Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Making School Choice Even More Burdensome

As if we didn't have enough government overreach to react to this week!

Ramesh Ponnuru reports the following in NRO's The Corner.

The Justice Department has decided that private and parochial schools have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act — if they participate in voucher programs. 

Compliance can be highly burdensome, so this is going to be a real disincentive for schools to take part in these programs.

Perhaps this administration considers that a feature, not a bug.


Let Me Get This Straight. Are the Dems Now Arguing for Smaller Government?

Irony alert...

After reading through the mainstream news this morning, it's clear what the new defense is for Democrats under fire for incompetence and/or conspiracy; namely, government is just too massive and too complicated for Obama, Holder, Clinton, Sibelius, and so on to even know what's going on, let alone control it.

Some defense, huh? To admit what Reagan conservatives have been saying for decades about big government being the problem, not the solution.

But hey…any way you get there is okay with me.

So, my warmest congratulations to all the Democrat politicians and journalists who seem to be have seen the light this morning and embraced political, social and economic reality.

I'm really looking forward to working with you in the days to come in shrinking government and significantly reversing those Welfare State policies that have wreaked such terrible havoc.

I will also appreciate your efforts to make government much more responsible, more efficient, and much more in line with what the Founding Fathers designed.

Where shall we start?

Has the Lapdog Press Finally Awakened?

Yes, there have been several moments in the bizarre presidency of Barack Obama where I hoped that maybe, just maybe, members of the Fourth Estate would awaken to their responsibilities (you know, the ones that they were taught in Journalism 101 -- honesty, relevancy, independence) and begin to fairly report the news.

With rare exceptions, those hopes have been dashed.

Dare I hope again?

* "O’s scandals take nation by storm" (Michael Goodwin, New York Post)

*  The letter from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to Attorney General Eric Holder which protests the Justice Department's subpoena of Associated Press phone records is co-signed by an awful lot of folks. Among them are ABC, American Society of News Editors, Association of American Publishers, Atlantic Media, California Newspaper Publishers Association, Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps Company, Forbes, Gannett, Journal Communications,  National Association of Broadcasters, the National Press Club National Press Photographers Association, NBC, the New York Times, the Newspaper Guild, The Newsweek/Daily Beast, NPR, POLITICO, Reporters Without Borders, Reuters, Time, and the Washington Post. (You can read that letter here.)

* "D.C. turns on Obama" (POLITCO)

* "Obama's dangerous new narrative" (POLITICO)

* "CNN exclusive: White House email contradicts Benghazi leaks"

* "More Details on Benghazi Talking Points Emerge" (ABC)

* Costa on the ‘Tizzy’ in Washington over AP, IRS Stories: ‘Tide Has Turned on this Administration’

Uh, David Axelrod's Defense of Team Obama Isn't Working So Well

Is Democrat loyalist David Axelrod, Barack Obama's pal and former senior adviser, conceding that America backed the wrong man?

To the discriminating listener, it certainly seems so.

For instance, in trying to establish Obama's innocence in the IRS and AP messes, he ends up portraying the President as ignorant, unconcerned and woefully inept.

“Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast," Axelrod moaned.

Really? Does that mean that Mr. Axelrod is ready to go Republican now, to decry big government because it is too confused and unwieldy to manage? I don't think so. It's more an acknowledgement that it's just too big for Barack Obama.

Perhaps Mr. Axelrod believes, along with a growing number of Obama voters, that the nation needs a leader with more smarts, more experience, more of a work ethic, more of a team player if we're ever going to get moving in the right direction again.

Axelrod is doing Obama no favors on Benghazi either.  Even many of the hardcore liberals in the press corps accepted the testimony of the Congressional hearing witnesses earlier this week as honest, profound and of tremendous importance in exposing Team Obama as conspirators whose patriotism (and concern for dead Americans) took a back seat to political opportunism.

Yet yesterday Axelrod was still trying to characterize the whole matter as "BS." A few weeks ago, that kind of coarse dismissal of the Benghazi coverup might have been excused as wishful thinking, even self-delusion. But with the evidence which has already piled up, Axelrod's attitude reeks of self-righteous arrogance.

The very kind of arrogance that seems so deeply embedded in the scandals themselves.

No, David is doing Barack (or Hillary) no favors. But then, if the formerly lapdog press decides to pursue these scandals and those others that will inevitably emerge, there's nothing that can save this administration anyhow.

The IRS Goes "Big Brother" to Intimidate, Weaken Conservative Cause

Even at Politico, they're bothered by the malicious Big Brother tactics of the Obama administration's IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service asked tea party groups to see donor rolls. 

It asked for printouts of Facebook posts. 

And it asked what books people were reading…

“They were asking for a U-Haul truck’s worth of information,” said Toby Marie Walker, the president of the Waco Tea Party. 


Some groups even gave up in the face of the IRS questions. 

Several of the groups were asked for résumés of top officers and descriptions of interviews with the media. One group was asked to provide “minutes of all board meetings since your creation.

Some of the letters asked for copies of the groups’ Web pages, blog posts and social media postings — making some tea party members worry they’d be punished for their tweets or Facebook comments by their followers.

And each letter had a stern warning about “penalties of perjury” — which became intimidating for groups that were being asked about future activities, like future donations or endorsements…

U.S. Court Rejects Homeschooling Family's Plea for Asylum (What's Next?)

Fox News reporter Todd Starnes relates the bad news:

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Obama Administration’s decision to deny asylum to a German homeschooling family.

The Romeike family fled their German homeland in 2008 seeking political asylum in the United States – where they hoped to home school their children. Instead, the Obama administration wants the evangelical Christian family deported.

An Immigration judge granted them asylum in 2010 after the family revealed they were facing criminal prosecution for homeschooling their children. That decision was later overturned by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2012.

The court ruled today that the Romeikes had not made a sufficient case and that the United States has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment...

Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, vowed to appeal the decision.

“Germany continues to persecute homeschoolers,” said Mike Donnelly, the HSLDA’s director of international affairs. “The court ignored mountains of evidence that homeschoolers are harshly fined and that custody of their children is gravely threatened—something most people would call persecution. This is what the Romeikes will suffer if they are sent back to Germany.” 


The Justice Dept. is arguing that German law banning home schooling does not violate the family’s human rights.

“They are trying to send a family back to Germany where they would certainly lose custody of their children,” Farris told Fox News. “Our government is siding with Germany.”

Farris said the Germans ban home schools because “they don’t want to have religious and philosophical minorities in their country.”

“That means they don’t want to have significant numbers of people who think differently than what the government thinks,” he said. “It’s an incredibly dangerous assertion that people can’t think in a way that the government doesn’t approve of.”…

Farris said he finds great irony that the Obama administration is releasing thousands of illegal aliens – yet wants to send a family seeking political asylum back to Germany.

“Eleven million people are going to be allowed to stay freely – but this one family is going to be shipped back to Germany to be persecuted,” he said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”…

Farris said he finds great irony that the Obama administration is releasing thousands of illegal aliens – yet wants to send a family seeking political asylum back to Germany.

“Eleven million people are going to be allowed to stay freely – but this one family is going to be shipped back to Germany to be persecuted,” he said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”


What can we do now?

1) Of course, pray for the appeal to be successful. And pray for a restoration of sanity in our nation's immigration policy, one that rewards immigrants who love America for its values as well as its opportunities, a policy that welcomes immigrants who are able and willing to add to the nation's economic strength rather than take from it.

And 2) you might even consider sending along a contribution to the HSLDA to help them in their effort to secure protection for the Romeike family.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Today's Posts

Getting Busy

We have ambitious plans for the week: two prayer and sidewalk counseling sessions in front of the Planned Parenthood abortion mill, writing and sending out the May LifeSharer letter, the regular blogging duties, several lawn projects, preparations for this weekend's letter-writing event, the Omaha city elections, sermon preparation, and a friend's 50th wedding anniversary party.

Oh yes, we also have a full slate of "When Swing Was King" presentations.

It's going to be hectic but I think we can get things done, especially since yesterday helped us with a good start.

We started the day off by praying over several matters while driving down to Lincoln. At the Westgate Bank there in the Capital City, we had the wonderful pleasure of paying off our home mortgage. That was, as you can guess, a most definite "hooray moment" for us.

We celebrated that momentous event with a quick lunch, then headed back to Omaha where we had a "When Swing Was King" performance waiting for us. And, before the day was over, we even managed to send out some correspondence, secured approval from the insurance company for roof and gutter repairs, and got the lawn mowed and watered.

Like I said, it was a good start.


"No Innocent Explanation" for Administration's Benghazi Actions

I've frequently urged Vital Signs readers to subscribe to the free e-mail newsletters offered by National Review Online. Read this superb essay from Jim Geraghty's "Morning Jolt" newsletter and you'll see why I've urged you to sign up.

Dear Media: Obama's Indignant Benghazi Response Revealed a Lot Yesterday!

Dear friends in the media.

Come on.

I mean, come on.

You and I know what's going with the Benghazi thing. Let me share something that I first put into play during the "was Anthony Weiner's Twitter account hacked" debate, but that comes from watching the Lewinsky scandal, the where-did–Mark-Sanford-go scandal, the why-is-David-Wu-dressed-in-a-tiger-suit scandal, and a wide variety of wrongdoing committed by politicians:

When there is evidence of scandalous or bizarre behavior on the part of a political figure, and no reasonable explanation is revealed within 24 to 48 hours, then the truth is probably as bad as everyone suspects.

Nobody withholds exculpatory information. Nobody who's been accused of something wrong waits for "just the right moment" to unveil information that proves the charge baseless. Political figures never choose to deliberately let themselves twist in the wind. It's not the instinctive psychological reaction to being falsely accused, it's not what any public communications professional would recommend, and to use one of our president's favorite justifications, it's just common sense.

So . . .

You and I both know, in our guts, and based upon everything we've seen in Washington since we started our careers, that there's no innocent explanation for the Obama administration's actions before, during, and after the Benghazi attacks.

If there were good reasons for why the requests for additional security from staff in Libya didn't generate any serious response in the halls of the State Department, we would have heard it by now. If there was evidence that everyone within the State Department, military, and White House were doing everything they could to rescue our guys on that awful night, we would have heard about it long ago. If there was a good reason for the "talking points" to get edited down from a false premise (a demonstration) but at least serious information (previous CIA warnings about terrorist activity) to false pabulum, we would have heard it by now; the latest lame excuse is that the 14 edits merely reflect "bureaucratic infighting between the CIA and State." And if there was a good reason for State Department lawyers to call up Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks  and tell him not to allow the RSO, the acting deputy chief of mission, and himself to be interviewed by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), we would have heard that by now, too.

Come on, guys. What do we think is going on when Hillary Clinton's chief of staff calls up the acting ambassador, and harangues him about the lack of a State Department lawyer for his conversation with Congress? Does anybody really believe it's just her checking up to make sure protocol was followed?

You can see what's going on here. You may not want to see it, or believe it, but you can see it. The federal government made awful, unforgivable wrong decisions about the security for its people in Benghazi. They compounded the error by failing to put together even the beginning of a rescue mission during the seven-hour assault. Perhaps those responsible for making the call had a fear of a "Black Hawk Down" scenario, in which the rescuers find themselves needing rescue, but whatever the reasoning, the net effect was the same: Our people were under fire, fighting for their lives, and nobody was coming to help. The decisions made that night make a mockery of the unofficial, but widespread motto of our armed forces: "Nobody gets left behind."

The decisions made up until this point may or may not have involved the president or then-secretary of state Clinton, but they sure as hell were involved in the decisions that came afterwards.  The morning after the attack, the administration tried to offer the excuse that it was a completely unforeseeable event, randomly triggered by some YouTube video. And they sought to intimidate and punish anyone who would contradict their storyline.

My friends in media, you know what is going on when you see President Obama say this: "The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow.  What we have been very clear about throughout was that immediately after this event happened we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were."

You know what this is: Stop looking at what I did, and start looking at the people accusing me of wrongdoing. We've seen this tactic before: "The vast right-wing conspiracy."

We know the president's claim that there was confusion is false, because everyone on the ground was clearly telling their bosses that this was a terror attack from the beginning. No one in Benghazi or Libya was saying this was a protest as a result of a YouTube video. Where did that idea come from? Who within the administration decided to take accurate information and start inserting inaccurate information?

The president continues: "It happened at the same time as we had seen attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo as a consequence of this film. And nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days."

No, the folks on the ground understood what was taking place. They just said so before Congress and a lot of television cameras. Why is the president confused about this?

Obama continues: "And the fact that this keeps on getting churned out, frankly, has a lot to do with political motivations. We've had folks who have challenged Hillary Clinton's integrity, Susan Rice's integrity, Mike Mullen and Tom Pickering's integrity. It's a given that mine gets challenged by these same folks. They've used it for fundraising."

The motivations and fundraising of those who disagree with you are irrelevant to whether or not you're telling the truth, Mr. President.

Melanie Phillips: The Left's Hatred Is Because She Was Once "One of Them"

For the Left, I am the target of deepest hatred.

For my trenchant views, expressed in this newspaper, they call me ‘insane’, ‘reactionary’, ‘racist’, a ‘Nazi’, a ‘shroudwaver’, a ‘witch’ and a ‘warmonger’.

I have been accused of ‘unmatched depths of ignorance and bigotry’ and being the ‘queen of mean’.

It was even suggested (in a particularly extreme spasm of hyperbole) that I eat broken bottles and kill rats with my teeth.

This resort to crude insult against anyone who dares to challenge their shibboleths is typical of the Left.

It doesn’t argue its case. It simply tries to shut down debate by bullying its targets and labelling them as extremists and enemies of humanity in order to frighten people away from listening to them.

But they reserve a special loathing for me. This is not just because I refuse to be cowed.

It’s because I was once one of them, one of the elect, a believer…


From the excerpt of exceptional journalist Melanie Phillips's e-book, Guardian Angel: My Story, My Britain. Here's more as printed in the Daily Mail.

And below is a Vimeo clip in which Phillips talks about the book. I've ordered my copy already. How about you?


Pulitzer Prize Winner Dares to Take On Scientology

Several years ago, for a series of Salon articles about Scientology, I was asked to review the founding text of the church, “Dianetics” by L. Ron Hubbard, first published in 1950. The book seemed so clearly the work of a man suffering from particular and pronounced mental health issues that I became, for the first time, curious about its author. Like most self-help books, “Dianetics” frequently invokes case histories or hypothetical scenarios, but unlike most self-help books, Hubbard’s stories featured an alarming amount of violence, specifically domestic violence.

Over and over, when imagining a childhood source for an individual’s problems, Hubbard spins tales of unfaithful wives and husbands who beat and verbally abuse them, sometimes kicking their pregnant bellies. Perhaps we can attribute some of this to a preoccupation with prenatal trauma; “Dianetics” insists that fetuses can understand damaging statements made to the women carrying them. Nevertheless, to me, the most striking thing about the book — besides Hubbard’s belief that it is “not uncommon” for women to make “twenty or thirty” attempts at a self-induced abortion with orange sticks and other implements — is its author’s assumption that such beatings are a commonplace aspect of most people’s home lives...

The whole mess seemed like a seething farrago of bizarre fantasies, vendettas and nightmares, indistinguishable from whatever grains of truth lingered here and there. A phenomenally diligent and rigorous investigator could probably sort it all out, but the Church of Scientology is notorious for using nuisance litigation to hound skeptical journalists to the brink of destitution and despair. Who’d be up for that?

Lawrence Wright was, and my long preamble is all by way of explaining why his new book, “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief,” is so invaluable. There have been other exposés of the church — including last year’s fine “Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion” by Janet Reitman, a book Wright praises in his own — but this one carries the imprimatur of both Wright, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, and the New Yorker magazine, where Wright first wrote about the church in a story on its cultivation of celebrity members, as exemplified by movie director Paul Haggis...


The above is from a hard-hitting Salon article in which Laura Miller reviews Lawrence Wright's new book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief along with giving some of her own experiences in checking out the super-weird religion.

Reflecting on the Gosnell Verdict

To better evaluate the verdict, the social implications, the media
treatment, and so on, take a look through these quick articles:

* "Gosnell Attorney Blames Media, 'Baby Factor' For Conviction" (Steven Ertelt, LifeNews)

* "Gosnell Did What Many Bioethicists Advocate" (Wesley J. Smith, NRO)

* "Three-quarters of Gosnell jurors were 'pro-choice'" (Ben Johnson, LifeSiteNews)

* "Kermit Gosnell's Verdict Is Not Justice" (Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg)

* "Finally: 56 Days Later, ABC Ends Blackout and Covers Gosnell 'House of Horrors'" (Scott Whitlock, NewsBusters)

* "Gosnell Abortion Clinic Staffer Eileen O’Neill Also Found Guilty" (Steven Ertelt & Cheryl Sullenger, LifeNews)

Scandal Sheet: Keeping Up With This Outrageous Administration

The scandals from the Obama administration are coming at us so "fast & furious" (pun fully intended) that it's hard to keep up with the best commentary. So (along with those articles about Benghazi that I've linked to in previous posts) here's a few items dealing with the latest revelations of gross misconduct.

* "An Outlaw Tax Collector" (The Editors of National Review)

* "IRS Scandal About to Blow Wide Open?" (John Hinderaker, Power Line)

* "Twin Scandals Sap Obama Credibility" (Chris Stirewalt, Fox News)

* "Wider Problems Found at IRS" (John D. McKinnon & Siobhan Hughes, Wall Street Journal)

* "The IRS admits to ‘targeting’ conservative groups, but were they also ‘leaking’?" (Matt K. Lewis, Daily Caller)

* "University to Bestow ‘Face of IRS Scandal’ with Honorary Tribute" (Jennifer Kabbany, The College Fix)

* "Gov't probe obtains wide swath of AP phone records" (Mark Sherman, AP)

* "Under sweeping subpoenas, Justice Department obtained AP phone records in leak investigation" Sari Horwitz, Washington Post)

Friday, May 10, 2013

The IRS Apologizes for Acting the Tyrant (This Time)

When several conservative groups complained that the IRS had begun to harass and intimidate them in last year's election campaign, both the government and the liberal's lapdog media loudly dismissed the complaints as nothing but conspiracy theories, unnecessary whining, and even outright lies.

Remember?

I wonder then how much news coverage we'll see on this story.

The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

"That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.

"The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added…


This time, anyhow.

I guess the dangers of government clerks acting as judge, jury and executioner are a lot closer than what mainstream media thought.

A Ghastly Reality: Gosnell Is Only One of Many


Has the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell received a fair amount of coverage from the press?

Not even close.

Indeed, as mentioned in a Vital Signs post a couple of days ago, Michael Chapman at CNS News used a Nexis "all news" search to discover that the "coming out" of a part-time NBA player was covered in 2,381 stories compared to 115 dealing with Gosnell.

That's more than 95 times the coverage.

Nevertheless, there is some appreciation that the Gosnell trial has been covered at all by mainstream media. It is proof that the alternative media has grown up healthy and strong -- strong enough to effectively pressure the old guard to pay attention to things that are truly newsworthy, things that previously could be ignored with complete impunity.

Obviously, there is still a lot of work for us to do in requiring the MSM to cover Gosnell's house of horrors. But, at the same time, we need to utilize the best research and commentary (especially the latest investigative journalism done by Live Action) to show America and the world that Gosnell is but one of the abortion industry's many dirty secrets.

Earlier this week I linked to the Live Action video report on Leroy Carhart. Do check it out if you haven't already. And next, please read and pass on these articles which help bring to light the dark and deadly exploitation that is abortion --- "Abortion’s Underside: Kermit Gosnell is not the only seedy backroom abortionist operating in the age of Roe v. Wade" by Jillian Kay Melchior at National Review and "Gosnell and the Super Coil" by Matt Purple at American Spectator.


Want to Avoid Discrimination Charges? Simple. Translate Everything.

A group of Hispanic custodians at the Auraria Campus in downtown Denver are claiming they are victims of discrimination…Ribota said she was injured at work because she couldn’t read a warning sign that was in English. “If I could speak English I wouldn’t have the problems that exist,” said Ribota.

[The dripping irony of that statement is apparently missed completely by Ribota and her lawyers.)

The Auraria Campus believes employees should understand some basic English. “It’s not our goal to provide every document translated or every conversation translated. Our employees are expected to interact with members of the public and that interaction we expect them to be able to understand English,” said Nickeson.

The EEOC could take several weeks to review the case. If they find actual damages the Department of Justice would get involved.


One wonders to what extent the forces of political correctness will take this principle? Should everything be translated? For instance, is a newspaper or magazine guilty of racism, discrimination or ethnocentrism if it fails to provide articles and ads in both Spanish and English? Indeed, why stop at two languages? One doesn't want to be charged with discrimination against those who speak Chinese, Russian, or Farsi, right?

Should we switch everything over to Esperanto?

Perhaps common sense will one day enter the arena and English will return as the standard for the United States -- with immigrants expected to learn the language. That's not only best for national unity and efficiency, but for the social and prosperity interests of the immigrants themselves.

Keeping Up With the Benghazi Hearings

In other compilation posts this week, I've listed some of the best reports on the Benghazi hearings. Here's the latest round:

* "Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference" from ABC News.

* "The Benghazi Scandal Grows" by Stephen F. Hayes at the Weekly Standard.

* "Let Benghazi's Chips Fall," an editorial from the Wall Street Journal. 

* "Benghazi Eight Months Later: What we know and what we still don’t know" by Ted Cruz at NRO.

* "Benghazi shows Democrats at most desperate" by Charles Hurt at the Washington Times.

* "Liberal media spin Benghazi scandal to protect Team Obama" by Dan Gainor at Fox News.

* "Hillary Hasn’t Heard the End of Benghazi" by Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary.

* "From Bimbos to Benghazi: Benghazi whistleblowers as the new Clinton bimbo eruptions" by Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator.

* "Benghazi: Beginning of end" by Dick Morris at The Hill.