Let us all pray for the President, with particular reference to Psalm 109:8

An ongoing topic regarding the Obama administration is the obvious and upcoming increase in taxes to the middle class…. despite Obama’s campaign promises to the contrary.  Taxes are, after all, the primary way government acquires the revenues it spends, and this administration has completely blown away all previous spending records.  Since the money wasn’t sitting in an account waiting to be spent, Obama and Congress had to borrow it …ultimately against future taxes.  After only ten months of existence, this administration now owes more money than all previous administrations in our entire history have spent collectively.

Whether or not any entity has even the right to tax, and if so, to what degree it has the right to tax, and whether or not it has the right to tax future generations (who will obviously have no say in its current distribution) is a legitimate question.

Despotisms claim the right to tax and impose it by force. Democracies may also impose a tax by use of force, but in theory it is limited to enforcing tax laws that are agreed-to jointly by the body politic.

Presumably, the concept of fairness comes into play, as only a tax deemed fair would be agreed-to by the taxed. Also, when a tax is considered for imposition, it is not only the method and criteria that are considered, but the use of the proceeds as well. Democratic government does not have free reign to spend tax receipts in just any fashion deemed desirous by those holding office at the time the receipts are garnered or borrowed against. There are limits imposed by law, custom, tradition, and morality.

The same principle applies, though one step removed from the voting public in a representative republic. The tax and its use must in essence be agreed-to by the body politic. Taxes, in representative governments therefore, are generally approved for a common good, cumulative necessity, and to advance a national interest.

In a redistributive scenario, a portion of the taxes obtained are being used not for a common good, or cumulative necessity, or to advance a national interest, but rather to enrich one group or special interest at the expense of another. Where those being taxed don’t, on the whole, agree, the redistribution is tantamount to theft, plain and simple, and the government practices despotism in enforcing it. Governmental theft is still theft, and the fact that it is being carried out by the government doesn’t mitigate its moral or ethical vaccuousnes….. It enhances it.

All of this presumes that some entity has a right to tax at all. Despotisms claim the right to tax and impose it by force. Democracies may also impose a tax by use of force, but in theory it is limited to enforcing tax laws that are agreed-to jointly by the body politic.

Presumably, the concept of fairness comes into play, as only a tax deemed fair would be agreed-to by the taxed. Also, when a tax is considered for imposition, it is not only the method and criteria that are considered, but the use of the proceeds as well. Democratic government does not have free reign to spend tax receipts in just any fashion deemed desirous by those holding office at the time the receipts are garnered or borrowed against. There are limits imposed by law, custom, tradition, and morality.

The same principle applies, though one step removed from the voting public in a representative republic. The tax and its use must in essence be agreed-to by the body politic. Taxes, in representative governments therefore, are generally approved for a common good, cumulative necessity, and to advance a national interest.

In a redistributive scenario, a portion of the taxes obtained are being used not for a common good, or cumulative necessity, or to advance a national interest, but rather to enrich one group or special interest at the expense of another. Where those being taxed don’t, on the whole, agree, the redistribution is tantamount to theft, plain and simple, and the government practices despotism in enforcing it. Governmental theft is still theft, and the fact that it is being carried out by the government doesn’t mitigate its moral or ethical vaccuousness…. It enhances it.

Add to that fact, that when a future generation is taxed, especially for monies that are being spent today, it is clearly for them taxation without representation, a basic tenet of the cause for revolt that launched this country in the first place.  It was so, because in essence taxation without representation is is the theft of personal property, which when sufficiently great (and it quickly becomes so) is the theft of a person’s life, efforts, desires, aspirations, beauty, potential for greatness….. in short… their freedom.

When we allow that to occur, we are condemning our progeny to a life of despotism unless they are able to throw of the shackles that WE have placed on them through our recalcitrance in controlling our elected officials.  And throwing off shackles only gets harder over time as they are allowed to exist.  I fear our grandchildren may one day curse our names.

General McChrystal has been asking for a substantial troop increase in Afghanistan for some weeks now, and the White House has been up ’til now unresponsive. Ostensibly the reason for the delay has been to give the President and his ‘“foreign policy expert” Vice President Joe Biden, time to mull over alternatives and come up with a really good plan, rather than to just jump in willy-nilly and risk failure, having not given the problem due consideration.

We now have a plan percolating to the surface that appears to be founded in the VP’s foreign policy expertise.

According to a New Republic article from September 24, 2009:

“When Obama’s national security team first considered a troop increase for Afghanistan in March, Biden circulated a document that outlined alternatives to a major escalation. Although the White House won’t provide precise details, aides acknowledge that Biden urged the president to consider a narrow counterterrorism mission, heavy on Special Forces and Predator drone strikes, which would require far less manpower than the military was seeking.”

This approach to the War in Afghanistan has recently been widely circulated as a viable approach, and one the White House is heavily contemplating:

Refocusing on the Threat from al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Following an intensive 60-day interagency review, on March 27, 2009, the President announced a new strategy with a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. The strategy is comprehensive and flexible and will need to be fully resourced. In addition to the new troops the President has chosen to deploy, the strategy calls for significantly more resources to the civilian effort and frequent evaluations of our progress.

According to an NYT article from September 22:

“Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.”

Biden is supposed to be a foreign policy expert. Actually, he is more accurately described as a foreign policy weather vane. Whatever Joe Biden opines on foreign policy has inevitably and repeatedly, without exception I can think of, turned out to be exactly, totally, WRONG. In fact, his record for being wrong in foreign policy issues has been so absolutely amazingly consistent he should be in the Guiness Book of records.

* In 1979, he shared Jimmy Carter’s starry-eyed belief that the fall of the Shah of Iran and the takeover by Ayatollah Khomeini represented progress for human rights. Throughout the hostage crisis, as US diplomats were daily paraded blindfolded in front of television cameras and threatened with execution, Biden opposed strong action against the terrorist mullahs and preached dialog.

* Throughout the 1980s. Biden opposed President Ronald Reagan’s proactive policy against the Soviet Union. Biden was all for détente - which, in practice, meant Western subsidies would have enabled the moribund USSR to cling to life and continue doing mischief.

* In 1990, Biden found it difficult to support President George Bush’s decision to use force to kick Saddam Hussein’s army of occupation out of Kuwait.

* A decade-plus later, the senator did vote for the liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s tyranny. But as soon as terrorists started challenging the new democratic system in Iraq, he switched sides and became a critic of the whole war effort.

* Biden opposed The Surge, and openly stated that he felt the only way to achieve peace or victory in Iraq was to partition the country into thirds.

* For more than a decade, Biden has adopted an ambivalent attitude towards the Islamic Republic in Tehran, now emerging as the chief challenger to US interests in the Middle East. Biden’s links with pro-Tehran lobbies in the US and his support for “unconditional dialogue” with the mullahs echo Obama’s own wrong-headed promise to circumvent the current multilateral efforts by seeking direct US-Iran talks, excluding the Europeans as well as Russia and China.

So if Biden wants to cut back forces and concentrate solely on Al Quida using small unit tactics, it is without any doubt in my mind time to radically expand our force structure.

Okay.

President Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, and , of course, Americans should feel proud of our fearless leader.  But why stop there?

Go to this link and we can vote for him as a write-in candidate for the Heisman Trophy.  He certainly deserves that every bit as much as the Nobel Peace Prize, and we, his constituents, can help with the selection process.  And even if he doesn’t actually get it, I think it would make a great news story if it could be reported that he placed well in the voting!

One of the truly great accomplishments of the founding fathers (and indeed, the foundational accomplishment) was the acknowledgment of human rights, and the attendant verbalizing, and eventual codifying of certain human rights in the first Ten Amendments, commonly called the Bill of Rights.

At the time of the ratification of the Constitution, there were opponents to ratification whose opposition was based on the fact that the proposed Constitution defined how government should be run, but did nothing to guarantee individual liberty.  In this opposition was the concept of Constitutionally guaranteed ‘rights’ (as opposed to merely ‘understood’ rights) born, and in answer to this opposition Madison proposed the Bill of Rights to enumerate those held to be most important at the time of conception.  The amendment process, of course, left open the door for inclusion of other ‘rights’ should they become evident in the future.

There are certain things that each of the first Ten have in common, and these are things that are inherent in all ‘rights’ in general. For example, each of these rights ascribes to individuals, rather than to the body politic. In fact each right ascribes STRICTLY to the individual, so that nothing can be considered a right for one person if the exercise of that right requires a duty or obligation by another. Also, these rights are what President Obama has referred-to as ‘negative rights’. By this term he correctly meant that the right prevented the government from doing certain things, rather than allowing or requiring the government to do things.

The argument that certain rights should be enumerated has proven a boon to our society, for the Bill of Rights is so clear in its purpose and unambiguous in its specific language that it has only needed to be questioned in circumstances where someone in the government was indeed trying to impose some rule of law that would result in a depravation of the right in question. It has acted as a shield against tyranny, though like a shield it must be raised in each instance where insult is hurled if it is to be effective.

“Health Care should be a right” is now a manta of the Left. Correct they may well be! However, as is often the case with the Left, they are not saying what they mean. What they mean is, “My health care at someone else’s expense should be a right.” Clearly, this whole concept is self-contradictory. It cannot be a ‘right’ if the exercise of the right requires a duty or obligation by another. Your ‘right’ cannot be a right if it imposes a duty on me. You don’t have a right to it if I have to pay for it.

As an example, the Second Amendment grants us each the right to keep and bear arms, yet imposes no duty on any other citizen (nor on the government as the aegis of the citizenry) to provide any of us with a weapon. Likewise, while a ‘Right to Health Care Amendment’ should allow each us to obtain Health Care in any manner we deem fitting (or not at all if that is our choice), there should be no duty on any other citizen (or the government) to provide the Health Care we desire.

The amendment granting health care the status of a right should read something like this: “Except as to provide for the medical needs of the federal military, Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of a health care system, nor interfere with any citizen in the free pursuit of such provision for health care as the citizen deems warranted.”

In this way could health care indeed become a ‘right’, and changes to the law of the land so as to reduce health care costs would be limited such things as tort reform, insurance and interstate commerce reform, and tax reform to increase competition and help in making health care more affordable. These are the kinds of things that actually could potentially reduce health care costs, improve health care efficiency, and continually improve standard of care, without increasing the national debt or raising taxes to pay for it.

This argument will of course be viewed by many as being simplistic (for example, what would become of Medicare if such an amendment were passed), and it is admittedly so. But what the heck….. a fella can dream, can’t he?

I have of late, been finding in my mailbox copies of folks’ AARP resignation letters. Some of them are quite entertaining. They all bear the common theme (as would be expected) that those resigned to resign feel AARP has in effect become a bunch of toadies for the Democratic machine with little interest in representing their members.  With claims of special treatment, kickbacks, and massive financial incentives being accorded-to or proposed-for The AARP by sitting Democrats, some members have been feeling there just MIGHT be a conflict of interest in The AARP’s representation.

Since July , The AARP was claiming to have lost about 60,000 members specifically to health care reform issues, while gaining or retaining 1.9 million members in the same period.

It’s quite clear that the AARP members who are resigning are confused about the role AARP should be playing in their lives. They paid dues to a group that they expected to represent their best interests. Where they err, is that they think ‘representing their best interests’ has something to do with them.

The AARP clearly feels that the interests of seniors are far better represented when The AARP does better financially. And while it is true that many of the resigning members feel that The AARP should be opposing any Obamacare program that cuts Senior Advantage (a program that allows Medicare recipients to choose to have their coverage administered by a private firm, pay a little more, but receive better coverage with more choice), AARP feels differently. The AARP feels it is working to seniors’ benefit by supporting cuts to Senior Advantage.  In fact, the more and deeper the cuts, the better!

“Why?” You ask. Good question! The answer is simple. While The AARP supports legislation that will cut Senior Advantage, it is perfectly willing to sell its members insurance policies that will make up the difference in supplementing regular Medicare.

So you, as a senior and a member of The AARP, will get the best of both worlds!  You get health care reform AND The AARP is willing to sell you supplemental insurance to make up for what you lost!

In 2008, The AARP generated 562.7 million in revenues, (over 60% of its total revenues) by selling ‘gap’ insurance policies to cover what standard Medicare won’t. Bullets noted at GOP Policy News in a recent article on The AARP:

• A review of its financial statements finds that in 2008, AARP received more than half a billion dollars in revenue from selling products like Medigap supplemental insurance policies-$652.7 million in direct “royalties and fees,” and an increase of more than 31 percent from the $497.6 million in similar revenue AARP generated in 2007.

• Royalty revenues now comprise more than half-60.3 percent-of all AARP revenues; a Bloomberg news analysis published in December found that in 1999, royalties comprised only 11 percent of the organization’s total revenues.

Should any Obamacare plan that cuts Senior Advantage go into effect, watch for those number to dramatically increase.

In addition, bills currently being crafted are being crafted in such a way that, according to Philip Klein (reporter for the American Spectator) would create what amounts to a continuous flow of ‘kickbacks’ to AARP.

“If the House Democrats health care bill becomes law, the report argues, it would be a boon to AARP, because while Medicare Advantage plans will be required to pay out 85 percent of the money collected in premiums to claims made by policy holders, the requirement would only be 65 percent for the kind of Medigap policies sold by AARP.

“In other words, under the Democrat bill, seniors could pay as much as 20 cents more out of every premium dollar to fund ‘kickbacks’ to AARP-sponsored Medigap plans than Medicare Advantage plans.”

And, of course, most of us here are familiar with the gag order that Congress has placed on Humana (and any other Senior Advantage provider), prohibiting them from telling their customers that their health plans are in jeopardy. That in itself demands another whole screed decrying the 1^st Amendment intrusion by Congress, that I will leave to others for the time being. What most folks are NOT aware of, is that the AARP has apparently been exempted from the gag order.

According to the Spectator:

“Earlier this month insurer Humana Inc. sent customers who enrolled in the company’s Medicare Advantage plan a letter warning them that their benefits would be in danger if the Democratic health care legislation passed. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus complained to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which not only ordered Humana to stop sending the letters to its customers, but prohibited any other private insurers from doing the same. Except, that is, AARP — which sponsors a Medicare Advantage program in addition to the Medigap policies it offers, but was exempt from the Obama administration’s gag order.

So the AARP is in the unique position of not only being able to offer coverages to its members, but to get them (they are ‘members’ after all) kickbacks from congress if Obamacare is adopted, AND to be able while all this is being decided to keep their members informed on what is best for them.

Why would anybody want to leave?

It seem like every time the Democrats bring up the subject of Health Care Reform, tort reform, as a possibility, is given short shrift. In fact, it has been a consistent mainstay of Republican reform suggestions throughout the debates. You know… those Republican suggestions that the Democrats continually say the Republicans aren’t making.

In fact, Republicans have been advancing a number of ideas, each of which has potential to reduce costs, and which together comprise what amounts to a total system reform that would dramatically reduce costs.

These include: Tort reform, Allowing interstate commerce among health insurance carriers, reform of intrastate insurance laws to allow customers to cherry-pick the coverages they want (so men don’t for example, have to be covered against pregnancy as is the case in some states where mandates are that everyone have exactly the same coverage), and Increase the viability of MSAs (medical savings accounts).

Among these, tort reform seems to hold the most promise, as it cuts not only malpractice insurance premiums, but it significantly reduces the need for defensive medicine. And we don’t have to speculate on the potential outcomes of tort reform based solely on logic. We have laboratories.

Texas, 1995: Governor Bush enacts the first stage of Texas Tort Reform (Reference Texas Medical Blog, “The Doctor is In”) by accomplishing the following:
* Limited punitive damages
* Reformed joint and several liability
* Restricted venue shopping
* Restored the Deceptive Trade Practices Act to its original purpose of protecting consumers in ordinary consumer transactions
* Enacted a half dozen other reforms to curtail specific lawsuit abuses

In 2003, Governor Perry followed up with the following:
* Enacted comprehensive reforms governing medical liability litigation, including a $750,000 limit on non-economic damages
* Initiated product liability reforms
* Made the burden of proving punitive damages similar to criminal law, requiring a unanimous jury verdict
* Comprehensively reformed the statutes governing joint and several liability and class action lawsuits
* Imposed limits on appeal bonds, enabling defendants to appeal their lawsuits and not be forced into settlements (this is what pushed Texaco into bankruptcy in its famous lawsuit against Pennzoil)
* Further limited the filing of lawsuits that should have been brought in other states or countries

The changes to medical liability in 2003 were extraordinary, and had a very substantial impact, including:
1. In August 2004, the Texas Hospital Association reported a 70% reduction in the number of lawsuits filed against the state’s hospitals.
2. Medical liability insurance rates declined. Many doctors saw average rate reductions of over 21%, with some doctors seeing almost 50% decreases. (Recent information provided to The Perryman Group - a Texas Economic and Financial Analysis Think Tank - during the course of this study suggests that premiums are declining even further in 2008.)
3. Beginning in 2003, physicians started returning to Texas. The Texas Medical Board reports licensing 10,878 new physicians since 2003, up from 8,391 in the prior four years. Perryman has determined that at least 1,887 of those physicians are specifically the result of lawsuit reform.
4. In May 2006, the American Medical Association removed Texas from its list of states experiencing a liability crisis, marking the first time it has removed any state from the list. A recent survey by the Texas Medical Association also found a dramatic increase in physicians’ willingness to resume certain procedures they had stopped performing, including obstetrics, neurosurgical, radiation and oncological procedures.
Last year, TLR commissioned a study by The Perryman Group to figure out the impact of these reforms (the above are excerpted from that report). Here are the economic impact findings of that study:
$112.5 billion increase in annual spending
$51.2 billion increase in annual output – goods and services produced in Texas
$2.6 billion increase in annual state tax revenue
$468.9 million in annual benefits from safer products
$15.2 billion in annual net benefits of enhanced innovation
499,000 permanent jobs
430,000 additional Texans have health insurance today as a result of the medical liability reforms

In Mississippi, reforms instigated by Governor Haley Barbour have been just as dramatic. In June of 2004, Barbour signed into law a tort reform bill that included the following: a $500,000 limit on pain-and-suffering awards in medical malpractice cases, and $1 million in other cases; punitive damage caps; venue reform; joint and several liability limitation; relief of premises owners from liability to contractors’ employees for hazards known to the contractor; and product liability relief for “innocent sellers”

The Canadian Free Press reports that since passing tort reform in 2004, Mississippi has seen the number of medical malpractice claims plummet by 91 percent from its peak. The state’s largest medical liability insurer dropped its premiums by 42 percent, and has offered an additional 20 percent rebate each year since tort reform went into effect.

In addition, Barbour was on Cavuto this afternoon making the points not only of the statistics quoted in the CFP article, but pointing out that Obama had himself stated the possibility of instituting tort reform on a limited basis in one or two states to experientially evaluate the results. HELLO MR. PRESIDENT! THE WORK HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE!

As to allowing companies to sell insurance across state lines, there is no definitive amount of money to be saved that I can find. Arguments go both ways. When the arguments are viewed closely, however, they seem to come down to one side arguing that market competition always results in improved product quality at reduced costs, with the other side stating that capitalists need government controls or they will steal from the poor and uninformed.

Axelrod looked like an idiot (make that smarmy idiot) when the point was being pushed by Wolf Blitzer during a recent interview.

In truth, there are wide discrepancies between costs in different states. In Tennessee, for example the annual cost of Individual Market Single care is $2,221.00. In New York, the same is $4,734.00 according to the AHIP (America’s health Insurance Plans). Part of the reason for the discrepancy is that New York requires certain coverages that Tennessee does not, and a truly competitive marketplace would allow coverages to be tailored to the individual. Probably most men, for example, would fell pretty secure in opting out of pregnancy coverage, and most people really would not want to pay for gender identity disorder coverage given the choice.

As to Medical Savings Accounts, the amounts and ways that these could be used to reduce health care costs is practically endless. The Singapore health care system, for example, mandates them (like our social security), makes them usable within families instead of just individuals, they are inheritable, and they are tax free. Singapore essentially requires that these accounts be used for certain medical procedures, and mandates that the citizens pay out of pocket for routine things. Though the Singapore plan incorporates a system of public option as well as private insurance, all care prices are published by law and the citizen is required to pay 20% (minimum) of any medical bill. This encourages shopping around and competition. The 20% cost is covered generally by MSAs, and the balance through additional health insurance. Catastrophic insurance is available, as is a means-tested safety net for those too indigent to be covered otherwise. The net result is that Singapore spends about 5% of its GDP on health care (compared to 15-17% for the US), while the coverages are rumored to be just as good. The key lies in the system being geared to encourage competition among providers.

A further advantage to the use of MSAs is that without the billing costs and hassles, medical offices could afford to provide services at a reduced rate. Cash talks, and the doctors accepting cash know what they are selling and for how much, and they don’t have to worry about Medicare or Medicaid discounting them into oblivion.

Here in the US, if we just made MSAs, tax-deductible, inheritable, and usable within families, and combined them with available Interstate catastrophic insurance, we would go a long way toward reducing medical costs further through competition.

WASHINGTON, DC –September 25th

There will be a national prayer gathering of Muslims on the west front of the U.S. Capitol Building. They are expecting at least 50,000 to attend from mosques all across America. They will gather to pray from 4:00 AM until 7:00 PM. The gathering will take place by the site where U.S. Presidents have been inaugurated since 1981. The organizers say that it was Obama’s inauguration speech in January and his speech broadcast from EGYPT in June that gave them the idea for this prayer gathering on Capitol Hill.

Given that the permits have already been issued, it’s kind of interesting that nobody in the press (at least that I’ve been able to find) is telling anyone about this up-coming event. They cover Code Pink when they show up 10 strong, but not a public prayer meeting where 50,000 people are scheduled to show up.

The interesting part to me is the ‘why’ of it not being mentioned. After all, they ignored 9/12 until it was forced upon them, then they dismissed it as substantially irrelevant, and as a result they were burned pretty badly. You’d think they might at least take a minor interest.

Are they afraid there will be associations made between the Muslims and Obama? They certainly have no fear of crying ‘racism’ at any possible potential opportunity, so one has to wonder why they are not jumping at the chance to get out front with this story so they can start the accusations of rabid Islamophobia if anybody even notices.

I guess the bottom line is…. If it doesn’t serve the specific purpose of advancing the Obama agenda of the moment…. It is just not really news.

I’m looking at the pictures on Fox news right now of over 60,000 people gathered at the capital, specifically to protest and address Obama’s assorted policies and attempts to remake our form of governance.  Some say over 100,000.  Where’s our president?  Cowering in Minnesota.  He knew this was coming, and he felt the need to find an excuse to get out of town, from where he can later deny any relevance to the gathering.  He didn’t even have the guts that even Barney Frank and Benedict Arlen showed in facing hostile town hall meetings.

OUR PRESIDENT IS A COWARD!

I was driving down the freeway with my wife the other day, when I noticed a large group of men by the roadside wearing orange jump suits and stuffing roadside litter into orange plastic bags.

We had just been discussing all the “green jobs” that the stimulus package and Obama’s budget were likely to produce, and wondering when we would start seeing the creations of the government largess being spread about in this “futuristic” area of investment. I realized then that the “green jobs” were already beginning to be filled! Here were about a dozen men working diligently at a green job in my very presence. At least these folks wouldn’t have to worry about losing their homes for lack of being able to make a mortgage payment!

I started thinking about all the roadsides across the country, and all the people that must be being employed to keep them relatively litter free, and asked myself, “Why isn’t the major media covering this? This something people ought to know about!”

Anyway, the noticing of the green jobs has for me, come at a propitious time. I just found out I’m about to be laid off over at Chrysler, and I could sure use one of those green jobs (I think I could handle that roadside thing) that Obama just created.

Can anyone tell me where I go to apply?

Secretary Janet Napolitano

U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528

April 13, 2009

Dear Secretary Napolitano:

I am a regularly-retired police supervisor with over twenty-five years law enforcement experience. I am also an honorably-discharged Viet Nam era veteran (a Special Forces medic to be exact), who later joined the National Guard.

As it happens, I am opposed to abortion on principal, as well as illegal immigration. In both my military and
police careers, I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. The government required it of me, but I was happy to oblige.

The Constitution includes (in case you are not familiar with it) what we citizens like to refer-to as “The
Bill of Rights”. There are Ten Amendments in the “Bill of Rights”, and each of them is a gosh-darned real part of the actual Constitution. Even number Ten, which limits the power of the Federal Government pretty-much to certain things that are specifically enumerated in the regular part of the Constitution, and
grants all other rights to the states or the people. You ought to read it sometime. It’s really pretty neat! Even though it’s not followed much these days, I still think it has some real merit.

From what I have heard of your recent DHS warning about “right wing extremism”, I guess I qualify as a right-wing extremist sufficiently for the police to be warned about me on at least four counts: abortion, illegal immigrants, believing in the Constitution, and, of course, being a veteran. ( Oh… and since I was in the National Guard following my original enlistment, I was required to swear to uphold and defend the CA state Constitution too. I guess that kind of works against me by implication as well).

Anyway, as I really am a concerned citizen as well as being a four (or five) count “right wing
extremist”, I was hoping you could clarify for me the specific point at which I become dangerous, or a domestic terrorist, or… you get the idea. I ask this because it really is not my intention to ever cross that line… so I’d like to know where you feel it is.

Let me close by saying that you probably need to be aware that of those Police and Sheriff’ Departments that you sent out your warning to on April 9, (and I can tell you this with reasonable certainty) about 95% of the actual working cops feel pretty-much the same way about those kinds of things listed above as I do, and a good 10% of them are veterans as well. And they have access to assault rifles and shotguns. I sure hope you didn’t make a big mistake in letting them know you are on to them.

Yours truly,

Devon M. Stavrowsky

How come I haven’t heard much about this?  I’m beginning to think the press might be biased in Obama’s favor.

By executive order, President Barack Obama has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in migration assistance to the Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza. The “presidential determination” which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States was signed on January 27 and appeared in the Federal Register on February 4.  President Obama’s decision, according to the Register, was necessitated by “the urgent refugee and migration needs” of the “victims.”

Few on Capitol Hill took note that the order provides a free ticket replete with housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary election of January 2006.

Obama’s actions VSV the Midddle East have thus far included:

* His first call to any head of state as president was to Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah party in the Palestinian territory.

* His first one on one interview with any news organization was with Al Arabia television.

* He ordered Guantanamo Bay closed and all military trials of detainees halted..

* He ordered all overseas CIA interrogation centers closed.

* He withdrew all charges against the masterminds behind the USS Cole and 9/11..

* Today we learn that he is allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refuges to move to and live in the US at American taxpayer expense.

SEE TEXT FROM FEDERAL REGISTER BELOW:
Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27,
2009

Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs
Related To Gaza

Memorandum for the Secretary of State

By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States, including section
2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of
1962 (the “Act”), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I
hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the
Act, that it is important to the national interest to
furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to
exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency
Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for the purpose
of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration
needs, including by contributions to international,
governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and
payment of administrative expenses of Bureau of
Population, Refugees, and Migration of the Department
of State, related to humanitarian needs of Palestinian
refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.

You are authorized and directed to publish this
memorandum in the Federal Register.

(Presidential Sig.)

THE WHITE HOUSE,

Washington, January 27, 2009