in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district.

Market Gloom Prevails at Start of ‘Decisive Week for Europe’
Excerpt: Market gloom prevailed Monday at the start of a crucial week for the euro, as Spain made a formal application for billions in aid for its sickly banks and European leaders prepare for talks over the creation of a European banking union to shore up the currency. Stock markets and the euro dropped amid pessimism that European Union leaders, who are due to meet Thursday and Friday in Brussels, will achieve the far-reaching breakthrough needed to resolve the debt crisis. (The can gets ever-harder to kick down the road. ~Bob.)

Romney can win, but he needs more than applause lines. By Peggy Noonan
Excerpt: You know what Republicans on the ground think when they look at Mitt Romney? "Please don't blow it." They think President Obama can't win but Mr. Romney can still lose. So they're feeling burly but anxious, hopeful yet spooked.

Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show
Excerpt: Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time - and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all. "Previous ocean models ... have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place," says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years' worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica - the first ever to be taken.

China Starts to Claim the Seas --The U.S. sends a signal of weakness over the Scarborough Shoal. By Max Boot.
Excerpt: The hardheaded case for President Obama's foreign policy rests on twin pillars: He is a tough commander in chief who does not hesitate to slay the nation's enemies, and he is "pivoting" from the Middle East to East Asia to confront the No. 1 threat to American power—China. There is some truth to both claims, but their essential hollowness has been revealed by a little-noticed defeat the U.S. has just suffered in a place few Americans have ever heard of.

Top secret: What food stamps buy. Taxpayers kept in dark about $80B a year
Excerpt: Food stamps can be spent on goods ranging from candy to steak and are accepted at retailers from gas stations that primarily sell potato chips to fried-chicken restaurants. And as the amount spent on food stamps has more than doubled in recent years, the amount of food stamps laundered into cash has increased dramatically, government statistics show.

First they came for the donor lists … By George Scoville
Excerpt: The Framers understood quite well that a time would eventually come when the United States government would become so large it would need to encroach on individual liberty to sustain itself, bringing all the force of law and arms to bear upon its endeavors. …Thus, they drafted institutions with very specific, enumerated powers, and they framed those institutions in our Constitution. They designed this document to shield citizens from abuses of power that would be cloaked in moralistic language.

Is President Obama A Pathological Liar?
Excerpt: The most frightening aspect of this president may not be his radical ideology but his rank dishonesty in selling that ideology. Now he's been caught lying about family racism….

EXCLUSIVE: 'Fast and Furious' whistleblower says he's 'disappointed' one year later. By William La Jeunesse
Excerpt: Dodson paid a high price for the truth. Moving to Arizona had been a dream come true. But after he blew the whistle, he was ostracized and told to leave Phoenix. …His former chain of command filed a complaint against Dodson for lying. Despite a mountain of evidence and testimony to the contrary, he remains on leave, rendered ineffective by the claims against him. (Supposed to be illegal. Those who reported the death of Terry and went to Grassley are persecuted/harassed; however, those who cooperated removed to the bosom of DC and promoted to cushy desk jobs. Per Carney spin, ignore it and think about jobs? –Barb.)

Dinesh D'Souza: Obama and 2016
Movie trailer.

A Beekeeper's Perspective on Risk. By Michael O'Malley
Excerpt: Take, for example, their approach toward the "too-big-to-fail" risk our financial sector famously took on. Honeybees have a failsafe preventive for that. It's: "Don't get too big." Hives grow through successive divestures or spin-offs: They swarm. When a colony gets too large, it becomes operationally unwieldy and grossly inefficient and the hive splits.

The Real War
Excerpt: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke continued the Fed’s war on and destruction of American savers and retirees last week with a continuation of Operation Twist.

Excerpt: This is a guest post from Hasan Afzal of Stand for Peace. On the 8th of July 2012, the Grand Connaught Rooms in London will host a conference featuring several hate preachers. Their repertoire includes justifying suicide bombings, glorifying jihad, promoting venomous homophobia, spreading crude antisemitism, and encouraging reprehensible bigotry against Shia Muslims. (Email address for Grand Connaught Rooms in London: enquiries.gcr@principal-hayley.com)

Mormon F**kface,‘ ’Mormon Cultist’: Attacks on Romney’s Faith Surface — Again
The tolerant, civil left. ~Bob.

On Thursday, Roberts Is Likely To Write The Supreme Court Opinion That Partially Overturns Obamacare
Excerpt: Today, we learned that the final day of the Supreme Court’s 2011-2012 session will take place at 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 28, and that Chief Justice John Roberts will most likely issue the majority opinion. … From what Roberts said at oral argument last March, it’s likely that this means that Obamacare’s individual mandate is going down, but that some of the law will remain intact.

Excerpt: In light of the controversy over the $20,000 to $30,000 in expected police overtime costs to Durham, New Hampshire, it is interesting to note that the Romney campaign is partially reimbursing local police forces for the costs of security for campaign events.

Will Egypt Become the New Iran? By Con Coughlin
Excerpt: But as happened during the 1979 Iranian revolution, I fear the Mr Morsi's election is the thin end of the wedge. While Mr Morsi himself might be moderate in outlook, many of those who back him are not, such as the Salafist groups that have recently set fire to a number of Christian groups. As we are seeing in neighbouring Libya, where the British ambassador recently survived an assassination attempt by al-Qaeda-related militants, the hardline Islamists in Egypt demand nothing less than the creation of a full-blown Islamist state.

Worth Reading: Is the Country Unraveling? By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: The last thirty days have made it clear that Barack Obama is not going to win the 2012 election by a substantial margin. The polls still show the race near dead even with over five months, and all sorts of unforeseen events, to come. But after the Obama meltdown of April and May, I don’t think he in any way resembles the mysterious Pied Piper figure of 2008, who mesmerized and then marched the American people over the cliff.

Has there been an explosion in U.S. inequality? No. By James Pethokoukis
Excerpt: Americans should be alarmed by a rocketing rise in inequality. At least that’s the constant message of the Obama White House and much of the media.

Call me Daddy: What ringleader of Rochdale sex grooming gang convicted of 30 rapes told child victims to call him
Excerpt: Shabir Ahmed, 59, was jailed last month but can only now be identified, after he was convicted of 30 more horrific rapes in a separate trial. … Ahmed was one of nine Pakistani men jailed at Liverpool Crown Court for a total of 77 years last month for the horrific sex attacks.

Bacchanalia and 'No Church in the Wild. By Emily Esfahani Smith
Excerpt: Slate‘s Aisha Harris has trouble making sense of the meaning of the song and the video because her political explanation is too surface and misses the point.
The song is not about politics. It’s about culture–or, what happens when culture degenerates and society breaks down.

Fast and Furious weapons tied to high profile killing in Mexico
Excerpt: The news emanating from the United States regarding the political firestorm of Operation Furious and Furious and its connection to the killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, has renewed interest in another murder that's linked to the controversial gunrunning operation, a drug enforcement official formerly assigned to duty in Mexico told the Law Enforcement Examiner on Sunday. According to the drug enforcement source, Mario Gonzalez, the brother of a Mexican law enforcement official, was abducted in 2011 by Mexican drug cartel enforcers who then tortured him and forced him to make a bogus confession al-la al-Qaeda-style videotaping.
Video.

The Muslim Brotherhood Takeover in Egypt shows Arab Spring is Radical Islamist Nightmare. By Congressman Allen West (R-FL), Facebook Page
Excerpt: A year ago there were those of us who warned the Obama Administration of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt. We were castigated as alarmists and loose cannons. Today our predictions have come to reality and the ominous specter reminding us of the Iranian revolution is evident. The Muslim Brotherhood claimed they would not run a presidential candidate. Clearly the Arab Spring is nothing more than a radical Islamic nightmare. Now we need to unequivocally reiterate our support to the Coptic Christians and Israel. What an incredible foreign policy faux pas by the second coming of President Jimmy Carter, the Obama Administration. I call upon President Barack Obama to cut off American foreign aid to Egypt, denounce the results of this election, repudiate the Muslim Brotherhood, and all radical Islamist political entities.

Excerpt: The Obama administration should call in Jimmy Carter to give them a briefing on what follows the end of a pro-U.S. authoritarian regime in the Middle East. The administration had better very carefully plan for all contingencies in Egypt. Thanks to brilliant political maneuvering, the “largely secular” Muslim Brotherhood — which, in early-Khomeini fashion, serially insisted that they were not interested in political power even as they grabbed it — has outsmarted both the military and the so-called secularists.

Excerpt: Eighty years ago, Egypt was ruled by a ramshackle, free-ish monarchy in mimicry of the Westminster system; forty years ago, it was under the control of authoritarian, secular pan-Arab nationalists; and now the Muslim Brotherhood guy has won the election. But don’t worry, on the day Mubarak stepped down, America’s director of national intelligence, who presides over the most lavishly funded intelligence bureaucracy on the planet, was telling the world that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular.” 

I think I may have been death-panelized... By Timothy Birdlow
Excerpt: The doctors wanted to operate and place a pacemaker/defibrillator in my chest, but as I was so young (aged 47) and made it clear I was eager to avoid this, they opted for a wearable external device designed to do the same thing. Made by the Zoll corporation, the Lifevest is a miracle of high technology. It transmits a real-time record of the wearer's heart rate to the company, who then can supply it to your doctor.

What’s in a Name? Asia Policy “Pivots” to Rebalancing. By Walter Russell Mead
Excerpt: Is America “pivoting” in Asia, or “rebalancing?” This is the kind of question that keeps bureaucrats writing long memos, but in the real world the labels are less important than the facts.

Obama officials’ brutal mistreatment of dying WW II hero. By Suzanne Eovaldi, staff writer
Excerpt: Horrific brutality is being done by the Obama Administration’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court to a cancer ridden, helpless 89 year old World War II veteran who received two bronze stars involving the incredible rescue of 2,000 U.S. Prisoners of War from vicious Japanese guards at the Los Banos Internment Camp in Luzon, Philippines in 1945.

Democratic Heretics: Would FDR, Truman, JFK, or LBJ be nominated by their party today? By Steven F. Hayward
Excerpt: The never-ending Democratic attempt to resurrect the strategy that destroyed Barry Goldwater in 1964—he’s an extremist, don’t you know—rolls on, with liberals and the media trying to tar the Republican party as an “ideological outlier” in American politics. There are three legs to this rickety barstool of an argument. One is the pseudo-social science findings of Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann that congressional Republican voting records have lurched sharply to the right in recent years (though it is not obvious why this should be bad news).

Who were the suckers in the Tahrir Square revolution? By Richard Spencer, Telegraph UK
Excerpt: The main purpose of the revolution was to get rid of Mubarak. There were a variety of views on what else people wanted – some wanted democracy, some wanted Islam, some wanted social justice and bread, and a lot of people thought those three weren't incompatible. But no-one thought paradise was six months away, and most didn't think beyond the end of Hosni.

Contemptible. By Mark Hemingway
Excerpt: Last Wednesday, the White House stunned observers by asserting executive privilege in its refusal to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal that resulted in the death of U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry. The day before, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign sent out a missive attacking GOP super-PACs for not revealing their donors. The message is clear: The president thinks transparency is a good thing if it allows him to bully citizens who give money to his political opponents.

Nation’s Editorials Press Obama Administration to Release Fast & Furious Documents
Excerpt: Last week, President Obama exerted executive privilege to shield Department of Justice documents that can help provide answers about the reckless Fast and Furious operation that cost an American border patrol agent his life. Editorial boards across the country are blasting the administration’s stonewalling, and calling on the White House and Attorney General Eric Holder to disclose the documents subpoenaed by the Oversight & Government Reform Committee. 

Mom given bill to clean street after son killed by illegal immigrant driving drunk
Excerpt: A grieving mother told a South Carolina court she was slapped with several bills, including one to clean the street after her son was killed by a drunken driver last year. Loretta Robinson spoke on June 19 of the emotional and financial toll her son Justin Walker's death had on her as the driver Anna Gonzales, who is an illegal immigrant, pleaded guilty in the case.

Taliban behead 7 Pakistani soldiers: report
Excerpt: The Taliban claimed to have killed 17 Pakistani soldiers in an attack in the northern district of Upper Dir yesterday. Seven of the soldiers are reported to have been beheaded.

Thousands of Racine Voters May Have Been Able to Cast a Recall Ballot by Mistake
Excerpt: Thousands of voters who registered at the polls on recall election day in the City of Racine may not have signed the supplemental poll list as required by law, the MacIver News Service has learned. Individuals who register as new voters or change their voter registration on Election Day do not appear on the pre-printed voter rolls maintained by election workers.


--
Robert A. Hall

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