The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is jumping on the Tea Party bandwagon with the launch of a new conservative lobbying group and plans to attend some high-profile Tea Party rallies in the coming weeks.
Ginni Thomas founded the Virginia-based nonprofit Liberty Central back in January. Amy Feather, the group’s director of business development and marketing, told FoxNews.com that “the hope” is that Thomas will make an appearance at a Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. - FOX
I remember watching the confirmation hearings of Justice Thomas back in the 80’s. The left wing came after him with a vengeance, and now that his record on the Court has been established, it is clear why they did. Nice to have his wife joining the fight with the tea party movement.
Over the years we have heard on the news how the Social Security Administration has been in danger of going bankrupt. The answer has always been some type of “reform” in order to keep it afloat. When I hear this news story I always scream at the politicians on the TV, “Why don’t you just keep your fingers out of the cookie jar?!?!”
The problem has not been with the SSA itself, but the fact that other agencies over the years have used the SSA as a bank, taking money in order to keep other federal programs afloat. Now with all the “baby boomers” coming of age, there is not enough money in the pot and it truly is in danger of “going under”.
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. – The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
I guess what we have always said, “There won’t be no such thing as Social Security by the time I retire” may actually not be as far fetched as some may believe.
Maybe Al Gore wasn’t so paranoid after all with his talk about a lock box for Social Security.
Social Security’s shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. But experts say it is a warning sign that the program’s finances are deteriorating. Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there’s concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits.
“This is not just a wake-up call, this is it. We’re here,” said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst with The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. “We are not going to be able to put it off any more.”
And how is the government going to pay back these IOU’s, yep, you got it. It will have to borrow more money. Hey BCR, I think that ticker up there is fixing to speed up a bit.
Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
I guess I need to get busy filling up that penny jar.
Looks like I’ll have some leg-work to do tomorrow.
WASHINGTON – Two guns used in high-profile shootings this year at the Pentagon and a Las Vegas courthouse both came from the same unlikely place: the police and court system of Memphis, Tenn.
Wendy Thomas should have a lot of fun with this one.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s House majority leader said late Thursday he paid a woman $150,000 to keep silent about going nude “hot-tubbing” with her when she was a minor a quarter century ago.
In a shocking statement on the House floor, Kevin Garn, 55, of Layton said he paid her to keep quiet about the incident during his unsuccessful U.S. congressional bid in 2002, but did not have sexual contact with her.
Garn said the woman, who he didn’t identify on the floor, has been calling news outlets and that he wanted to be open about the incident that occurred when he was 28 years old, before any stories appeared. - FOX
I don’t know about you, but I can think of some pretty stupid things I did when I was in my twenties, but I don’t think I messed around with any 15 year olds. However, even if he did not actually mess around, I’m not sure what the attraction would be to a 15 year old girl at 28. So, lets chalk this down as a fairly stupid thing to be doing at that age and I don’t think I would want him around my teenage daughter.
That being said though, most of us are pretty forgiving of others on such young stupid things when they are forthcoming about them because each of us can look back at that age for us and recall more than one stupid thing we would not be very proud of ourselves. However, to pay the girl $150,000 to stay quiet about it 20-something years later is just dirt dumb stupid compounding the original stupid!
They should throw the guy out of office. Not because he was stupid at 28, but because he still is stupid. We have enough stupid in government as it is, so Utah needs to throw out what it can.
Yes, American Muslim Jihad Jane is now in custody for a shady plot.
Today, an indictment was unsealed accusing her of plotting to murder a Swedish man in order to frighten “the whole Kufar (nonbeliever) world”.
Although the indictment does not name him, her intended victim is reported to have been Lars Vilks, a cartoonist who drew a satirical picture of the head of the prophet Muhammad on top of a dog’s body. – Guardian
Well political cartoonist Nate Beeler has had about all he can take.
Yesterday I watched a DVD entitled “Brothers at War“. I know the “Hurt Locker” gained all of the critical acclaim from the Hollywood crowd, but I watched it the day before and I can tell you that “Brothers” was a much better effort.
Although a great movie which I would recommend that everyone rent and watch, that is not the reason for this post. My sister watched the movie with me and in one segment where a U.S. Marine is talking to his Iraqi counter-parts about their enemies, I started screaming, “Do you hear what they are calling them?” To my amazement, they referred to the insurgents and terrorists as the “Wahhabi’s“. I started to wonder how it is that our troops and the Iraqi’s know who our enemy is, but the vast majority of Americans do not.
First, bear in mind that not all Muslim’s subscribe to the Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood ideals. It is impossible to say just how many do. I’m finding that many who claim that Islam is the “Religion of Peace”, secretly subscribe to the teachings of the Wahhabi’s. I’ve posted in recent days that the Wahhabi’s own the major Islamic centers here in Memphis. I’ve posted how an individual who is an American convert and teaches Islam to Americans locally and on the internet. That same individual attended the same mosque, owned by the Wahhabi’s, as did Carlos Bledsoe, the American Muslim who shot two soldiers at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas last year. The same individual posted anti-American and anti-Israel artwork and links to a video by the Wahhabi cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki (linked to the 9/11 hijackers and Fort Hood shooter).
All of this is relevant since Al Qaeda seems to have had a change in strategy.
For the first time, the group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and has prided itself on its ideological purism seems to be eyeing a more pragmatic and arguably more dangerous shift in tactics. The emerging message appears to be: Big successes are great, but sometimes simply trying can be just as good.
U.S. officials and counterterrorism experts say the airline attack and last November’s shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, prove that simple, well-played smaller attacks against the United States can be just as devastating to the democratic giant as complex and riskier ones.
We have forgotten that we are at war and I agree with some aspects of Congressman Kennedy’s remarks.
“You want to know why the American public is fit? They’re fit because they’re not seeing their Congress do the work that they’re sent to do. It’s because the press — the press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national important and that’s the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It’s despicable, the national press corps right now.” – FOX
In 2009, we lost over twice as many of our sons and daughters in Afghanistan (316) than we did in Iraq (149). In 2010 we have lost 71 in Afghanistan compared to 12 in Iraq (source: iCasualties.org). He is right, the media simply is not covering the story very well at all, and that is a real disservice to those fighting and dying on our behalf. Also, just as unfortunate, it seems the only way Al Qaeda can get our attention these days is to start hitting us here at home any way that they can.
Around 100 years ago, a Swiss patent clerk named Albert Einstein published a paper dealing with Special Relativity. A few years later, he developed a General Theory of Relativity which dealt with the interaction of light with gravitational fields. His theory predicted that starlight passing through the Sun’s gravitational field would be bent. Although this idea drew a little laughter in some quarters, less than a decade later his theory was confirmed during a lunar eclipse. This earned him the Nobel Prize in 1921 (back when it really meant something). However, due to the vast distances involved, it remained an elusive task to verify Einstein’s General Theory on the scale of the Universe … until now.
Score one more for Einstein. A new study has confirmed his theory of general relativity works on extremely large scales.
The study was one of the first rigorous tests of this theory of gravity beyond our solar system. The research found that even over vast scales of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the equations of general relativity predict the way that mass pulls on other mass in the universe. - FOX
Contrary to popular myth, Einstein did not invent the atomic bomb, but did develop the famous equation E = mc2 which most folks associate with nuclear energy. He was also not a perfect genius and is rather famous for mathematical blunders in some of his work. Perhaps his biggest goof was his refusal to accept Quantum Theory, which being based on probabilities rather than concrete mathematical constructs led to his now famous quote, “God does not play dice with the universe!“. He spent his later years attempting without success to formulate a “Grand Unified” theory to explain both his relativistic theory and Niels Bohr’s quantum theory.
A century later, it turns out that both Einstein and Bohr were right, and at the same time wrong. There still is no unified theory to explain the universe around us, just one to explain it on the large scale (Einstein) and another on a smaller scale (Bohr). The entire semiconductor industry is built upon the concepts of quantum mechanics, so just using a computer to make this blog post confirms its consistency in describing the world of the very small. Now we have confirmation that relativity describes the world of the very large. Although Einstein was right, he was also wrong; God does play dice with the universe.
Gunmen stormed the offices of a US-based Christian charity in Pakistan on Wednesday, killing 6 workers in an attack blamed on insurgents.
Gunmen burst into the World Vision office in Oghi village in Mansehra district, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Islamabad, at about 9 a.m. (0400 GMT), police and a witness said.
Just a reminder that following Christ often has a cost.
People need to watch and listen to this video VERY attentatively. In it, Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn calls on American muslims to rise up and emulate the Fort Hood shooter, attacking not only military, but civilian targets as well.
Pakistani authorities are reporting that they have arrested Gadahn, but this reporting has yet to be confirmed. However, what is important for us to understand is that Gadahn is a product of a California North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) mosque. So is the Fort Hood shooter, who attended a mosque in the DC area also frequented by some of the 9/11 hijackers. Also, as recently learned, Carlos Bledsoe, the Little Rock shooter was also associated with an NAIT mosque here in Memphis.
The NAIT also runs a publishing service, publishing a book titled “Milestones” by Sayyid Qutbs, a Muslim Brotherhood cleric. Qutbs argues the same proposition…
Any place where the Islamic Shari’ah is not enforced and where Islam is not dominant becomes the Home of Hostility (Dar-ul-Harb) … A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it, whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interest are located.
As I discovered recently, the NAIS operations here in Memphis are significant, extending beyond a simple mosque and community center. They continue in “jail house” conversions to Islam, but the question remains to what purpose? Was Gadahn’s call to action just that, or just more Al Qaeda “wishful thinking”?
Vigilance is called for my friends….the “religion of peace” is talking tough again.
Bossier Parish, LA sheriff, Larry Deen, has set-up a 200 citizen strong group he calls “Operation Exodus.” This group has been organized to help in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. The way our government is going these folks will be busy. Sheriff Deen does not want his new group referred to as a militia. Deen goes on to state “we run from that word.” I am not sure why he or anyone else would run from that word when per Merriam-Webster its definition is 1 a : a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency b : a body of citizens organized for military service
2 : the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service. Nothing ominous sounding there.
So far I am OK with Deen and Operation Exodus. It seems to be just the kind of group that our founding fathers would have approved of in case of emergencies. My only concern is that they are not used against other citizens of the United States under false pretenses. The concerns of the author of this story are more related to PC garbage which is typical for the liberal media. Knowles, the author write that there are only 5 blacks and no women in this group. I wonder what bearing that has on anything. The one thing David did not tell us was how many blacks and women signed up and what was the majority of those that were cut from the original 300. We have go to get away from placing people in positions for any reason other than qualification. Sex or race should have ZERO influence on whether or not someone gets a job.
I will keep an eye on this to see how it works out in the future. I can imagine if this is a success then there will be others to follow around the country. I do wish them success and to remain scandal free.
Texas Fred is one of my favorite bloggers (second only to Kate), although I don’t necessarily agree with him on some things, I like his style. However, he (and Kate) have picked up on a rather ominous trend in the news media.
Many on the left are trying desperately to link the TEA Party to various anti-American groups, they are trying to convince the innocent viewer that the TEA Party is anti-government.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Please read the CORE VALUES and Mission Statement of The Rowlett TEA Party, then make your own decision. We are NOT anti-American anything, we’re not a part of the 9-11 Truther movement and we don’t support the enemies of America.
If everyone will recall, when “Tiller the Baby Killer” was shot at his Church, the news media was all over it as a prime example of the threat from “right wing extremists”. Then we had a Hitler-worshiper walk into the Holocaust Museum and shoot the place up shortly afterwards. The media was trying hard to associate both with the pro-Life and tea party movements. They really went nuts when some started showing up at town hall meetings and areas near President Obama’s visits with “assault rifles” and guns strapped to their waist. I guess it did not matter that the reason they did so was because SEIU and ACORN operatives had begun to physically attack tea party activists at such functions. So when they found out that the Pentagon was more of a “left wing” nut case than a “right wing” one, the story just pretty much died on the vine.
An AP reporter contacted me this morning and wanted to meet with me. He is doing a story about the impact of the tea party movement on elections this year. He left it to me to come up with the venue for the meeting, so I invited him to meet at Range USA. It seemed appropriate since on March 9th of last year, a number of local activists met to discuss getting the local tea party effort off-the-ground in one of their meeting rooms. As I arrived, I saw the “UN-free Zone” sign at the entrance and two plasma TV’s, one on FOX News and the other with NASCAR running. I sat down with the reporter inside the 1776 Grill with the Declaration of Independence, vintage flags (including the Gadsden flag) and portraits of the founding fathers draping the walls around us. Of course there were lots of guns scattered around too, on racks, in peoples hands, strapped to their sides, etc. The venue itself gave me much in the way of visual aids with which to make my arguments.
He did ask about the efforts by some to portray those in the tea party movement in a negative light, and I mentioned briefly the latest SPLC report. It is all about marginalizing those trying to regain control over the elective and legislative process, you know, that “Government for the People, by the People” thing? We are certainly NOT anti-government and I’ve heard no real calls for violent action by anyone, although many of us do retain “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security” as an option outlined by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. However, at this point the tea party movement is more akin to the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800 than to the Boston Tea Party.
The Federal government has simply over-stepped the boundaries laid upon it by the U.S. Constitution. The Tenth Amendment has for the most part just been thrown into the trash bin by those in Washington and ignored. There is no authority in the Constitution for the federal government to take over the health care system, only authority to insure that commerce between the States remains unhindered. So if we are anti-anything, we are anti-law breakers, which many of our elected officials have become. Yes, this is supposed to be a nation of laws and the foundation of our law is the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Federalist papers which expounded the principles and terminology used in those documents. There is NO ambiguity in what the documents say and/or mean. Yet for decades now, revisionists have twisted the meanings of key words such as “general Welfare” beyond the context in which it was used.
Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.
Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms “to raise money for the general welfare.”
But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.
The objection here is the more extraordinary, as it appears that the language used by the convention is a copy from the articles of Confederation. The objects of the Union among the States, as described in article third, are “their common defense, security of their liberties, and mutual and general welfare.” The terms of article eighth are still more identical: “All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury,” etc. A similar language again occurs in article ninth. Construe either of these articles by the rules which would justify the construction put on the new Constitution, and they vest in the existing Congress a power to legislate in all cases whatsoever. But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation! – James Madison, Federalist #41
Madison penned the document and certainly knows quite well what was intended when he put pen to paper giving form to the consensus of debate at the Constitutional Convention. So the tea party movement is calling our elected officials to task for violating those restrictions also enumerated in the Constitution. The charge is that the federal government is in violation of the compact with the people upon which it has the authority to govern, and all three branches stand guilty in that regard.
However, just so it is not misunderstood, the States are the entities which entered into the compact on behalf of their people. I as a citizen have no right what-so-ever to take up arms against the federal government on my own accord or with others. In my case, I am a Tennessean by birth and privilege. It is the State of Tennessee which must act on my behalf against the federal government. In Texas Fred’s case, it is the State of Texas which must act on his behalf. Governor Perry of Texas has been a strong advocate in defense of Texas and its people against the federal government and as a result just won his primary for re-election quite decisively.
We are not anti-government. Quite the contrary, we all love the founding compact and our country. This is why people need to pay just as much attention to the Tennessee elections this year as the national ones. It is our governor and legislature in Nashville that ultimately will have to draw the line against the federal government if one is to be drawn. This past year I have been very proud of Nashville in this area and I hope to see even more attention paid to the issue next year. For that reason I will be looking very closely at the Tennessee State Representative District 93 (my representative) race, because it is important. I would suggest that everyone else do likewise.
Yes, many of us own and carry our firearms proudly. However, we do so as responsible citizens who believe in the rule-of-law. If I ever turn my gun against the federal government, I will do so under the Tennessee state flag. Or, if Texas decides to start a ruckus, then I might have to pull a Davy Crockett and run off to Texas to help ole’ Fred out. I would remind readers that the Minutemen who fired those first shots at Lexington did so to defend their elected leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock and to insure their escape from British forces sent to arrest them.
WHEN King George heard of the Boston Tea Party his anger knew no bounds. This rebellious colony should be punished, and that right soundly.
The Boston port was closed to all trade until the destroyed tea should be paid for. And General Gage, with several regiments, was sent to govern the people of Massachusetts.
“We are outraged,” declared the colonists. “Such things are not to be endured.”
So they organized a new government quite independent of General Gage, with John Hancock and Samuel Adams at its head.
Nor was this all. Massachusetts decided to have an army of her own to defend her rights. “Minute men,” the soldiers were called, because they agreed to be ready to fight at a minute’s notice. Arms and ammunition were collected, and stored in Concord.
Before long, news of this hiding place reached General Gage. He determined to send a secret expedition to take the stores. Nothing seemed easier. Moreover, he knew that John Hancock and Samuel Adams were visiting in a town called Lexington. Why not kill two birds with one stone and direct his soldiers to march to Concord by way of Lexington? Thus they could seize not only the soldiers’ arms, but also their rebel leaders.
However, no sane person wants to see such a scenario develop or play out. The last time it happened it took more American lives than all of our other wars combined. Let’s just concentrate on a good ole Jeffersonian-style revolution this go around, at the ballot box, not the bullet box.
Fortunately this time the shooter picked the wrong targets …
WASHINGTON — Resentment of the U.S. government and suspicions over the 9/11 attacks have surfaced in writings by the Californian identified as the gunman who shot two Pentagon police officers before he was mortally wounded in a hail of return fire.
The two officers are okay, but the suspect, John Patrick Bedell is dead. He just walked up, pulled out a gun and started shooting at the officers. Apparently he was seeking revenge for the government perpetrated 9/11 attacks and other bizarre paranoid schemes. He is friends with Daniel Hopsicker, a 911 conspiracy author, on his Facebook page, although I must note that since I pulled his [Bedell] page an hour ago, it is no longer comes up in the FB search. The photo above was take from his Facebook profile page earlier.
Here is his 2006 “pot” arrest record.
So not jihadist’s this time, only a terrorist sympathizer.
Update:
I figured I had better do a screenshot before FB deleted his information altogether.
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