Former U.S. Attorney Gen. Edwin Meese, III, who served as legal advisor to then-Governor Ronald Reagan, provided a sworn Declaration included in the suit, which said the state law was defended, regardless of their personally held beliefs.

The lawsuit – called an extraordinary writ of mandate – asks the court to enforce a state code that commands the attorney general to defend the state and its officials against any legal challenges.

To date, Attorney General Jerry Brown has refused to challenge California Supreme Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling, which overturned a voter-approved marriage amendment. Read Full Story

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, told CNSNews.com on Tuesday that implementing card check would allow unions to swell their ranks with new members who would have to be signed up and pay money into failing union pension plans.
 
“It shouldn’t be allowed,” she said. “It’s a ponzi scheme as bad as Bernie Madoff.”
 
EFCA would do away with secret ballot elections for unions, which critics say would open the door to employees being pressured into voting to unionize. Additionally, the new union members could be entered into a multi-employer plan that is badly under-funded, and the wages they would pay into the fund would not go toward their own retirement, but would likely go to fulfill liabilities already owed to new and existing retirees. Read Full Story

Usama Dakdok, founder of The Straight Way of Grace Ministry, was born in Egypt and raised in a Christian home as the son of a Baptist pastor, where he accepted Jesus at the age of 11. But despite his background, he was forced to learn the Quran in school.

After becoming a U.S. citizen in the 1990s, Dakdok felt called to bring Muslims to Christ and teach Americans the truth about the Quran. But he shares that every English translation he purchased at that time was misleading.

“They have sugar-coated the Quran so badly — taking words out, twisting words, and putting them in wrong places,” he laments.  Read Full Story

Dennis Prager

There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism; the liberal-led Korean and Vietnam Wars were examples. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the left, which had been morally confused about communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I.

After the Vietnam War, even liberals who continued to describe communism as evil were labeled “right-wingers” and “Cold Warriors.” And the United States, with its moral flaws, was often likened to the Soviet Union. I recall asking the pre-eminent liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in a public forum in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, if he would say that the United States was a morally superior society to that of the Soviet Union. He would not.

Little has changed regarding the Left’s inability to identify and confront evil. And its moral equation of good guys and bad guys was made evident again in recent weeks by hosts on three major liberal networks — ABC, NPR and PBS.

First, on May 25, PBS host Tavis Smiley interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the ex-Muslim Somali writer and activist for human, especially women’s, rights in Islamic countries. After mentioning American Muslim terrorists Maj. Nidal Hasan (who murdered 13 and injured 30 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood) and Faisal Shahzad (who attempted to murder hundreds in Times Square), this dialogue ensued:

Ali: “Somehow, the idea got into their (Hasan’s and Shahzad’s) minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter.”

Smiley: “But Christians do that every single day in this country.”

Ali: “Do they blow people up?”

Smiley: “Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine is — I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians — and I happen to be a Christian.

“There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work.”

Then, on Aug. 22, Michel Martin, host of NPR’s “Tell Me More,” in discussing whether the Islamic Center and mosque planned for near ground zero should be moved, said this on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with Howard Kurtz:

“Should anybody move a Catholic church? Did anybody move a Christian church after Timothy McVeigh, who adhered to a cultic white supremacist cultic version of Christianity, bombed (the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City)?”

And third, on Aug. 26, ABC “20/20″ anchor Chris Cuomo tweeted this to his nearly one million followers:

“To all my christian brothers and sisters, especially catholics — before u condemn muslims for violence, remember the crusades….study them.”

I have known Smiley since the 1980s when we both worked at the same radio station in Los Angeles. He is smart, and he is a gentleman who has accorded me great respect both on his television show and off air.

How, then, does such a man equate Muslims who murder in the name of Islam with Americans who “murder every day,” none one of whom commit their murders in the name of Christianity?

How does Martin equate the thousands of Islamic terrorists around the world, all of whom are devout Muslims, with a single American — one who, in any case, professed no religion, let alone Christianity?

And how does Cuomo claim that Christians cannot condemn Muslims for violence because of the Christian Crusades?

First of all, the Crusades occurred a thousand years ago. One might as well argue that Jews cannot condemn Christian and secular anti-Semitic violence because Jews destroyed Canaanite communities 3,200 years ago.

Second, it is hardly a defense of Muslims to have to go back a thousand years to find comparable Christian conduct.

Third, even then there is little moral equivalence. The Crusades were waged in order to recapture lands that had been Christian for centuries until Muslim armies attacked them and destroyed most Christian communities in the Middle East. (Some Crusaders also massacred whole Jewish communities in Germany on the way to the Holy Land, and that was a grotesque evil — which Church officials condemned at the time.) As the dean of Western Islamic scholars, Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis, has written, “The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineffectual response to the jihad — a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war.”

So how did Smiley, Martin and Cuomo make such morally egregious statements?

The answer is not that these are bad people, let alone that they are not repulsed by terrorist violence.

The answer is leftism, the way of looking at the world that permeates high schools, universities, news and entertainment media. Those indoctrinated by leftist thinking become largely incapable of accurate moral judgments: They regarded America and the Soviet Union as morally similar. And today, they claim that people they call “extremists” within Christianity (who are they?) and Islamist terrorists and their supporters pose equal threats to America and the world.

That is how bright and decent people become moral relativists and thereby undermine the battles against the greatest evils — communist totalitarianism in its time and Islamic totalitarianism in ours.

The only solution is to keep exposing leftist moral confusion. One problem, however, is that in countries without talk radio, an equivalent to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, conservative columnists and a vigorous anti-left political party, this is largely impossible.

The other major problem is that the media that dominate American life have little problem, indeed largely concur, with the foolish and dangerous comments made by their mainstream media colleagues. That is why these comments, worthy of universal moral condemnation, were ignored by the mainstream (i.e., leftwing) media. Instead, they directed mind-numbing attention and waves of opprobrium toward Dr. Laura.

Those who don’t fight real evils fight imaginary ones.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

Phyllis Schlafly

For the first time in the long record of U.S.-Russian treaties, New START links offensive and defensive weapons. Obama’s advocates of ratification say that doesn’t matter because the link is only in the preamble and that doesn’t bind us.

But this interpretation hasn’t been cleared with the Russians, who assert that the preamble puts a binding limit on the U.S. missile defense program. The Russian government issued a statement that the New START treaty “can operate and be viable only if the United States refrains from developing its missile defense capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively.”

The Russians are salivating at the thought that the New START proclaims their victory in their long-running battle to kill U.S. missile defenses. For decades, Russia’s primary goal was to stop the United States from building any anti-missile capability.

Ronald Reagan’s adamant refusal to give up his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was the principal reason he won the Cold War (without firing a shot, as Margaret Thatcher said). But now Barack Obama is casually willing to abandon our right to build defensive weapons.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., accurately warns that New START revives the Cold War policy known as MAD, a label that famously served as a double entendre. The acronym stands for Mutual Assured Destruction, the policy that was supposed to deter nuclear attack because of the threat that the United States was committed to retaliate and dump massive destruction on the Soviet Union.

In the years of the Cold War, we assumed we were dealing with a rational enemy who, even though dedicated to world conquest, dared not risk such devastating retaliation. That may not be true of today’s potential adversaries, who have trained their younger generation to believe that suicide is noble and their key to Heaven.

New START doesn’t make nukes obsolete, it just tries to ensure that the U.S. and Russia have an equal capacity to destroy each other. Most important, New START does nothing whatever to protect us from a nuclear Iran or North Korea or Syria or even China.

The U.S. Constitution gives the Senate “advice and consent” power over treaties. But the Obama administration refuses to let senators review the treaty’s negotiating documents.

Whatever happened to transparency? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserts that it’s not customary to allow senators to see the records, but DeMint cited the precedent of two previous U.S.-U.S.S.R. treaties that disprove her claim — the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the 1972 ABM Treaty.

New START bars the U.S. and Russia from deploying more than 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 launchers. To achieve that goal, we will have to destroy some of our missiles and not modernize the ones we keep because the treaty locks us into a permanent comprehensive nuclear test ban.

The State Department admits that Russia has consistently cheated on all its arms-control treaties, including the 1991 START I treaty right up until it expired last December. Russia admits that it cheated on the famous 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, from which President George W. Bush finally (and thankfully) withdrew the United States.

U.S. intelligence analysts have raised questions about whether Russian cheating can even be detected. But a State Department report to Congress claims that potential Russian cheating on the New START nuclear-arms treaty would not be significant because the benefits of cheating would be “questionable.”

Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., said we’re all wasting a lot of time if the State Department admits that Russia has consistently cheated on all arms-control treaties as a matter of course and that cheating doesn’t matter anyway. McCain believes that cheating does matter.

Another provision where the New START treaty favors Russia is that it fails to limit Russia’s massive tactical nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield. They outnumber U.S. tactical nukes by a ratio of 10 to one and can be launched from rockets, submarines and bomber planes.

The New START treaty is based on Obama’s foolish notion that the United States can create “a world without nuclear weapons.” We have power only to create a world without American nuclear weapons, a condition that would make us a sitting duck for countries that have evil nuclear objectives.

The New START treaty is a big victory for Russia and defeat for the United States. The Senate should reject it.

Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and the author of the newly revised and expanded “Supremacists.” She can be contacted by e-mail at phyllis@eagleforum.org. To find out more about Phyllis Schlafly and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

David Limbaugh

In my new book, “Crimes Against Liberty” (I know, another shameless plug, but you’d do the same in my position), I dedicate an entire chapter to detailing the Obama administration’s horrendous and unprecedented mistreatment of Israel. Can you believe we’re even having a discussion about Israel’s right to the land six-plus decades and numerous wars after the modern Israeli state was restored to the Jews?

It’s bad enough when misfit countries oppose Israel’s right to existence and always demonize Israel while downplaying the Palestinians’ misdeeds, but it’s shocking and disturbing when the president of the United States abuses our greatest ally in the Mideast.

It’s mystifying to me that so many Jewish people in America have been so tolerant of Obama’s behavior toward Israel, almost as if in denial, but what more evidence do we need?

During the campaign, it was widely suspected that Obama had strong ties with pro-Palestinian groups, not to mention his membership in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church — one that is known for its sympathy for the causes of certain terrorist organizations and the Palestinian position.

The Los Angeles Times reportedly possessed and protected a damning video of Obama toasting Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO operative and an outspoken Israel critic who, after the 9/11 attacks, referred to the media’s “hysteria about suicide bombers.”

Obama’s official campaign website, Organizing for America, permitted the posting of a blog entry titled “How the Jewish Lobby Works.” Though the post was eventually removed, it’s suspicious that someone with posting privileges had these virulently anti-Semitic views. The post said: “No lobby is feared more or catered to by politicians than the Jewish Lobby. If a politician does not play ball with the Jewish Lobby, he will not get elected, or re-elected, and he will either be smeared or ignored by the Jewish-owned major media.” NewsBusters cited numerous other links to similar anti-Jewish posts on the website, showing this was not an isolated event. How does one explain away that kind of climate in the bowels of the administration?

Once elected, Obama appointed James Jones as his national security adviser, a man The Lid said is “not known as a friend of the Jewish State.” Jones assembled a team that reportedly intended to be tougher and “impose a solution on” Israel. Early in his term, Obama pledged more than $900 million to rebuild Gaza and to shore up the Palestinian Authority. The rationale was to strengthen Palestinian moderates, but many experts warned that much of this money could get into the hands of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gratuitously denounced Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza while ignoring the many Palestinian sins against Israel. The administration also demanded that Israel negotiate with Syria — a primary sponsor of Hezbollah — just two days after Syrian foreign minister Walid Mueller praised a speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling Israel “the most cruel and repressive racist regime.”

The administration has also applied fierce pressure on Israel to acquiesce on the matter of the creation of a Palestinian state, even to the point of conditioning our efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions on that Israeli concession. Obama directed our return to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which the Bush administration had left nine months before because the council had incessantly condemned Israel while ignoring the abuses of Mideast dictatorships. Obama snubbed Netanyahu and announced he would discontinue the established practice of hosting Israeli prime ministers when they are in Washington.

Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, adopted the controversial 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which called for Israel to withdraw from east Jerusalem, the entire West Bank and Golan Heights and also for Israel to accept the influx of millions of foreign Arabs as Israeli citizens as part of the “right of return.” Mideast expert Caroline Glick says this would mean “Israel would effectively cease to be a Jewish state.”

Vice President Biden engaged in a public temper tantrum and harshly “condemned” Israel for not bowing to the administration’s demands that it discontinue its settlements in east Jerusalem. Rarely does the United States publicly condemn an ally, especially in such harsh terms.

We’re just scratching the surface, but surely you get the picture. There is, however, one gratifying development in this ongoing saga. Finally, some Jewish Americans have had enough and are speaking up. As I chronicle in the book, former New York Mayor Ed Koch wrote two scathing editorials against Obama’s appalling policies and called out his fellow Jews to speak up against them. Amazingly, Obama’s stalwart supporter Sen. Chuck Schumer finally joined Koch in pushing back. Others, not just American Jews, need to wake up.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His new book, “Crimes Against Liberty,” is in bookstores everywhere. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his website at www.DavidLimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

CitizenLink.com 8/30/2010 This headline is hard to miss.  “Why is the Government Trying to Force Me to Divorce My Wife?” But even more noticeable is the $80-100,000 dollars Scott Sumner and his wife will miss over their lifetime simply because they’re married.

Sumner opines about the marriage tax penalty on the Wall Street Pit blog, and points out that the new health care bill “makes the marriage penalty even worse for married couples earning between $250,000 and $400,000.” Read Full Story

“We shouldn’t be fighting this battle in the interior. We should be fighting it directly on our international border,” Babeu said in an “Online With Terry Jeffrey” interview. “And it’s an outrage that our own federal government stopped building the fence.” Read Full Story

Liberty Counsel appeared in federal court, seeking an injunction to immediately allow World Changers to hand out Bibles to interested students in Collier County schools during non-instructional time. Liberty Counsel attorney Horatio Mihet tells OneNewsNow the school board displayed an amazing change of heart at the hearing.

“The Lord showed us great favor, and towards the end of the hearing the school board, I believe, saw the writing on the wall and did a complete about-face.” Mihet reports that it “agreed that the distribution is constitutional and agreed to allow the Bibles to be distributed again in their schools.” Read Full Story

Dick Morris

Party trend usually indicates itself in the 10 days before an election when voters who do not typically follow politics closely tune in and decide for whom to vote. Until this window, they usually describe themselves to pollsters as “undecided.” There will be a huge Republican party trend this year, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The huge Republican poll numbers these days do not reflect the last-minute switches typical of less involved voters but rather mirror the disappointment with Barack Obama and with Congress among voters who do follow politics closely that has accumulated over the past year and a half. It is this reappraisal of their political opinions that is occasioning the big swing toward Republicans in the 2010 election.

The ranks of these disaffected voters who are now turning against Obama and the Democrats will soon be joined by the less-involved voters who will come around in the week or 10 days before the election.

From the perception of the pollster, party trend is a bit like a curveball thrown by a pitcher to a batter. The election statistics remain fairly static for weeks or even months with little change as the race unfolds through September and early through mid October. Like a fastball that comes in straight and true.

Then, suddenly, as the election nears, the vote swings wildly to one side or the other, akin to a curveball that breaks as it approaches the batter — usually too late for him to make an adjustment. Suddenly, the tied races show up as decisive victories for the side that benefits from party trend. And the unwinnable races come into play.

2010 is a year like no other in the magnitude of the partisan shift going on. It dwarfs 1994 and even 1974 in its order of magnitude. But we haven’t yet seen the full impact of the last-minute party shift that will take place. Plenty of voters who are now undecided are yet to be heard from, and when they are, they will impact the results decisively.

In which direction? Most likely they will transform a massive Republican win into an even more massive victory. The uninvolved voters who will decide late in the process are likely to break the same way the rest of the country is breaking: toward the Republicans. Surveys suggest that they share the disenchantment of the participating voters with the economy and Obama’s performance. They have just not focused on the coming election.

Democrats hope that the less involved voters are also less educated and more likely to be the young or minority voters on whom their party depends. But the lack of enthusiasm among Democrats for Obama indicates that these voters are likely to decide by staying home. In the most recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics study, 54 percent of Republicans said they were “very enthusiastic” about voting in the 2010 elections, while only 28 percent of Democrats felt the same way.

So the net result is that for those who anticipate a major Republican win in 2010, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann are authors of the new book “2010: Take Back America — A Battle Plan.” To find out more about Dick Morris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

CLICK HERE FOR PDF OF REPORT – UN Report – USA Human Rights 082410

U.S. District Judge Randal Hall ruled Friday that Augusta State University can expel Jennifer Keeton if she does not follow a “remediation plan” assigned by her professors — a requirement Hall described as “academically legitimate.” Keeton had been asked to complete the plan after she said she believed homosexual behavior was morally wrong and that she would then help such clients change that behavior.

Dr. Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America sees judicial activism in action. Read Full Story

The new law requires that an ultrasound be performed on a woman seeking an abortion at least two hours before the termination of the pregnancy. Pro-abortion groups filed suit to block the measure, deeming it “unconstitutionally vague,” but the restraining order was lifted after the ambiguities were eliminated. Ben Clapper of the Louisiana Right to Life Federation tells OneNewsNow the law has been put into effect. (See earlier article)

“The case brought by the Louisiana abortion industry was meaningless. And so for the first time in Louisiana’s history, abortionists will have to offer women the opportunity to see the image of their unborn child,” he explains. Read Full Story Here

This year, the Obama administration will spend nearly $6 million to restore 63 historic and cultural sites, including mosques and minarets, in 55 nations, according to State Department documents. That includes $76,000 for a 16th century mosque in China, $67,000 for a mosque in Pakistan, $77,000 to restore minarets in Nigeria and Mauritania, and $50,000 for an Islamic Monument in India.

But that’s a fraction of the total in the 2010 Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, which also will fund projects to restore Christian and Buddhist sites as well as museums, forts and palaces.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the U.S. program to restore Islamic and other cultural sites abroad is money well spent.

Other Uses of American Tax Payers Money disguised as “Aid”- this will blow your mind. Check out this government site. USAid.com and spend some time seeing where all your money is being wasted outside the US. Like $7.5 BILLION in Pakistan to – Please keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that we are implying that we shouldn’t help people in need or work together with other nations finding solutions to real humanitarian problems. But, maybe if we didn’t waste so much on funding corruption we would have even more for those truly in need.

Here are some other Links that you will find interesting: Click Here

After discussing the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Rauf went on to argue that America is to blame for its testy relationship with Islamic countries. Read Full Story

According to WORLD magazine, Soros, an atheist billionaire who has financed groups promoting abortion, atheism, and same-sex marriage, bankrolled Sojourners with a $200,000 grant in 2004. Since then Sojourners has received at least two more grants from Soros organizations altogether totaling $325,000, the most recent in 2007. Sojourners revenues have more than tripled — from $1,601,171 in 2001-2002 to $5,283,650 in 2008-2009.

Wallis originally rebutted a criticism of “religious progressives” for being allied with Soros in 2005: “I know of no connections to those liberal funds and groups that are as direct as the Religious Right’s ties to right-wing funders.” Earlier this month in Patheos, Wallis wrote, “No, we don’t receive money from George Soros.”

IRD President Mark Tooley commented:

“Wallis’ initial denials and then ultimate confirmation of Soros funding for Sojourners is a revealing turning point for the evangelical left.

“Long insisting he represents a mysterious Christian ‘third way’ more enlightened than the old Religious Right, Wallis now stands exposed as what he always was: a man of the political left. From his days 40 years ago as a radical Students for Democratic Society activist, to his championing of the Marxist Sandinistas in 1980s’ Nicaragua, Wallis has always allied himself with secular leftist groups hostile to the historic Church.

“Religious leftists may freely tout their views no less than religious conservatives. But Wallis and his Sojourners, as Soros-funded religious leftists, should heed truth in advertising.”

www.TheIRD.org

Christian Newswire

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 /Christian Newswire — Advocates International (AI), part of the public interest legal team along with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (GD&C) who brought the case before the court more than a year ago, is pleased with the decision of the United States District Court of the District of Columbia yesterday enjoining HHS and NIH from unlawfully expending taxpayer funds on research involving the destruction of living human embryos.  The district court’s opinion followed the decision by the United States Court of Appeals earlier this summer finding that doctors doing adult stem cell research have ‘competitive standing’ to sue. Therefore, the court reinstated the doctors’ federal lawsuit, filed last summer that seeks to preliminarily enjoin and ultimately overturn the controversial guidelines for public funding of embryonic stem cell research that the National Institutes of Health issued on July 7, 2009.  The preliminary injunction issued yesterday for the time being brings to an end the unlawful use of taxpayer dollars to fund research that will result in the destruction of human embryos.  Since 1994, in what has been popularly known as its Dickey-Wicker Amendment to each HHS Appropriations Bill, Congress has expressly banned NIH from funding research in which human embryos “are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.”

According to AI’s General Counsel, Samuel B. Casey, United States District Court Judge Lambreth’s ruling, quoted below, “could not be clearer”:

ESC research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed. To conduct ESC research, ESCs must be derived from an embryo. The process of deriving ESCs from an embryo results in the destruction of the embryo. Thus, ESC research necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo. Despite defendants’ attempt to separate the derivation of ESCs from research on the ESCs, the two cannot be separated. Derivation of ESCs from an embryo is an integral step in conducting ESC research. Indeed, it is just one of many steps in the “systematic investigation” of stem cell research. 45 C.F.R. § 46.102(d). Simply because ESC research involves multiple steps does not mean that each step is a separate “piece of research” that may be federally funded, provided the step does not result in the destruction of an embryo. If one step or “piece of research” of an ESC research project results in the destruction of an embryo, the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. Because ESC research requires the derivation of ESCs, ESC research is research in which an embryo is destroyed. Accordingly, the Court concludes that, by allowing federal funding of ESC research, the Guidelines are in violation of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment.

According to GD&C’s Thomas G. Hungar, lead trial counsel for the plaintiffs who argued the case before the Court of Appeals and before Judge Lambreth: “We are gratified that the Court agreed with our plain-language reading of the Dickey-Wicker statute.  Congress has forbidden federal funding of research that entails the destruction of human embryos, and NIH needs to start complying with the law.”

The plaintiffs contend that the NIH guidelines violate the congressional ban because they “necessarily condition funding on the destruction of human embryos.”  In addition, the plaintiffs also allege that the NIH guidelines were invalidly implemented, because the decision to fund human embryonic stem cell research was made without the proper procedures required by law and without properly considering the more effective and less ethically problematic forms of adult and induced pluripotent stem cell research.

President Obama, in his March 11, 2009 Executive Order announcing his Administration’s policy stated he was determined to fund ethically “responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research…to the extent permitted by law.” Sadly, said AI’s Casey, “these guidelines while claiming to ‘implement’ the President’s directions, failed his own test because they are not only unlawful, they are based upon an ethically irresponsible misunderstanding of available scientific evidence.  One of the expert stem cell researcher plaintiffs, Dr. James L. Sherley, explained that “the great irony of the guidelines is that research involving stem cells safely derived from human adults and other sources presents the same if not greater potential for medical breakthroughs, without any of the troubling legal and ethical issues related to embryonic stem-cell research.”  Clinical trials using adult stem cells have successfully reversed the effects of diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.  The plaintiffs argue that because NIH promulgated its guidelines with a preconceived determination to fund human embryonic stem cell research and without considering these scientifically and ethically superior alternatives, the guidelines are invalid regulations and should be struck down.

Dr. David Stevens, Executive Director of Christian Medical Association, an organization of more than 16,000 doctors who are also plaintiffs in the case, said “we are opposed to this proposed illegal and unethical federal funding of destructive embryonic research that would compel every American to cooperate with such unlawful human experimentation and the violation of our fundamental medical research ethic never to lethally experiment on one human being simply to benefit the interests of other human beings.”

Sam Casey, co-counsel for the plaintiffs and General Counsel of Advocates International’s Law of Life Project, a public interest legal project specializing in cutting-edge bio-ethical issues, added:  “The majority of the almost 50,000 comments that the NIH received were opposed to funding this research, and by its own admission, NIH totally ignored these comments.  The so-called spare human embryos being stored in IVF clinics around the United States are not ‘in excess of need,’ as the NIH in its guidelines callously assert.  They are human beings in need of biological or adoptive parents.”

The lawsuit is brought by a broad coalition of plaintiffs, including Dr. James L. Sherley, a former member of the MIT faculty, currently working as a senior scientist at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute; Dr. Theresa Deisher, the founder, managing member, and research and development director of AVM Biotechnology; Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a non-profit, licensed adoption agency dedicated to protecting and finding adoptive parents for human embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization; all individual human embryos whose lives are now at risk under NIH’s guidelines; parents seeking to adopt human embryos; and the Christian Medical Association, a non-profit association of doctors dedicated to improving ethical standards of health care in the United States and abroad.  The Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending religious freedom and the sanctity of human life, is also serving as co-counsel on the case and providing financial support.

A copy of the Court of Appeals and District Court decisions, the Complaint in the lawsuit, the President’s Executive Order, and the challenged NIH Guidelines and the comments thereon can be obtained by clicking the hyperlinks in the first or fourth paragraphs above.

OITHER CONTACTS:

Thomas G. Hungar, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, 202-887-3648

Steven H. Aden, Alliance Defense Fund, 202-393-8690

Margie Shealey, Christian Medical Association, 423-341-4254

Ron Stoddart, Nightlight Christian Adoption, 714-865-6542

Dr. James L. Shirley, BBRI, 617-658-7892, 617-990-6819

Advocates International is an international organization of attorneys in over 150 nations, including the United States, who seek to do justice with compassion, including through its Law of Life Task Force protecting the inalienable and sacred right to human life from biological conception to natural death.

Christian Newswire

Also on this page is a call to prayer for 140 days down to election day. Start today with us. Click here for In Touch

Watch Video Here:

American Atheists Inc., successfully argued that because crosses are a Christian symbol, they violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  That these white crosses, which are on public land, with official Utah Highway Patrol logos, give the impression that the government is showing preference to one religion over another.  In its ruling, the 10th Circuit states “…these memorials have the impermissible effect of conveying to the reasonable observer the message that the state prefers or otherwise endorses a certain religion.” Read Full Story

But i digress, so what if the President is Muslim, does it really matter? Yes it matters big-time on a number of different levels and issues: If the President in fact is a practicing Muslim then the following truths ought to cause the American people to demand answers from Mr. Obama:

1. The President ran a campaign that consistently positioned him, in his own words, as a Christian. Then he lied.

2. What if the President’s religious allegiances are jeopardizing our national security? A quote from his book raises this flag.

3. Since our great Nation was founded upon Judeo-Christian principles, does the President’s religious bias jeopardize our United State Constitution?

California’s capital city offers two Waldorf-inspired public schools — John Morse Waldorf Methods School (K-8), and the high school George Washington Carver School of Arts and Sciences. The Sacramento City Unified School District now is facing a trial in federal court on allegations that those schools are religious, making them ineligible to receive taxpayer dollars.

The lawsuit, filed in 1998 by the group People for Legal and Nonsectarian Schools, is just now making it to trial after several appeals. In an interview with The Sacramento Bee, the president of PLANS uses phrases like “cult-like religious sect” and “new-age religion” to describe the activities at the schools.

Dr. Bruce Shortt, author of The Harsh Truth about Public Schools, explains to OneNewsNow that the Waldorf system is based on a dangerous philosophy called “anthroposophy” from the writings of 19th-century Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner.

“And in those writings he basically posits that the universe is driven by conflict between Lucifer and the god of darkness called ‘Ahriman’ — and his educational philosophy is built around that conflict,” says Shortt. “…In fact, in his view Christ came to earth as a ’son god’ to balance the forces of light and darkness.”

The author says these views are reflected in The Waldorf Teachers Survival Guide.

“As a matter of fact, quoting from the guide, it says ‘most of what contributes to our work as teachers — preparation work, artistic work, even meditative work — is under the guardianship of Lucifer. We can become great teachers under his supervision….’ And it continues in that vein.”

Although the Waldorf system is primarily offered through private education, the demand for Waldorf public schools has grown to more than 40 across the country, including two dozen in California.

Source – Bill Bumpas – OneNewsNow.com

Other Resources / Research

• Also, Do Some Research on the philosophy of these schools based on Antroposophy – for a thourough and unbiased explanatation – Click Here a Wiki definition – Click Here
• Google Search page relative to connection to Lucifer – Click Here

• The man behind this philosophy – Rudolph Steiner
• Book Review addressing this controversial subject – The Harsh Truth About Public Schools
• Rudolf Steiner Schools – mission, vision & philosophy – Click Here check it out to see if your children are attending one of these schools.
• Rudolf Steiner website – Click Here – this guy is creepy, spend 5 minutes on this web site and the links and you will know what I mean.

Walid Shoebat, a convert from Islam to Christianity who is now an outspoken critic of Islam, recently translated an Arabic language interview conducted by Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf. He believes the imam’s words should be alarming as they indicate what the world will look like if he gets his way.

The Islam critic explains that the organizer spearheading the Ground Zero mosque outlined his manifesto for the infiltration of secular governments like that of the United States by means of “peaceful lobbying efforts.”

“What he is suggesting is to make the governors and the political institutions consult Muslim institutions and Muslim personalities like himself…in the field so as to ensure that the decision-making…reflects the spirit of sharia, to make Muslim personalities so they can begin to influence the government and so they can become consultants to the government,” Shoebat reports. “And then they make sure that the laws are within the spirit of sharia Islamic laws.”

He points out that Abdul Rauf has already taken a step toward his goal by getting a State Department-funded trip to the Middle East to be an envoy for alleged “peaceful” Islam. (See related article)

See Other Related Articles

• Core Report
• Core Report

Details of the violations are laid out in a new report (Analysis of the First Year of the Obama Administration: Public Records and Propaganda Initiatives) issued this week by a House panel that oversees all facets of government, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It reveals that, under one-party rule, the White House used the Obama campaign machinery to tout the president’s agenda through inappropriate and sometimes unlawful public relations and propaganda initiatives. See PDF Copy – Click Here – 20100816obamaadministrationpropagandareport

In nearly a dozen cases the administration abused taxpayer resources and/or violated federal law that prohibits using public funds to promote partisan propaganda, according to the probe. For instance the administration spent millions of dollars to buy road signs touting progress under the economic stimulus law and coordinated taxpayer-funded art to promote Obama’s legislative priorities in the first few months of his presidency.

The White House also created a government-funded online form that encouraged users to lobby members of Congress to pass health care legislation and spent $700,000 to promote the president’s hostile takeover of the country’s health care system in television commercials. The administration hired an aging Hollywood actor to star in the TV ads after numerous polls revealed that most Americans oppose Obamacare.

The committee has requested that the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office further probe the Obama Administration’s publicly funded effort to generate support since it clearly violates prohibitions on federally financed propaganda.

Other Related Articles:

The Hill – Rep. Issa: Stimulus Website is “propaganda” 8/17/10

The Core Report – Whit House directed to erect signs to promote Obama’s Recovery Act 8/16/10

More ugly details of how this controversy is unfolding – Pelosi calling for investigation into who is funding opposition….Mosque developer not ruling out taking money from Iran to build….Read More Here

The statement endorsed by 40 religious voices is comprised of top NCC officials, left-wing Catholics, Muslim groups, and mostly second-tier Jewish groups, plus J Street. Not listed are mainline Protestant clerics, Eastern Orthodox, and prominent liberal Jewish voices typically found on NCC-organized political statements. No prominent evangelicals are signatories.

“We are deeply troubled by the xenophobia and religious bigotry that has characterized some of the opposition to a proposed Islamic center and mosque near where the World Trade Center towers once stood,” the letter reads. Read Full Story

Two of six massive marble-faced exhibit cases at the front of the hall are inscribed with tellingly edited passages from the first clause of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Another two are inscribed with tellingly edited passages from the eighth clause of that section. (The final two exhibit cases are inscribed with the First Amendment and an edited passage from the preamble.)

The full text of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 says: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” Read Full Story

Earlier Rep. Peter King (R.-N.Y.), a vocal critic of the plan, said Paterson told him during a phone conversation that he planned to meet with the developers later this week to discuss the possibility of an alternative site.

The project is the brainchild of Feisel Abdul Rauf, an Islamic cleric who heads the Cordoba Initiative, an organization whose stated goal is to improve Muslim-West relations.

Formally called Park51 – the address is 45-51 Park Place in lower Manhattan, about 200 yards from the World Trade Center site – the project widely dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque” has become a major national political issue.

Opponents argue that its location is insensitive to the families and loved ones of those killed and injured when al-Qaeda attacked on 9/11. The terrorist network claims to be driven by the tenets of Islam.

Paterson last week offered the organizers state assistance if they agreed to move the site, but they declined.

Tuesday’s news suggested a fresh bid by the governor, but the Cordoba Initiative shot down the idea. Read Full Story

The number of deportations in fiscal 2009 was far less than the 400,000–or 4 percent–that John Morton, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said his agency was capable of deporting each year. Read Full Story

Vasily Boiko, who officially changed his name to Boiko-Veliky, which means “Boiko the Great,” has set a deadline of October 14 — a Russian Orthodox Church holiday — for any of his unmarried employees who live with a partner to get married, or get fired.

“We have about 6,000 employees, most of whom are Orthodox, and I expect them to be faithful and to repent,” Boiko told Reuters last week. His order came in an internal memo to workers at Russkoye Moloko, which means “Russian milk” and whose products are sold in many Russian supermarkets.

Boiko told Ekho Moskvy radio that a woman who’s had an abortion “can no longer be an employee of our company … We don’t want to work with killers,” according to Reuters. Read Full Story

Some congressional Republicans are calling the signs propaganda for the administration and questioning their cost.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recommended one model sign that included these words: “Funded By: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act/ Barack Obama, President.” Read Full Story

In a 3-0 decision, the appeals court reversed District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision, which would have overthrown the will of 7 million Californians and allowed same-sex marriages to begin again in California on Wednesday at 5pm. Read Full Story

The FDA’s decision came down despite numerous concerns and warnings related to ella‘s deceptive marketing and its detrimental impact on women and the preborn. Read Full Story

Students for Life, CitizenLink and other pro-life organizations sounded the alarm on Wednesday that the University of North Carolina system, which oversees 17 institutions, offered only one health insurance plan to uninsured students – and it covered abortion.

Erskine Bowles, president of the school system, directed Pearce and Pearce, the largest student health care insurance company in the nation, to contact students who purchased policies and offer them a chance to opt-out.

Kristan Hawkins with Students for Life is thankful students now have an option.

“The Board of Governors came out and said they were going to allow pro-life students to opt-out of abortion coverage ,” she said, “and that their health care money wouldn’t go for other women’s abortions.”

She said she would rather abortion not be included at all, because “Abortion is not health care.” Read Full Story

In a 136-page decision barring California’s Proposition 8, which limited marriage to one man and one woman, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker found that “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.” Read Full Story

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” he said. “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.” Read Full Story

Watch Speech Here:

This pretty much sums it up. Perhaps our own commander in chief should have made this speech instead:

Other Related Stories:

• The Core Report OpEd
• Powerful Ad from victims of 9/11 opposing mosque
  
• Obama’s Mosque…Now He Owns It
  

• Obama uses Ramadan dinner to endorse NY mosque

Organizations Opposing Mosque:

• 911 Familiesforamerica

• Keep America Safe

Other Sources for Tracking the Mosque Issues

• Jihad Watch

Is this really an act of bridging and healing relationships or pure defiance. The  original name for this mosque was to be called The Cordoba House (do the research on this name)but after so much backlash, they changed it to a more acceptable, NY Style American name…now it’s Park 51 Community. The majority of Americans are opposed to building this mosque so close to Ground Zero, for many obvious reasons. Again, we’re not opposed to building a mosque – just Not On Hallowed Ground. Check this out,  a recent  CNN Poll taken just this week states that nearly 70% oppose it ( Fact Check Here – CNN Poll 081110 – refer to Q# 41). Further evidence that there is more to this than outreach, after a “bridge building” attempt by some to meet with the mosque building committee to discuss searching and selecting an alternative sight was flat-out ignored and subsequently denied.

Since announcing his endorsement of the mosque last night at the White House Ramadan kick-off dinner – Obama, shrouded in our Constitution said this in an attempt to align patriotic Americans with his ideology … “But time and again, the American people have demonstrated that we can work through these issues, and stay true to our core values, and emerge stronger for it. So it must be — and will be — today”. Is that an order Mr. President? Kind of feels like you are lecturing the American people on how to be patriotic. A simple statement as to the inappropriateness of the site and a shout-out to encourage an alternative location could have gone a long way.

Like others who are intent on bringing America down, our president has shielded himself with our very own US Constitution and in the name of Freedom of Religion made a strong appeal to support the building of this mosque just two blocks from the 9/11 terrorism grave sight.

Arial Photo showing proximity to Ground Zero – proposed mosque site outlined in red.

While it (May Be) constitutionally legal, perhaps the President of the United States of America could have at least condemned the insensitivity of this provocative act and held fast to the concept that the greatest act of respect, compassion and bridge-building with the Muslim community would be to relocate it.  In fact, the mosque was originally proposed for another site away from ground zero but was later moved to its currently proposed location – less than a 9-iron away. To all the families impacted by this act of terror, we are very sorry.

What to do with those who use our freedoms to harm us? How do we protect ourselves from enemies who use us and abuse our laws to do the opposite of the original laws’ intent? Yes, these are big questions concerning known enemies from outside our borders, much less enemies from within.

One thing is for sure, from this point forward all things Ground Zero Mosque and all that evolves from it will be identified with and owned by  the President, the democratic party, progressives and all the media networks that are sold out to this administration. With the November elections just around the corner, timing will be everything and such a time is this for America to take back the leadership of our great nation before its too late.

So, as the controversial imam responsible for driving the “Cordoba Initiative” the mosque takes off on an All Expenses Paid by the American Tax Payer Sojourn around the world on a “bridge-building” effort and raising funds  for the estimated $100 Million construction costs for this Mosque  – he must be thrilled knowing that our President, Barrack Hussein Obama has his back.

Watch Speech Here:

This pretty much sums it up. Perhaps our own commander in chief should have made this speech instead:

Ground Zero Mosque Imam Claims America Already a Sharia Compliant State:

Other Related Stories:

• The Core Report OpEd
• Powerful Ad from victims of 9/11 opposing mosque
  
• Obama’s Mosque…Now He Owns It

• Obama uses Ramadan dinner to endorse NY mosque

Organizations Opposing Mosque:

• 911 Familiesforamerica

• Keep America Safe

Other Sources for Tracking the Mosque Issues

Jihad Watch

Jim Schubert is the founder & publisher of The Core Report.com, Core Alerts and Core Media Network. All rights reserved August 14, 2010 TheCoreReport.com.  Sign-up to receive Free subscription, alerts & feeds today.

As previously reported on OneNewsNow, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell recently announced his support of holding hearings on the issue of birthright citizenship. Likewise, House Minority Leader John Boehner announced Sunday that he is also open to talks on changing the way the 14th Amendment is interpreted so that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are not automatically U.S. citizens. Read Full Story

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix is a private challenge to the health care bill championed by President Barack Obama. Arizona and 21 other states are pursuing public lawsuits against the federal law, based in large part on preserving their traditional authority to regulate health insurance. This new lawsuit, known as Coons v. Geithner, argues the federal health care bill exceeds the powers of Congress, violates individual rights, interferes with the authority of states, and violates the separation of powers by setting up a new bureaucracy without meaningful congressional oversight or judicial review.

“This lawsuit is our effort to bring down one of the most sweeping invasions of individual liberty and state sovereignty in American history,” said Clint Bolick, litigation director for the Goldwater Institute. “The federal health care bill is a sledgehammer to solve a problem that needs the precision of a scalpel. This is the most overbearing and intrusive way possible to try to address America’s rising health care costs.” Read Full Press Release and Related Articles

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced his intention to eliminate the Virginia-based Joint Services Command, which employs about 6,000 military and civilian workers who account for at least $240 million in the defense budget’s personnel costs. He declared that while some military and civilian employees could be reassigned elsewhere, a substantial number of full-time workers would have to leave the DOD. Gates also explained he would seek cuts elsewhere in the defense budget.

But Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), a member of the Armed Services Committee, does not think Congress should suggest slashing Defense Department jobs while at the same time wanting to add a misguided additional expense at military health facilities.

“We’re going in the wrong direction in this defense re-authorization bill. There is a provision in the Senate version that would allow abortions in military health facilities, not only for military members, but their families,” the senator reports. “Now if we’re looking to save money, the first thing we need to do is not add additional expenses and additional demands on our healthcare professionals and our facilities by saying that abortion on demand can be performed in our [military] health facilities.”

Wicker feels pro-abortion senators should even understand that it makes no sense to put this additional burden on the defense budget at a time when there are so many more important and pressing priorities that should be dealt with first.

‘Ground Zero’ banner hits bump in the road

A national public-interest law firm that defends and promotes America’s Christian values has filed a federal lawsuit against the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) for refusing to place banner ads on city buses that oppose the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero.

The ad in question is sponsored by the Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI), founded by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.

On one side, the banner shows a picture of the twin towers aflame with a plane headed toward them. On the opposite side, a tower with the Islamic symbol of the crescent moon and star is displayed. The question “Why There?” is between the two, relating the date of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, with the proposed date of the opening of the mosque on September 11, 2011.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), thinks MTA refused to display the ad in its original design because it states the obvious.

“They refused this ad because they said, ‘Well, it seems to make a connection between the World Trade Center attacks and the mosque,’ which is what Pam Geller and Robert Spencer were trying to do,” he explains. “We believe their refusal to put up the ad is a violation of the constitutional rights to free speech.”

Thompson points out that the transit authority displayed other controversial ads, including FDI’s “Leaving Islam” campaign. “They indicated that it is a forum for free speech….So this becomes curiouser and curiouser,” he concludes.

The TMLC president adds that his firm hopes to get a temporary restraining order, which would force the MTA to display their ads until a permanent injunction can be obtained. Read More

Five Ouachita Parish high schools have banned home-schoolers from participating in athletic programs – despite a law recently signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal that gives these students the chance to play public school sports. The law leaves it up to principals to make the local decision.

Twenty-two states allow home-school students to participate in public school activities.

Randy Hammet, athletic director for Ouachita Parish Schools, said, “When polled last spring by the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, it was overwhelming, 200-and-something to five against participation by home-school students.

He added that letting home-schoolers play would be unfair to the public school students. Read Full Story

More Related Home School Articles

Allied attorneys Jay Thompson of Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough, LLP; Matthew Gerrald of Barnes, Alford, Stork & Johnson, LLP; and Timothy Savidge of the Bufkin Law Firm, LLC, all of Columbia, S.C., sent the three letters last month to South Carolina officials on behalf of ADF.

“America’s founders opened public meetings with prayer, and public officials today should be able to do the same,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Brett Harvey. “We were happy to assist the city of Woodruff with a prayer policy that can be followed with confidence. We will defend it in court if necessary because the First Amendment protects public officials who choose to invoke divine guidance and blessings upon their work in the constitutionally sound manner described by this policy.” Read Full Story & Press Release from ADF

Washington has stepped up pressure on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move forward with the resumption of direct talks after 18 months of stalemate. Observers say President Obama is in a full-court press for purely political reasons and desperately needs some kind of foreign policy success before the mid-term elections in November, where the Democrats could take a sound thrashing.

Ben Kinchlow is best known for his years as co-host with Pat Robertson on The 700 Club. Now he is involved in several projects, including Americans for Israel and the African-American Political Awareness Coalition. Read Full Story

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‘Amnesty’ memo reflects ‘dictatorial’ attitude

Lacking votes for amnesty? No problem…

Virginia’s immigration law – a la Arizona



The Real Clear Politics website quoted Pawlenty on Friday as calling the proposed mosque and cultural center “inappropriate.” The site also quoted Pawlenty calling the site sacred ground that shouldn’t have images or activities that “degrade or disrespect” it.

CizensLink.org – Focus On The Family – 08/09/10 The Obama administration is trying to revive efforts to have the U.S. ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). CRC treats children like adults by giving them the same rights as adults.

Thomas Jacobson, United Nations analyst for Focus on the Family, says CRC undermines the responsibility of parents. It could prevent parents from disciplining their kids, and from giving them moral and spiritual guidance.

“Essentially, the Convention on the Rights of the Child removes the ability of parents to protect their own children,” Jacobson said.

The CRC also requires governments to help raise children. The U.S. signed on to the treaty back in 1995, but never ratified it.

Read More on this outrageous situation and abuse government power at CitizensLink.org

20 Things Every Parent Needs To Know About the UN Treaty and How It Impacts Your Parental Rights as A US Citizen. Check out this organization dedicated to fighting for U.S. Parental Rights – ParentalRights.org – Click Here

Read Actual UN Documents Here – Click Here

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Arizona) tells OneNewsNow that America’s enemy is not as much outside itself, but within its own borders. “It’s always the water on the inside of the ship that’s sinks it,” he says. “And Barack Obama, I have to tell you, is water on the inside of the ship of America.”

The Republican lawmaker further claims Obama’s appointments to the Supreme Court pose the greatest threat to the fundamental beliefs and way of life for most U.S. citizens.

“I don’t know if there’s anything happening in America that is more dangerous to the foundation of the republic than appointments by Barack Obama to the bench,” he laments.

Franks is not alone in his criticism. Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo (Colorado) recently said on ABC News the progressive-liberal movement poses a bigger threat to the U.S. than does al-Qaeda or Iran.

Home Depot fired Christian employee Trevor Keezor who wore a button reading “One Nation Under God” to support his country and his 27-year-old brother who is serving in the military in Iraq. AFA spokesman Randy Sharp offers this observation:

“If you’re a Christian or a patriot and you want to wear a patriotic button, that violates the corporate policy — but if you’re a homosexual and you want to wear an apron with pro-gay buttons and homosexual messages, and wear them in pride parades and gay and lesbian film festivals, those are approved by the Home Depot,” he states.

As reported on OneNewsNow, a group of U.S. senators led by Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have sent letters to the administration asking for answers about a plan that would allow Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to provide an amnesty to illegal aliens if the administration cannot secure enough votes for a bill in the Senate. (Read “Amnesty Obama-style“)

Now a Justice Department memo leaked to Grassley outlines the strategy that can be used to grant de facto amnesty to illegal aliens by effectively lessening the standards used in determining “extreme hardship” cases. Under certain circumstances, illegal aliens can remain in the country under laws already on the books.

At issue is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a measure that purports to protect children’s freedom of religion and privacy.

In reality, this measure is not necessarily “about giving children rights, but about giving the government the power to override decisions of good parents when their choices differ from the paths favored by the progressive Left,” explained Michael Farris, president of parentalrights.org and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Among rights threatened would be parents’ ability to direct their children’s spiritual upbringing, as well as what – and when – they learn about sexuality. Read Full Story

In October 2009, Congress enacted a new federal statute known as the Military and Overseas Empowerment Act (MOVE), requiring states to send military and overseas voters absentee ballots 45 days prior to elections. But heading into the 2010 mid-terms, a number of states have failed to comply. Some have even have requested wavier applications. Most of those states are politically of the “blue” variety. Read Full Story

On Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com spoke with Isakson about Arizona’s new law against Illegal immigration, which now faces legal challenges, and asked, “Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu came out in public and said, ‘Our government has become our enemy and is taking us to court at a time when we need help.’ Now that he’s out in public in making that statement, would you agree or disagree with his statement?” Read Full Story

Nor, he found, does a child have a need or a right to a father.

“Children do not need to be raised by a male parent and a female parent to be well-adjusted, and having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted,” the judge wrote in finding of fact No. 71 in his opinion.

“The gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in a child’s adjustment,” the judge stated in finding of fact No. 70. “The sexual orientation of an individual does not determine whether that individual can be a good parent. Children raised by gay or lesbian parents are as likely as children raised by heterosexual parents to be healthy, successful and well-adjusted. The research supporting this conclusion is accepted beyond serious debate in the field of developmental psychology.” Read Full Story Here

Judge Ewing Werlein, Jr. has thrown out a lawsuit against Houston over city council prayer. Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of Liberty Institute, represented Houston in the lawsuit filed by Kay Staley and Ray Hill, two non-believers.

“They not only sued the city council, but they actually sued Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck for saying the Lord’s Prayer to begin the council meetings,” the attorney reports. Read Full Story

Read Liberty Institute Press Release  – Click Here

The measure will allocate $55 million to fund the Personal Responsibility Education Program and $50 million to abstinence-only programs. The responsibility of the former is to provide comprehensive sex education, which is to include curriculum based on “the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth on how their programs will be inclusive of and non-stigmatizing toward such participants.” Read Full Story

How else can you explain the plan that appeared on the NEA’s “Diversity Calendar” instructing teachers to make October 1st a special recognition of the Communist revolution in China?  The NEA recommended teachers celebrate how the world’s most notorious butcher, Chairman Mao Zedong, proclaimed the “Chinese people have stood up,” as he established the regime that would slaughter more innocent human beings than any other in world history. [Editor's note: The NEA has since removed the October 1 event from their website, following a rapid spread of the news about it.] Read Full Story Here

Brad Dacus, founder of the Pacific Justice Institute, concludes that the decision is outrageous.

“This is a classic case of judicial activism. Proposition 8 has already withstood a legal battle and challenge pursuant to the California constitution. There is absolutely nothing in the U.S. Constitution that guarantees homosexuals some kind of right to the institution of marriage,” the pro-family leader contends. Read Full Story

On Tuesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell announced his support of holding hearings on the issue, which has been gaining steam in recent days from Republicans who believe the 14th Amendment has been misinterpreted to allow the children of illegal alien mothers to gain automatic U.S. citizenship when they are born on U.S. soil.

Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations at Numbers USA, contends, “That is a policy that needs to be changed.” Read Full Story

In an interview with a Christian radio network, Angle describes her effort to oust Majority Leader Harry Reid as a religious calling in “a war of ideology, it’s a war of thoughts and of faith.”

Reid, President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have pushed “entitlement programs built to make government our God,” says Angle, who has called for privatizing Social Security and Medicare for younger workers. Read Full Story

According to Gingrich, the United States is failing to address national threats in numerous areas.  These include our declining economy, which puts us at risk of being overshadowed as a leading economic power by China and India, and the rise of “secular socialism” in modern politics.  This results in a system that purposely overlooks growing threats and “defends reactionary institutions that are incompetent in order to prop them up.”  We certainly saw this issue with the multiple bailouts of institutions that were supposed to be “too big to fail.” Read Full Story Here

Glenn Beck has also done a good job a keeping dialed in on the czars and here is what he has to share with you. Click Here

Judicial Watch specifically asked the Secret Service for access to:

1.) All official visitor logs and/or other records concerning visits made to the Vice President’s Residence and Office located on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory from January 20, 2009 to the present.

2.) All official visitor logs and/or other records concerning visits made to Vice President Joe Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware from January 20, 2009 to the present. Read Full File Here

Facts are stranger than fiction because oftentimes the truth is uncomfortable, counter intuitive and hard to grasp. Check out these facts from GB

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker made his ruling in a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the voter-approved ban violated their civil rights.

Supporters argued the ban was necessary to safeguard the traditional understanding of marriage and to encourage responsible childbearing.

California voters passed the ban as Proposition 8 in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

“Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples,” the judge wrote in a 136-page ruling that laid out in precise detail why the ban does not pass constitutional muster. Read Full Story

• Read Ms. Kagan’s answers to her Public Questionnaire  -click Here ElenaKagan-PublicQuestionnaire

• Read a full collection of Nominee Record from the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary – Click Here

• Judicial Watch features a comprehensive collection of data, articles, links, etc.. Click Here

• Does Ms. Kagan Support Sharia Law? Some experts believe she does. Read this interesting article from THE HILL and you make the call.

• Andrew Brietbart’s Big Peace also ran a good piece on this issue – Read Full Story

• What is Ms. Kagan’s position on partial birth abortion? Interesting Article on CNS News – Read Full Story Here

About 71 percent of Missouri voters backed a ballot measure, Proposition C, that would prohibit the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for not having it.

The Missouri law conflicts with a federal requirement that most people have health insurance or face penalties starting in 2014.

Tuesday’s vote was seen as largely symbolic because federal law generally trumps state law. But it was also seen as a sign of growing voter disillusionment with federal policies and a show of strength by conservatives and the tea party movement.

“To us, it symbolized everything,” said Annette Read, a tea party participant from suburban St. Louis who quit her online retail job to lead a yearlong campaign for the Missouri ballot measure. “The entire frustration in the country … how our government has misspent, how they haven’t listened to the people, this measure in general encompassed all of that.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

“Whenever it was,” said Pelosi, “we bow our heads when we talk about it in church, and that’s where I’d like to talk about that.”

Later, when asked in writing through her press secretary whether the speaker believed Jesus had a right to life from the moment of conception, the press secretary responded: “The speaker answered the question. Thanks.” Read The Full Story

ADF represents Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, a party in the case, which is one of about 53 non-profit 501(c)(3) corporations organized to distribute private donations in the form of scholarships to over 27,000 students attending hundreds of private schools throughout the state. Read Full Story

Speaking last week to the National Urban League, the president pledged to fight for Race to the Top, saying he will not tolerate a status quo where the U.S. lags behind other countries in education achievements.

But Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, contends that the president’s policies are contributing to the problem.

“The federal government through Race to the Top is telling all states, ‘If you want to compete for this money, which came from your taxpayers, you have to sign on to national standards or national tests.’” Read Full Story

The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s decision allows organizers to transform the 152-year-old building into an Islamic community center blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

National and New York politicians and the Anti-Defamation League have come out in recent weeks against plans for the mosque, saying it disrespects the memory of Sept. 11 victims. Mayor Michael

Bloomberg has supported the mosque.

The commission voted 9-0 against granting landmark status to the building.
Commissioners said the building didn’t meet historic criteria to qualify as a landmark.

Watch Fox News Debate:

He also claims that his grandfather was saved the exact same way, The Daily Mail reported Monday.

Now home from a seven-month tour of duty, 19-year-old Glenn Hockton was on patrol when his rosary beads suddenly dropped from his neck. He bent down to retrieve the chain and realized he was on top of a land mine.

Hockton stood still for 45 minutes while his colleagues worked to secure the land mine.

During his tour, Hockton’s duties involved patrolling and loading the mortars while he was based in Kabul and Helmand Province, which has seen a significant amount of violence. Read Full Story Here

It took the help of the United States, but the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) has gained official status at the U.N., which is an “important step forward for human rights,” according to President Obama.

“This once again just highlights the fact that President Obama is fully in the tank of the radical homosexual activist lobby,” notes Matt Barber, attorney and head of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel. “In keeping with his commitment to ram through his radical agenda, the president has once again circumvented the proper protocol and procedure in order to push a very unpopular policy.”  Read Full Story

The new University of Virginia study, which appears in the August issue of Applied Developmental Science, was conducted by psychology professor Charlotte J. Patterson. But Alex Mason, political analyst for the Virginia-based Family Policy Network (FPN), considers her lifestyle and decides that researchers who have something to gain by the outcome of a study are biased.

“The fact of the matter is that Charlotte Patterson is herself an avowed lesbian who is raising three children with her so-called ‘partner’ that she married in Canada,” Mason reports. “Over the years, she’s written books like Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Identity [and] Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Identity in Youth. She even teaches seminars around the country on how to create homosexual families.” Read Full Story

Jordan Lorence, senior counsel with ADF, is disappointed by the federal judge’s decision because, as he says, ”it basically has no respect for the right of conscience of Christians or other people who have sincere beliefs about the proper definition of marriage and whether certain sexual behaviors can be immoral.” Read Full Story

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) may have uncovered the answer to their dilemma yesterday: an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo (reported here on NRO) that outlines steps the Obama administration can take “in the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform” — that is, lawfully enacted amnesty — to “reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization.”

The four authors of the memo, titled “Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” are political appointees USCIS chief of policy and strategy Denise Vanison (a former immigration attorney and partner at Patton Boggs) and USCIS chief counsel Roxana Bacon (former general counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association), and two career employees of USCIS director Alejandro Mayorkas, another Obama appointee.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress — and only Congress — the authority to decide federal immigration law, but the Obama administration has come up with an extensive list of ways to ensure that a majority of the illegal aliens in the United States are allowed to remain here.

Here are just three examples of the outrageous proposals in the memo:  Read Full Story

The 57–41 vote to end debate fell sharply along party lines – even swing-vote Republicans Sens. Snowe, Collins and Brown voted against the measure.  Despite vocal opposition prior to the vote, Democrat Sens. Feinstein of California and Lautenberg of New Jersey voted “yes “on the procedural vote.  Read Full Story

Photo Courtesy of Alliance Defense Fund

A federal judge ruled schools can expel students, like Julea Ward, who believe homosexuality is morally wrong. Ward’s lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University

“It’s a very dangerous precedent,” Jeremy Tedesco, legal counsel for the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, told FOX News Radio. “The ruling doesn’t say that explicitly, but that’s what is going to happen.” Read Full Story

The overall law will still take effect Thursday, but without the provisions that angered opponents – including sections that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws.

The judge also put on hold parts of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled that the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues.

The ruling came just as police were making last-minute preparations to begin enforcement of the law at 12:01 a.m. Thursday and protesters were planning a large demonstrations to speak out against the measure. At least one group planned to block access to federal offices, daring officers to ask them their immigration status.

The volume of the protests will be likely be turned down a few notches because of the ruling by Bolton, a Clinton appointee who suddenly became a crucial figure in the immigration debate when she was assigned the seven lawsuits filed against the Arizona law. Read Full Story Here

Read the Ruling and the Law by Clicking on these PDF’s
072810_ArizonaRuling, SB1070-HB2162New

Interesting analysis provide by Fox News -

I. What is enjoined

1. Requiring verification of immigration status: Requiring that an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is unlawfully present in the United States, and requiring verification of the immigration status of any person arrested prior to releasing that person.

Reasoning: Pre-empted by federal law because it creates an additional burden on the federal government by increasing the number of immigration-verification requests to the federal government.

2. Failure to carry immigration papers: Creating a crime for the failure to apply for or carry alien registration papers.

Reasoning: Pre-empted as an impermissible attempt to create its own state immigration scheme by altering the penalties established by Congress under the federal registration scheme.

3. Illegal for an illegal to solicit work: Creating a crime for an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for or perform work.

Reasoning: Pre-empted because there is a comprehensive federal scheme regulating employment of illegal immigrants.

4. Warrantless arrest for potentially removable alien:  Authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe the person has committed a public offense that makes the person removable from the United States.

Reasoning: Pre-empted because determining whether a specific offense makes an alien removable is a tough decision and there is “a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens,” thus impermissibly burdening legal aliens (and only the federal government can impose such burdens)

II. What is not enjoined?

1. No sanctuary cities: Prohibiting Arizona officials, agencies and political subdivisions from limiting enforcement of federal immigration laws.

2. Requiring cooperation with federal authorities: Requiring that state officials work with federal officials with regard to unlawfully present aliens.

3. Permitting civil suits for sanctuary cities:  Allowing legal residents to sue any state official, agency or political subdivision for adopting a policy of restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law.

4. Human smuggling crimes: Amending the crime of human smuggling.

5. Crime to pick up day laborers: Creating a crime for stopping a motor vehicle to pick up day laborers and for day laborers to get in a motor vehicle if it impedes the normal movement of traffic.

6. Knowing/intentional employment of illegal immigrants: Amending the crime of knowing employment of unauthorized aliens. Amending the crime of intentional employment of unauthorized aliens.

7. Employee verification:  Amending the requirements for checking employment eligibility.

8. Funding for gang / immigrant enforcement: Creating the gang and immigration intelligence team enforcement mission fund.

[source: United States v. State of Arizona et al., Case 2:10-cv-01413-SRB, July 28, 2010 decision]

Jordan Sekulow, attorney for the American Center for Law and Justice, said the group has filed written testimony with the New York Landmark Preservation Commission to try to halt the joint plan of the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement to build a mosque to replace a building just two blocks from Ground Zero. The landing gear of one of the planes commandeered by Muslim terrorists on Sept. 11 crashed through the roof of the building that the ACLJ wants to preserve. Read Full Story

“There’s more to marriage than just any two people in a relationship,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. “We should be strengthening marriage, not tearing it down, and the Supreme Court of New Jersey did the responsible thing by denying activists’ attempt to make marriage something other than one man and one woman. This already-resolved, three-year-old lawsuit was resurrected with the goal of forcing legislators to redefine marriage against their will. Such attacks utterly dispel the myth that civil unions will appease same-sex “marriage” activists, who seek to use them as a legal springboard to redefine marriage.” Read Full Story

The Wichita City Council opens each session with prayer, but that ritual met opposition during a recent meeting. Local TV station KSN was on hand when Vickie Sandell Stangl, president of the Great Plains chapter of AU, argued that the practice only promotes religion.

“There is no good reason to use public time to express private beliefs,” she contended. “Any member of the city council or staff can freely pray any time of the day or may come together as a group in private before conducting city business.” Read Full Story

PHOENIX — A federal judge will hear arguments Thursday from lawyers for the governor, the U.S. government and civil rights groups over whether Arizona’s new law requiring police to run checks on immigration status should take effect in a week.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton will consider a request by the U.S. Justice Department to block enforcement of the law. She also will hear arguments in a challenge by civil rights groups over whether the law should be put on hold and whether that lawsuit should be thrown out of court.

The judge has said she wasn’t making any promises on whether she would make those rulings before the law takes effect on July 29.

The law requires officers, while enforcing other laws, to check a person’s immigration status if there’s a reasonable suspicion that the person is here illegally. It also bans people from blocking traffic when they seek or offer day-labor services on streets and prohibits illegal immigrants from soliciting work in public places.

From condoms for young children in Provincetown to sex education for kindergartners in Helena, Katie Reid — author of When the Bough Breaks — believes the intent of such actions is to provide children a means to engage in sexual relations with fewer possible side effects. But as Reid points out, there are more consequences to sex than just pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Read Full Story

Jennifer Keeton, 24, is pursuing her master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State University. But after her professors learned of her biblical beliefs — specifically her views on homosexual conduct — from both classroom discussions and private conversations with other students, the school imposed a “remediation plan.”

“It’s in essence [telling her] ‘you do not have the correct beliefs, we are going to re-educate you into the correct beliefs,’” explains David French, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund. “And unless she completes this — quote — ‘remediation plan’ to their satisfaction, then she can be thrown out of [the school's counseling program].”  Read Full Story

After one of Pat Toomey’s ads accused Sestak of voting “100 percent” with Nancy Pelosi, Sestak howled that this was a lie. He voted with her 97 percent of the time. Hmmm.

Sestak displayed the same unwise litigiousness after a group called the Emergency Committee for Israel ran ads calling attention to his poor record on support for Israel. Sestak’s lawyers contacted Comcast and insisted that the ads be pulled. In so doing, he has invited closer examination of his record.

It is false and “offensive,” Sestak’s lawyer argues, to say that the congressman “raised money for an anti-Israel organization that the FBI labeled a ‘front group for Hamas.’” Oh, did Sestak not deliver the keynote address at a fundraiser for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)? Well, yes, he did, admits the lawyer, “but during a portion of the event explicitly free of fundraising.” Please. People paid $50 to attend the banquet and hear a speech by Congressman Joe Sestak. That he didn’t personally solicit funds is quite irrelevant.

Sestak certainly had notice, before agreeing to deliver the speech, that CAIR was a problematic group. In 2007, the founders of the Holy Land Foundation were indicted for funneling money to terrorist organizations including Hamas. (They received life sentences in 2009.) CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Repeatedly, over the course of two decades, CAIR has justified terror, condemned Israel, and declined to denounce suicide bombings and other attacks on civilians. Mustafa Carroll of the Dallas chapter of CAIR stressed in 2007 that “the root cause of terrorism is oppression.”

Sestak might have consulted with Sen. Barbara Boxer, a fellow liberal Democrat, who rescinded an award to an Islamic activist in California after learning of his association with CAIR. Several former CAIR officials have been deported or indicted on terror-related charges.

Sestak himself said, in an interview with the Exponent, a Philadelphia Jewish weekly, that “I don’t just speak to groups that I support … I think that is the job of a congressman in order to have a dialogue. And I went to CAIR and I criticized their failure to condemn terrorists by name, Hezbollah and Hamas, and the fact that they had not dissociated themselves.”

Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin examined the speech, looking for that “criticism.” The speech doesn’t bear close reading. It contains pages upon pages of praise for Muslims, which is fine, but also praise of CAIR, which isn’t. Here is Sestak’s endorsement of CAIR’s hypersensitivity to any and all security measures in the wake of 9/11: “We need to claim our values, not betray them, by ensuring there is not a psychology that ‘pulls out’ of the rich fabric of our American community those who look like ‘one of them’? We are better than that. CAIR does such important and necessary work in a difficult environment to change such perceptions and wrongs — from racial profiling and civil rights to promoting justice and mutual understanding — at a time when it is challenging to be an American-Muslim and pass, for example, through an airport checkpoint.”

And here is Sestak’s confrontation with CAIR: “This is why it is my, and your, just duty to condemn not just terrorism — as you have done — but also condemn the specific acts, and specific individuals and groups by name, associated with those acts, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.” Hardly heroic.

The ad to which Sestak so hotly objects also noted that he signed a letter to President Obama in February of this year asking the president to intervene with Israel to loosen the blockade of Gaza. Acknowledging Israel’s security needs, the letter nevertheless referred to the blockade (which permitted humanitarian aid) as “collective punishment” of the Palestinian people — a favorite accusation of the anti-Israel left, as “collective punishment” is defined as a war crime by the Geneva Conventions. At the time, Sestak boasted that he knew the letter might “be used against me” in a political campaign but that he had to “stand up for” his “convictions.” He signed, he said, because “I think we should be looking at this because I think it’s part of what we stand for as a nation.”

If Sestak retains any self-respect at all, he should justify his actions or apologize for them — not whine that truthful ads be pulled from the airwaves.

To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

Chuck Norris

This presidential lie is tragically just one more in an unprecedented string of flat-out falsehoods, reaching back to Obama’s campaign promise to “clean up both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue” with “the most sweeping ethics reform in history.” He repeatedly declared then that “an Obama administration is going to have the toughest ethics laws of any administration in history.”

Really?

The question that keeps coming to mind is: What about the kids across the nation who have so uniquely looked up to this relatively youthful president? What are they learning from him? Does President Obama naively believe that they never will overhear their parents discussing his array of presidential lies (http://obamalies.net/list-of-lies)?

What happened to the days when presidents — and even sports stars — were role models?

Maybe it’s time even our presidents looked up to some new examples of decency and integrity.

I’ve got just such a person in mind, and he always will be one of my models and heroes, despite the fact that he died just last Wednesday — 12-year-old Cody Ty Humphries.

Cody was one of several Make-A-Wish Foundation kids who visited my Texas ranch in the same month that Obama was elected, November 2008. Though all the children were certainly special and a great blessing to my wife, Gena, and me, Cody stole my heart.

Cody was born March 13, 1998. He was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, which eventually crippled nearly every part of his little body and spawned a series of progressive deteriorations that ultimately would lead to his death.

All of the precious children visiting my house that day had a wish to meet me, for which I’m humbly honored. I found out later that Cody waited 2 1/2 years to meet me. The Make-A-Wish Foundation asked him for a second wish, just in case they couldn’t fulfill the first, but he replied, “I don’t have a second choice. You need to ask him. I have to meet him because I am running out of time.”

Cody was so proud that his birthday was only three days after mine. Like the other kids, Cody pet our ranch animals and even rode my horse, though it was painful for him to do so.

I was so impressed by Cody that I asked him whether he wanted to see my Western collection. He was particularly thrilled to see the Uzi that I used in my “Missing in Action” movies. I gave him a western belt that I received from President Ronald Reagan. And I also gave him one of my authentic Texas Ranger badges.

Cody’s stare was piercing, and his eyes sparkled with his love for life and others. What he was incapable of doing with his body he made up for in his heart and mind. He was an amazingly mature, compassionate and bright young man for his age, no doubt in part from enduring what he had for his decade on this planet. Yet he maintained his childlike innocence and was honest to the core. He saw the good in everyone, and nothing got him down, not even his MD. Even as his condition declined, he adapted and always maintained his optimism. He once said that “love and friendship are something that you can take with you for all time.”

As Cody left that November day, Gena and I gave him a big hug. But he wanted to give me one of his “pat-hugs.” Because he was incapable of putting his arms around people, his mother lifted his arms around me, and with his palms resting on my back, he moved his fingers slowly up and down as much as he could to extend his love to me. (I was told he rarely gave pat-hugs.)

A year ago last June, I was speaking with him on the phone, and we expressed our love for each other. Then I told him that when we both got home to heaven, he would be my first martial arts student there!

This past week, Cody’s mother, Deedee, described a dream he had just before he passed on.

The Sunday before last, Cody’s mom held him on the couch as he slept. He later told her that as he was sleeping, he also was standing with his grandpa Gary (who died five years ago), both dressed in white and watching his mom hold him on the couch. Cody told his grandpa that he wasn’t ready to go and that he needed a few more days. Later Cody told his mother, “I just want you to know that I love you and that the next time Grandpa visits me, I’m going to go with him.”

Late the next day, Cody said he wanted to hug his mom, so she placed his arms around her. He held her for about 10 minutes and then whispered, “Mom, I’m going to pass away. I love you, and I’ll see you again when it’s your time to come home.”

At 5:15 a.m. the next day, Cody departed his earthly body and went to his heavenly home.

Now you see why Cody stole my heart — and why I think we all should emulate those young brave souls like him. Of course, Cody is not alone. There are many small heroes all around us — maybe even in your home or community.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14).

He also said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

Maybe it’s time to quit asking the kids to learn from us and it’s time we learned from them.

Maybe we should be more concerned with growing down than with growing up.

Maybe even the president would be a better man and leader if he did.

Maybe we all would.

To find out more about Chuck Norris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CHUCK NORRIS

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Petraeus takes command in the midst of an increasingly difficult and bloody campaign. U.S. and NATO casualties topped 100 in June, the most in one month since the war began in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 on U.S. soil. The 46-nation “grand coalition” he now heads under a United Nations mandate is rife with dozens of conflicting “national caveats” that limit how troops from various countries can be deployed and employed. Placating our “allies” in this fight is a full-time task in itself.

The “surge” of 30,000 additional U.S. troops, which Obama famously announced in a surreal speech at the U.S. Military Academy on Dec. 1, 2009, is not yet complete. Logistics support for deploying additional forces to a country suffering from “infrastructure-deficit disorder” continues to be hampered by the need to move personnel, equipment and supplies into Afghanistan by air or overland through lovely places such as Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. All of these routes depend on the good will of their governments — and exorbitant fees for fuel, bases, security and “transit rights.”

Meanwhile, factions in both Iran and Pakistan are doing their best to confound any possibility of “success” — the word Obama uses instead of “victory” — for what we’re trying to achieve in Afghanistan. Recent intelligence reports do not bode well.

Taliban-inspired terror attacks have become nearly a daily occurrence in Pakistan’s major cities. Despite hundreds of civilian casualties and the inherent risks to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal, Islamabad’s infamous Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence continues to provide safe harbor, training and materiel support to Afghan Taliban-affiliated networks at war with the government in Kabul. Though Hellfire missiles delivered by U.S. remotely piloted aircraft have proved effective in eliminating high-value Taliban and al-Qaida targets in the mountainous Af-Pak border region, nearly all the targeting data for these attacks have to be acquired at great risk by small teams of human intelligence collectors.

Along Afghanistan’s western border, the ayatollahs running Iran are playing a dangerous game of their own. On June 24, Congress passed a new set of sanctions designed to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The next day, I was shown new information about how the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is delivering new long-range rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, machine-made explosively formed penetrators and batteries for surface-to-air missiles to Afghan insurgents.

The IRGC is known to have provided weapons, training and safe harbor to Shiite militias in Iraq since 2004. Opium from Afghanistan has been running through IRGC-protected “ratlines” for at least as many years. But until now, there had been scant evidence that Tehran’s agents were supplying advanced munitions and support to the Afghan insurgency. This support threatens to make the difficult fight in Afghanistan even more perilous in the months ahead.

As if these challenges for the new International Security Assistance Force commander were not enough, the Karzai government in Kabul is creating even more. Charges of rampant corruption, opium dealing and outright theft of U.S. and European aid were heightened this week when The Wall Street Journal revealed that billions of dollars in cash has been flown out of the country over the past three years — a practice that continues to this day.

Though significant, these problems are not insurmountable if Gen. Petraeus is given sufficient time and resources and essential political support from Washington. And that may prove to be his greatest challenge. The foolhardy July 2011 “deadline” Obama has imposed for commencing U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has emboldened our adversaries and disheartened our allies. Coupled with overly restrictive rules of engagement for combat operations, the pullout (troops in theater call it the “bug-out date”) threatens to jeopardize any prospect for a positive outcome in Afghanistan. In his confirmation hearings this week, the new ISAF commander distanced himself from the O-Team on both issues.

Sen. John McCain, inquiring about the withdrawal date, asked, “Was there a recommendation from you or anyone in the military that we set a date of July 2011?” Petraeus responded, “There was not.”

The general also told the solons he already had talked to President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan government officials about the rules of engagement and stated, “I want to assure the mothers and fathers of those fighting in Afghanistan that I see it as a moral imperative to bring all assets to bear to protect our men and women in uniform.”

Abandoning a withdrawal date and revising the rules of engagement to “bring all assets to bear” are absolutely essential. Convincing Obama of these necessities may be the hardest task of all.

Oliver North is the host of “War Stories” on Fox News Channel, the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance, and the author of “American Heroes.” To find out more about Oliver North and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

Michelle Malkin

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, headed by Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, took the lead in prepping the legal brief against Arizona. The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Perez is a far-left lawyer and activist who worked for the late mass illegal alien amnesty champion Ted Kennedy and served in the Clinton administration DOJ. While holding down a key government position there in which he was entrusted to abide by the rule of law, Perez volunteered for CASA de Maryland — a notorious illegal alien advocacy group funded through a combination of taxpayer-subsidized grants and radical liberal philanthropy, including billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute (not to mention more than $1 million showered on the group by Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez’s regime-owned oil company, CITGO).

Perez rose from CASA de Maryland volunteer to president of the group’s board of directors. Under the guise of enhancing the “multicultural” experience, he crusaded for an ever-expanding set of illegal alien benefits ranging from in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students to driver’s licenses. CASA de Maryland opposes enforcement of deportation orders, has protested post-9/11 coordination of local, state and national criminal databases, and produced a “know your rights” propaganda pamphlet for illegal aliens depicting federal immigration agents as armed bullies making babies cry.

In 2006, CASA de Maryland threatened to protest at the schools of children whose parents belonged to the pro-immigration enforcement group Minuteman Project — and then headed into the Montgomery County, Md., public schools to recruit junior amnesty protesters who were offered school credits for traveling with CASA de Maryland to march on Washington.

As a former Maryland resident, I got to see Perez’s militant friends and colleagues in action. I watched CASA de Maryland President Gustavo Torres (who met with President Obama last week) complain that motor vehicle administration officials have “absolutely no right to ask for people’s Social Security number or immigration status to get a driver’s license.” I stood among CASA de Maryland grievance-mongers who shouted, “No license, no justice! No justice, no peace!” while playing the race card against naturalized Americans and legal immigrants who opposed the illegal alien welfare state.

Perez himself derided secure-borders citizen activists as “xenophobes,” but denied painting the grassroots immigration enforcement movement as racist. Questioned by GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions during his Obama DOJ confirmation hearing last year about the illegal alien rights guide produced by CASA de Maryland, Perez grudgingly stated that “the Civil Rights Division must not act in contravention to valid enforcement actions of our federal immigration laws.” But “act(ing) in contravention” is exactly what the Civil Rights Division is doing in spearheading the challenge to Arizona’s valid enforcement actions of our federal immigration law.

Perez, Attorney General Eric Holder and the rest of the open-borders DOJ team have invoked a “preemption” doctrine based on the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause to attack Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration measure and oppose local and state enforcement of federal immigration laws. Never mind that the Arizona law was drafted scrupulously to comply with all federal statutes and the Constitution.

You gotta love Obama’s fair-weather friends of the Constitution. When a state acts to do the job the feds won’t do, Obama’s legal eagles run to the Founding Fathers for protection. When, on the other hand, left-wing cities across the country pass illegal alien sanctuary policies that flagrantly defy national immigration laws and hamper cross-jurisdiction enforcement, the newfound federal preemption advocates are nowhere in sight.

The Obama DOJ’s lawsuit against Arizona is sabotage of the people’s will and the government’s fundamental responsibility to provide for the common defense. No border enforcement, no security. No security, no peace. Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

The opportunism and hypocrisy of his attempt to manipulate America’s Latinos into forgetting his previous inaction is transparent and obvious. Polls show him losing Hispanics due to high and continuing unemployment and losing congressional seats in the bargain, so Obama has dug up the immigration proposals of former President George W. Bush, dusted them off and made them his own.

He knows it won’t pass. But he hopes that it will reignite Latino enthusiasm for his failing presidency and anger at Republicans for frustrating immigration reform.

In the process, Obama is neglecting the real answer to immigration. It is ridiculous to speak of sealing the border. A border of more than 1,500 miles can’t be sealed. It can’t even be controlled. As long as people want to cross, they will be able to get over. Some won’t make it. They will just keep trying until they do.

To sell his amnesty program for those already here, Obama raised the red herring of deportation, saying that we could never round up and send away 11 million people.

But he brushed over the real answer: to dry up the jobs. If employers would not hire illegal immigrants, they would stop coming here — and those already here would pack up and go home of their own accord. Obama’s promise, in his speech, to invigorate the enforcement of sanctions on employers who hire illegals rang hollow. If he hasn’t done it over the past year and a half, what confidence do we have that he will see the light now?

Employer sanctions, a guest-worker program at good wages with health care and a national biometric identification card must be the pillars of a real solution to illegal immigration. The promise of amnesty would be totally unnecessary if there were no jobs here to lure them and hold them. Amnesty presents a false choice. It assumes that we cannot dry up the jobs. But we can!

Were companies to face heavy corporate fines and jail time for those who hired the illegal workers, they would stop hiring. If a guest-worker program brought in a sufficient labor force to meet their needs — and returned them back home again — it would not be necessary to hire illegal immigrants.

But as long as employers can get away with hiring illegals and paying them starvation wages, they will do so. It is only when they face the prospect of prison that they will see the light and start paying good wages as part of a national guest-worker program.

The cynicism of Obama in kindling hopes for amnesty only to see them certainly dashed is breathtaking. And his pushing the false choice of amnesty — when eliminating the jobs that fuel illegal immigration is a readily available solution — is revolting.

He doesn’t want a law. He wants a fight, and he wants the votes that a fight may bring him. It is Chicago polarizing politics at its very worst.

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann are authors of the new book “2010: Take Back America — A Battle Plan.” To find out more about Dick Morris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN

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