“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” ― Samuel Adams
AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.
Consider,
for example, the assertion by the Senate minority leader last week that the
House could not take up a plan by Senate Democrats to extend tax cuts on
households making $250,000 or less because the Constitution requires that
revenue measures originate in the lower chamber. Why should anyone care? [Do
they mean here like Obamacare, which in my view is unconstitutional because it
was changed by the Supreme Court to be a tax, and taxes must originate in the
House?] Why should a lame-duck House, 27 members of which were defeated for
re-election, have a stranglehold on our economy? Why does a grotesquely
malapportioned Senate get to decide the nation’s fate?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/opinion/lets-give-up-on-the-constitution.html?_r=1&
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Human Genes Engineered Into Experimental GMO Rice Being Grown in Kansas
(this is a long article but well worth just glimpsing the content as it is enough to set your teeth on edge)
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/Pharmaceutical%20Rice-FINAL.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/opinion/lets-give-up-on-the-constitution.html?_r=1&
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Human Genes Engineered Into Experimental GMO Rice Being Grown in Kansas
(this is a long article but well worth just glimpsing the content as it is enough to set your teeth on edge)
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/Pharmaceutical%20Rice-FINAL.pdf
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What global warming? Alaska is headed for an ice age as scientists report state's steady temperature decline
Since 2000, temperatures in Alaska have dropped by 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit
Scientists reviewed weather reports from 20 climate stations operated by the National Weather Service located across Alaska
19 of the 20 weather stations reported falling temperatures
An ocean phenomenon has disrupted a storm regulating system thus allowing cold winter storms to linger longer and bring a deep chill
Local residents have noticed the colder temps but say its no big deal since they are already bundled up for 20-below zero temperatures
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2256188/What-global-warming-Alaska-headed-ice-age-scientists-report-states-steady-temperature-decline.html#ixzz2GraYzkxM
Since 2000, temperatures in Alaska have dropped by 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit
Scientists reviewed weather reports from 20 climate stations operated by the National Weather Service located across Alaska
19 of the 20 weather stations reported falling temperatures
An ocean phenomenon has disrupted a storm regulating system thus allowing cold winter storms to linger longer and bring a deep chill
Local residents have noticed the colder temps but say its no big deal since they are already bundled up for 20-below zero temperatures
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2256188/What-global-warming-Alaska-headed-ice-age-scientists-report-states-steady-temperature-decline.html#ixzz2GraYzkxM
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The manager of a business in West Nyack, N.Y., Caryn McBride, was receiving vaguely menacing "negative correspondence" and phone calls. At least twice she made reports to police, in one case telling them "she was worried because an email writer wondered 'what McBride would get in her mail now.' "As the Rockland County Times reports, McBride is the Rockland editor of the Gannett-owned Journal News, a rival newspaper based across the Hudson in White Plains. "Due to apparent safety concerns," the Times reports, the Journal News "decided to hire RGA Investigations to provide armed personnel to man the location." The Times "has not investigated" whether the paper's headquarters is also protected by men with guns. (White Plains is in Westchester County, outside the Times's circulation area.) Nor has the Journal News reported anything on its own hiring of armed guards.
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Gun ban of 2013 video (quite informative)
Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/010213-639108-500-murders-rahm-emanuel-chicago-gun-ban.htm#ixzz2GsgMriJb
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The biggest recent development—which was overshadowed by the fiscal cliff negotiations—came on New Year’s Eve, when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a report that raised the question of whether Libyan officials assisted the Benghazi terrorists. The report found that a team of CIA contractors dispatched from Tripoli to Benghazi on the night of the attacks waited at least three hours after arriving at the Benghazi airport before departing to the scene because of negotiations with Libyan government officials. According to the report, members of Congress still don’t know the exact reason for the delay. “Was it simply the result of a difficult Libyan bureaucracy and a chaotic environment or was it part of a plot to keep American help from reaching the Americans under siege in Benghazi?” the report asks.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/03/a-twist-in-the-benghazi-saga.html
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Short version
Long version
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While conservatives fume over the fiscal cliff aversion bill that passed through Congress and now awaits President Barack Obama’s signature, Obama’s team is triumphal about it – and they are ready for a debt ceiling debate featuring more talk about taxing the rich. Despite Obama’s proclamation that the rich are now “paying their fair share,” Obama will undoubtedly call for more tax increases for top earners if Republicans insist on cutting government spending. How do we know? This morning, Obama’s team, led by David Plouffe, sent out an email
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Governance in the United States is at a standoff. The crisis over the federal budget has led many people around the world to wonder if Americans haven't lost their minds. Ultimately, as Winston Churchill infamously observed, they may be counted on to do the right thing after exhausting all other options. But this hardly is sound policy with every new vote in Congress. Maybe the latest crisis is symptomatic of a deeper and even more serious problem.
This realization, regarded as a "post-hegemonic" fact, is no longer controversial. All empires vanish eventually. Hegemony indeed may be a form of imperial rule - it's been called an empire with good manners - but that's beside the point. American hegemony may be giving way to some other post-hegemonic condition. It is hard to say where it will lead, or what it signifies
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Thomas Jefferson: "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."
George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which inspired our Constitution's Bill of Rights, said, "To disarm the people -- that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
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A federal judge on Wednesday rejected The New York Times' bid to force the U.S. government to disclose more information about its targeted killing of people it believes have ties to terrorism, including American citizens.
The newspaper and two reporters, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, had sued the government for details about the government's drone program, including the late 2011 killings of U.S. citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman in separate strikes in Yemen.
Civil liberties groups have attacked the drone program, which deploys pilotless aircraft, as in effect a green light for the government to kill Americans without constitutionally required due process. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has rejected that contention.
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-The 112th Congress came in with a bang, but it is crawling out with the soft whimper of failure.
For two years, President Barack Obama and Congress ignored virtually every other pressing matter to engage in an ideological war over the size of government and who should foot the bill for it.
They racked up more processes than policies: a blue-ribbon White House commission, Vice President Joe Biden’s working group, bilateral talks between Obama and Speaker John Boehner, a “supercommittee,” a “Gang of Six” that became a “Gang of Eight” and, finally, Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) coming to a deal that leaves open as many politically thorny issues as it solves.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/112th-congress-legacy-unfinished-business-85659.html#ixzz2Gs21ewGW
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Republicans expressed dismay at the amount of excessive spending in the fiscal cliff deal that Congress passed Tuesday evening.
“The Senate loaded this up with pork,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) Wednesday during an appearance on the Laura Ingraham show. “This bill was filled with both tax extenders and spending.”
The spending included an extension of unemployment insurance while the tax breaks include subsidies for electric scooters and wind turbines.
The deal will result in the deficit growing by nearly $4 trillion over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
-The 112th Congress came in with a bang, but it is crawling out with the soft whimper of failure.
For two years, President Barack Obama and Congress ignored virtually every other pressing matter to engage in an ideological war over the size of government and who should foot the bill for it.
They racked up more processes than policies: a blue-ribbon White House commission, Vice President Joe Biden’s working group, bilateral talks between Obama and Speaker John Boehner, a “supercommittee,” a “Gang of Six” that became a “Gang of Eight” and, finally, Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) coming to a deal that leaves open as many politically thorny issues as it solves.
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Republicans expressed dismay at the amount of excessive spending in the fiscal cliff deal that Congress passed Tuesday evening.
“The Senate loaded this up with pork,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) Wednesday during an appearance on the Laura Ingraham show. “This bill was filled with both tax extenders and spending.”
The spending included an extension of unemployment insurance while the tax breaks include subsidies for electric scooters and wind turbines.
The deal will result in the deficit growing by nearly $4 trillion over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
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Guns: The mayor of what is at once America's most gun-controlled city and its murder capital wants an assault weapons ban like the one he pushed in 1994. Except it didn't work then, and it won't work now.
Nathaniel T. Jackson, 40, an alleged gang member with a long arrest record, was gunned down last week outside a store in Chicago's Austin neighborhood, becoming the Windy City's 500th murder victim in 2012.
Up to 80% of Chicago's murders and shootings are gang-related, according to police. By one estimate, the city has almost 70,000 gang members. A police audit last spring identified 59 gangs and 625 factions; most were on the South and West sides.
Yet, in the view of Chicago's mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the answer to violence by crazies and criminals in his city and nationally is more gun control, not more gang and goon control.
Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/010213-639108-500-murders-rahm-emanuel-chicago-gun-ban.htm#ixzz2GsgMriJb
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The biggest recent development—which was overshadowed by the fiscal cliff negotiations—came on New Year’s Eve, when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a report that raised the question of whether Libyan officials assisted the Benghazi terrorists. The report found that a team of CIA contractors dispatched from Tripoli to Benghazi on the night of the attacks waited at least three hours after arriving at the Benghazi airport before departing to the scene because of negotiations with Libyan government officials. According to the report, members of Congress still don’t know the exact reason for the delay. “Was it simply the result of a difficult Libyan bureaucracy and a chaotic environment or was it part of a plot to keep American help from reaching the Americans under siege in Benghazi?” the report asks.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/03/a-twist-in-the-benghazi-saga.html
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