When did we become a civilization that doesn’t care about the truth? More to the point, when did our drive to seek the truth dry up? When did we exchange our vigor for laziness? At some point along the way, we lost what we came here with. In the beginning, we fought a revolution. We fought a government that had become more than it ever should have, more powerful, more aggressive, more violent, more greedy, more oppressive, and more tyrannical. Fast forward 250 years, and we don’t seem as focused. Politicians lie, and behave hypocritically every day, yet our zeal to pursue the truth has become weak—at least when it comes to liberals.
A new report has come out that New York mayor Bill de Blasio paid an effective 8.3% tax rate in 2013. According to Breitbart: (Where is the massive ridicule that the Leftist heaped upon conservatives like Mitt Romney?)
“Mayor de Blasio and his wife made $167,047 in income, $52,000 in rental income on a second home in Park Slope, and reported charitable donations that totaled just 3% of their income, or $5,597.”
For a man who claims to care so much about the little guy, he doesn’t give much to charity. Of course, liberals rarely do. They’d rather take your money, and use it for their pet projects. But ole Bill’s lack of charitable spirit isn’t what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the liberal standby of tax increases. Liberals love to raise taxes. It’s always for the benefit of the people, of course. We even have a Vice President claiming that paying a higher tax is patriotic. Yet, when one scrutinizes the very people advocating the liberal doctrine of higher taxes, one most often finds that the advocates pay very little themselves.
In the case of liberal Superman Bill de Blasio, he only pays 8.3%. Now, I’m not saying what he paid was wrong. I’m sure his rate of taxation was perfectly legal, and it is his right to pursue the lowest legal taxation possible. However, the hypocrisy is staggering. The Left can do one thing, say another, and have people believing conservatives are the enemy. They are masters at the art of manipulation.
The Democratic Party is filled with narcissists. Let’s be honest, so is the Republican Party. They believe they are above it all. They believe that they can tell us what is best, and that we are just some stupid peons. Their narcissism is fueling their policy. We are being driven farther and farther into the ground, and they are reaping the reward.
After a weeklong confrontation between protesters and armed agents of the Bureau of Land Management, events at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., came to an abrupt end Saturday when the BLM suddenly threw in the towel and left.
Speaking to a local TV news program Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada declared: “This isn’t over.” And he is certainly correct. The showdown between BLM and Cliven Bundy – the last rancher in Clark County, Nev. – was but the latest battle in a long-running conflict.
Supposedly at issue was the desert tortoise, a reptile on the endangered species list that purportedly could not coexist on the land with Bundy’s cattle. But why, many asked, would the turtle suddenly be threatened by animals it had cohabited with for the 100-plus years the Bundy ranch has been in operation?
The solar projects will obliterate most of the turtle’s natural habitat.
Bloggers quickly made a connection between the effort to remove Bundy’s cattle and a solar energy project in Southern Nevada financed by the communist Chinese energy firm ENN. It was to be the largest solar farm in the U.S.
Reid had lobbied heavily for the company’s business, even traveling to China. Reid’s son, Rory Reid, formerly a Clark County commissioner, became a lobbyist for ENN, and the Senate majority leader’s former senior adviser, Neil Kornze, now leads the BLM.
But the solar energy complex financed by the communist Chinese was not at the heart of the Bundy Ranch fiasco after all. The project died last year.
He was at the work site on March 21 to help break ground on the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project. A close inspection of the project reveals why there is so much interest in the area and why the BLM, presumably at Reid’s urging through his former aide, Kornze, is so intent on getting Bundy off the land.
The leaseholder for the project is K Road Power, LLC, a New York City-based energy company. An examination of its website finds the business development manager to be none other than Jonathan Magaziner.
Magaziner was formerly an associate at the Clinton Climate Initiative of the William J. Clinton Foundation. He is also the son of Ira Magaziner, former senior policy adviser for President Bill Clinton. The elder Magaziner now works for the Clinton Foundation on health and environment issues. There are likely other connections to Democratic insiders.
First Solar investors comprise a who’s who of Democratic insiders, including major Obama campaign bundlers, billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones, Al Gore, Ted Turner and Goldman Sachs. First Solar’s CEO is Michael Ahearn, former fundraiser for both Obama and Harry Reid.
First Solar has at least three other solar projects in California. So it becomes apparent why the BLM, Reid and many other interested parties have such an intense interest in the desert tortoise.
This is what has been discovered by examining only a few of the 50-plus projects. Doubtless there are similar stories behind some, if not all, of the others.
If Democrat-linked entrepreneurs plan to turn the West into a massive arena for green projects, the implications are disturbing. The projects will eventually go as all others have gone before: failing as the unsustainable costs, maintenance problems and unseen environmental catastrophes they create become intolerable. The true goal of “green” energy, say cynics, is to make these people wealthier, not to save the environment.
I was teaching a Bible Study in the home of our best friends, Gary and Carol Leach sometime during the late 1970’s. Someone asked me questions about Passover. I was a young man, new to ministry, and knew better than to try and fake some answer. These people were, and remain, very smart. I admitted my ignorance, and promised I would start researching it immediately.
In those days I was a sales representative for the SAVIN Corporation. We sold photocopy machines. My territory was the city of Encino. At that time Encino was growing very rapidly. As people from Beverly Hills and Brentwood needed addition office space, they found them over the hill in Encino. A vast percentage of the business district in Encino was built on both sides of Ventura Boulevard.
Additionally, Encino was at that time believed to be 90% Jewish, or more. The largest Jewish Synagogue was, and remains, in Encino, right on Ventura Boulevard, Valley Beth Shalom. It also was a private preschool, grade school and high school.
I went into the school office and introduced myself explaining that I was a Christian conducting a Bible Study and wanted to learn about Passover. The lady I spoke with returned with a very distinguished man who introduced himself as the head of the school. Once inside his office I noticed that he had earned several theological doctorates. After explaining my quest, he excused himself and I heard him getting several of the staff to collect the materials.
While I was waiting, I noticed four books displayed prominently on his desk. They were the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You can imagine the questions that filled my head.
The doctor returned with an arm full of materials and the education began. He then instructed me to go to a particular store over on Victory Blvd. to acquire an authentic Seder Plate, and any think else I desired.
As I was about to leave, I asked about the four Gospels on his desk. He explained that they taught from them in the school, starting in the grade school, up through the high school. He explained that they believed Jesus to be a great prophet. I thanked him again for his time, his teaching me and the materials.
That started a 40 plus year study of Passover. I am still learning. I have taught on, and conducted Passover almost every year since. The most common reacting I hear from participants that Resurrection Sunday is now the most important time and the year to them, and that they have never taken the Lord’s Supper (Communion) the same again.
I have found many things to be unimpeachable truths in my life of study. It has made me realize how poor we are as modern day Christians because we have never stopped to understand the traditions of the Jewish people and how they give us greater understanding of our New Birth Covenant with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Risen Savior, through the power of His Holy Spirit.
Please take the time to set your heart to learn as you participate in this wonderful service. If your heart is open, the Holy Spirit will fill it will understanding that will change your life, draw you closer to Jesus, and fill you with knowledge that will make Resurrection Sunday the most important day of the year.
“The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.”(Num 6:24-26; NIV)
The following is the MINIMUM requirements to have a proper SEDER (Passover)
(Table: The following description is for ALL participating tables.)
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Seder Leaders Elements for the Passover Seder Service
“SEDER” is a Hebrew word that means “arrangement”, or “order”. It is also used to mean the entire Passover eve service. PESACH (Passover) in Hebrew means “to spread wings over” (See Ps 91). Jesus, in His lament over Jerusalem, used the term of gathering Israel under His wings as a hen gathers her chicks. God stands guard over His people today, just as He did on the first Passover Night. “HAGGADAH” is the book you are holding. In the Hebrew it means “the book, or the story”. At the Passover service, every participant has their own copy so they can follow along with the leader, and participate at the right moments. “PASCAL LAMB” is Hebrew referring to the sacrificed Passover Lamb
The Seder Table includes a number of objects, prescribed by the tradition, which symbolizes the spirit of the holiday. The table is usually set in a festive style because of what Passover represents (redemption), and because it is celebrated during the birth of spring when everything is fresh and new (just like redemption). Flowers and candles are main elements of this table.
A large platter is placed in front of the one conducting the Seder. This can be an ordinary platter, or a special Seder Plate. Upon the plate are placed the following objects;
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Everyone at the table has a plate, and a glass for wine. These will be filled four times during the course of the service.
Traditionally the Seder is celebrated at home with family, and sometimes, close friends. Children are an important part of the Seder service and participate throughout. This is a service for all to remember the great redemption of God. For the Jewish people, it is a look forward to the coming of the Messiah. As Christians who already know the Messiah, this service takes on even greater significance as we experience this service as it points directly to our Lord Jesus. Jesus is the Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. John 1:29 This, therefore, is a celebration of our redemption from the bondages of sin.
Everyone participates in the Seder service;
| ALL | Everyone reads aloud in unison. |
| Fathers | Just the men read aloud in unison. |
| Mothers | Just the women read aloud in unison. |
| Children | Just the children read aloud in unison. |
| Leader | Just the leader of the Seder. |
| Added Text | The text that is in a different type style, represents what has been added to the Jewish Seder service to show us the New Testament fulfillment found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. |
The following service is the same order the Jewish people use in their Passover Celebration. However, it has been altered to show how Jesus is the total fulfillment of the Passover. Keep that in mind as we proceed. Remember the Apostle Paul’s words; “Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” 2 Corinthians 3:12-18
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The woman of the house lights the candle(s) as the leader explains;
LEADER: The Passover begins as the woman of the household kindles the festival lights and recites a traditional Jewish blessing;
MOTHERS: Blessed are You our God, King of the universe, who sanctifies us by your commandments, and has ordained that we kindle the Passover lights.
LEADER: It is most fitting that a woman kindles the lights, for we are reminded of God’s promise that the Messiah, the light of the world, would come, not from the seed of man, but from the seed of a woman, and by the will of God. As the prophet Isaiah declared,
MOTHERS: ‘A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel”. Isaiah 7:14.
LEADER: A light to lighten Gentiles,
MOTHERS: …and the glory of God’s people, Israel.
ALL: Amen.
LEADER: “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”John 8:12 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”John 9:5 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
LEADER: The Passover has begun, and during the course of our Seder we wilt drink from our cups, and replenish them, a total of four times. (All raise the first cup) The first cup is called the “KIDDIJSH” cup, or “THE CUP OF SANCTIFICATION”.
ALL: With this cup, we commit our observance to the Lord, and pray for His blessing upon the rest of the service to follow.
FATHERS: Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who created the fruit of the vine.
ALL: Amen.
LEADER: It is concerning this first cup that Jesus our Messiah declared;
ALL: “After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”Luke 22:17-18 All drink the first cup.
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LEADER: Ritual washings have been a part of Jewish life since God commanded Aaron to bathe his hands and feet before approaching the alter of the Lord. And so we customarily wash our hands at this time as a token of our desire to live lives of acceptable service to our Almighty God.
FATHERS: Yet Jesus carried this notion of servant-hood one step further on that Passover night in the upper room. At this point of the last Passover Jesus spent with His disciples; “…so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!” Jesus answered, “A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not everyone was clean. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them”.John 13:4-17 LEADER: How graciously has He taught us the fullest meaning of servant-hood; Humility ALL: The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.Matthew 23:11-12 Leader washes hands
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LEADER: Behold the Seder Plate and these traditional symbols.
ALL: What do they mean, and of what do they speak?
LEADER: The story of Passover is a story of our deliverance from bondage, and all the elements of the Passover meal are part of the portrait of redemption.
ALL: What is the meaning of the “KARPAS”, or greens, and the salt water?
FATHERS: The greens represent life, and the salt water represents the tears of life. Before we eat the greens, we dip them into the salt water, for truly
ALL: A life redeemed is a life immersed in tears.
LEADER: Let us eat the KARPAS. (Everyone dips a piece of the greens and dips it in the salt water and eats it) <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ALL: What is the meaning of the HAZERET, the root of the bitter herb? FATHERS: This horseradish root reminds us that the root of life is often bitter, as it certainly was for the sons of Israel in the land of Egypt
ALL: And what is the meaning of the “MAROR”, the biller herb itself?
FATHERS: As we partake of the freshly ground horseradish, we are reminded afresh of how bitter life is without redemption.
LEADER: Let us eat of the bitter herb. (All eat a small amount of horseradish between two small pieces of Matzah) <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ALL: What is the meaning of the “HAROSET:, and why is it sweet to the taste?
FATHERS: The HAROSET is a reminder of the mortar with which the Israelites made bricks for Pharaoh.
ALL: But why should such a sweet mixture represents such bitter toil?
FATHERS: Even the bitterest labor is sweetened by the promise of redemption.
LEADER: Let us eat the HAROSET. (All eat a small amount of HAROSET between two small pieces of Matzah) <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> ALL: What is the meaning of the egg, the “HAGIGAH”? Why is it brown?
FATHERS: HAGIGAH was the name given to the daily Temple sacrifices in ancient Jerusalem It is roasted to turn it brown, just as the daily offerings were burned with fire upon the altar of the Lord. The HAGIGAH is a token of grief to the Jewish people; Grief over the destruction of the Temple; and so before we eat it, we dip it into salt water – the tears of life.
LEADER: Let us eat the HAGIGAH. (All dip a small piece of the egg into salt water and eat it)
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ALL: What is the meaning of the “ZEROAH”, the shank bone of the lamb?
LEADER: Passover is also known as the Feast of the Passover Lamb, and yet in Jewish homes throughout the world, lamb is not served at any Passover table. Instead, we have this ZEROAH to remind us of those first Passover lambs which were sacrificed on the night of redemption. As it is written;
ALL: “In one house shall it be eaten. ..neither shall you break a bone of it.’ (Ex. 12:46)
FATHERS: lt is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, Who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.
ALL: But why do we no longer partake of the Paschal Lamb as in the days of old when the ancient Temple stood?
LEADER: Simply because the Temple stands no more. The Passover sacrifice, as well as all sacrifices, could only be offered upon the altar in Jerusalem. Since the Temple’s destruction in 70 A.D., no sacrifices have been made, and no Iamb is found on the Passover table. .
ALL: But without sacrifices, how can we atone for our sins? The law declares, “it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.” (Lev. 17:11) Does this mean that the atonement, and redemption, are no longer possible?
LEADER: May it never be! Those of us who have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, know that God has provided a sacrifice for our sins. That sacrifice for our sins is the PASSOVER LAMB WHO TAKES AWAY THE SINE OF THE WORLD. (John 1:29 & 36)
ALL: The Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.
LEADER: Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Who offers redemption from death, and atonement for sins.
ALL: Amen.
LEADER: Rabbi Gamaliel said, “He who has not explained the three symbols of the Seder, has not fulfilled his duty; the Passover lamb, the bitter herb, and the unleavened bread.”
ALL: We have heard of the Paschal Lamb, and we have eaten of the bitter herb, but what of the unleavened bread?
LEADER: (The Leader holds up a piece of Matzah) Behold the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat
ALL: What is the meaning of the unleavened bread?
FATHERS: Throughout the Bible, leaven is frequently employed as a symbol of sin. In Biblical times a small piece of bread from the previous loaf was used to ferment an entire portion of fresh dough. Thus the leavening of each batch of dough was related to the original loaf. It was the leaven that caused the dough to rise.
LEADER: In the same way, we are related through the generations to the sin of our first forefather, Adam. As the leaven in bread causes the dough to rise, so the sin in our life causes us to rise in our own estimation; to be puffed up.
FATHERS: On this night and for the seven days to follow, we eat nothing that contains any leaven. In this we demonstrate our desire to be cleansed of our sin, and to live lives devoted entirely to the Lord. It is written; “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.(Romans 12:3) LEADER: “I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:44) “Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast-as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.”(1 Corinthians 5:6-8)Let us take this moment to search our hearts for any leaven that might be hindering our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now go before the Lord in prayer to repent of the leaven and then rejoice in His faithfulness to forgive us our sins and cleanse us for all unrighteousness.
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LEADER: (Leader holds up the “MATZAH TOSH”) One of the most intriguing items on the Passover table is this pouch called a Matzah Tosh, which is a unity. Yet concealed within this unity are three pieces of unleavened bread – Matzah – and each piece is separated from the others by a piece of cloth.
ALL: Though the matzos are concealed, yet we know that they are there.
(Leader removes the middle Matzah)
FATHERS: But now the middle is removed from its place among the others and made visible to our eyes.
LEADER: (Leader performs as the following is read) It is broken, and half is set aside while the other half is wrapped in a white napkin. ln a moment it will be hidden from view. This broken piece of Matzah has a special name: the “AFIKOMEN”. This is not a Hebrew word, but a Greek word, and it means, “That which comes after. “The origin and significance of the AFIKOMEN, and the MATZAH TOSH, are shadowed in mystery. We will explore this mystery as our celebration unfolds. But for now, guesses must give way to a game. We are going to hide the AFIKOMEN as you children close your eyes. If you find it, we have to buy it back from you, or the Passover cannot be concluded,
And remember …
ALL: Great is the reward of he who finds the hidden AFIKOMEN.
LEADER: (Leader hides the AFIKOMEN while the children hide their eyes)
LEADER: The children are essential to the Passover celebration, for it is through this feast that they may learn of God’s redemptive nature. So at this time, the children participate together to learn the meaning of Passover by asking the traditional four questions.
CHILDREN: Why is this night different from all other nights?
FATHERS: Once we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord in His goodness, and mercy, redeemed us from that land with a mighty hand, and an outstretched arm.
ALL: Had He not redeemed us, surely we, and our children, would still be enslaved.
CHILDREN: On all other nights we eat either leavened or unleavened bread. On this night why do we eat only unleavened bread?
FATHERS: We eat the unleavened bread to remember that the sons of Israel, in their haste to leave Egypt, had to take their bread with them while it was still flat.
CHILDREN: On all other nights, we eat herbs of every kind. On this night why do we eat only bitter herbs?
FATHERS: We eat the bitter herbs to remember how bitter it is to be enslaved.
CHILDREN: On all other nights we do not dip the sop even once. On this night, why do we dip twice?
FATHERS: By dipping, we remember that a life of bondage is bitter indeed, but that even the harshest bondage is sweetened by the promise of redemption.
CHILDREN: On all other nights we eat our meals in any manner. Why is this night so special?
FATHERS: This night is truly special. Once we were slaves, but now we are free. So we recline in order to appropriate the rest He has wrought for us.
LEADER: “Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, testifying to what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.'” See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief. Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.'” And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “And on the seventh day God rested from all his work.” And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.” It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their disobedience. Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 3-4) LEADER: By strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage. In gratitude, let us worship our God and recount the story of Passover.
The Bible teaches that during a great famine in the land of Canaan, the sons of Israel journeyed to Egypt to purchase food. There they were reunited with their brother Joseph. Because of his influence, they were permitted to dwell in the fertile plains of Goshen.
At first the house of Israel numbered less than eighty souls. But in time their numbers swelled, their flocks increased, and they became a mighty people.
Then there arose a new Pharaoh, one who did not know Joseph. He beheld the might of Israel, and he feared that in time of war, the sons of Jacob might join themselves with Egypt’s foes. Pharaoh decided to subdue the Israelites, and afflicted them with cruel labor. Taskmasters were placed over the Israelites to compel them to make bricks and to build Pharaoh’s great storage cities of Rameses and Pithom.
But despite their hardships, they continued to thrive just as God had promised. This caused Pharaoh even greater alarm, and he ordered the slaughter of Israel’s infant sons. By his command, every male child born to the Hebrews was to be cast into the Nile and drowned.
How sore were the afflictions of the Jewish people? In anguish they cried unto God of their fathers. God heard their cry, and remembered His covenant. God raised up a deliverer, a redeemer, the man Moses. He sent Moses to Pharaoh’s court to declare the commandment of the Lord, “Let My people go.”
But Pharaoh would not hearken to the Lord of Host. As a result, Moses pronounced God’s judgment on Pharaoh’s house, and on Pharaoh’s land. Plagues were poured out upon the Egyptians, upon their crops, and upon their flocks.
But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. He would not yield to the will of God. He would not let the house of Jacob depart.
Then the tenth plague fell upon the land; the death of Egypt’s first born. “And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sits upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment: l am the LORD.” (Ex:11:5:, Ex:12:12:)
But to protect the children of Israel, God commanded the head of each Jewish household to select a spotless lamb from the flock, have it live with them for three days, and then sacrifice it outside the front door, catching it’s blood in the basin (the depression in front of the door to catch rain water and keep the house from flooding). Then they were instructed to take a Hyssop branch, dip it in the blood of the lamb, and strike both sides of the door frame and the top of the door frame (forming a blood threshold through which the entire family had to pass). They were instructed not to leave their homes until morning.
ALL: “And the blood shall be to you a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt”.
LEADER: “And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord throughout your generations.”
ALL: ‘You shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever.”
LEADER: By the blood of the lamb was Israel spared.
ALL: By the blood of the lamb was Jacob redeemed.
LEADER: By the blood of the lamb was death made to pass over.
Passover, or in Hebrew, PESACH, that holiday which commemorates the night when death passed over the houses of Israel because of the blood, the blood of the lamb; the Passover Lamb. What a mighty act of redemption! What a beautiful picture of a greater redemption destined to come. For just as none of the bones of the first Passover Lamb were broken, so none of the Messiah’s bones were broken.
ALL: Just as the blood of those first Passover lambs was applied in faith to the door posts Israel’s homes, so the blood of the Messiah must be applied in faith to the door posts of our hearts. Tonight we worship God, not only because the angel of death passed over the Jewish people’s homes,
LEADER: but because all of us, whether Jewish or Gentile, may be redeemed from an even greater bondage through faith in the Messiah of Israel,
ALL: The Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.
LEADER: Through Him we may pass over from death to life.
ALL: AMEN!
LEADER: Pharaoh defied the Lord and placed his will above the will of God. As a result, he brought destruction upon his house and land. How often do we, like Pharaoh, choose our desires over God’s direction? How often do we, like Pharaoh, bring harm upon ourselves and upon those closest to us? Because we share with Pharaoh the sin of disobedience, and because we regard all people as God’s creations, we do not rejoice over the destruction visited upon the Egyptians.
ALL: For our sake they met with suffering and death. We mourn their loss and express our sorrow over their destruction.
LEADER: Though we celebrate our liberation, our happiness is not complete as long as others remain bound to slavery and death.
(Leader raises cup and continues)
A full cup is a symbol of complete joy. Let us, therefore, diminish our cups as we recall the plagues which befell the Egyptians.
(Everyone empties a drop from his cup for each one of the ten plagues)
1. Blood
2. Frogs
3. Lice
4. Flies
5. Cattle disease
6. Boils
7. Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness .
10. Slaying of the first-born.
LEADER: It is time to drink the second cup. (All raise their cups.)
ALL: Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Who created the fruit of the vine. (All drink the second cup.)
LEADER: (Leader’s prayer for GOD’s blessing over dinner).
THE PASSOVER MEAL
The Leader now sends the children in search of the Afikomen. The child, who recovers it, returns it to the Leader, who gives the child a reward. LEADER: The search of the Afikomen is certainly one of the most delightful moments of the Passover Seder. Yet, some mystery surrounds the significance of the Afikomen and the Matzah Tosh from which it has been drawn. We may justly ask,
ALL: What is the meaning of the three Matzos and why is the middle Matzah broken, buried and then brought back.
LEADER: To many, the question is a riddle yet to be resolved. For those who have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, it need not be a riddle at all. Where can we find a clearer picture of our Messiah than in this tradition concerning the Afikomen which has been broken, buried and then brought back? Even the Matzah, a symbol of a sinless nature speaks of Jesus. The Rabbis have set down some very special regulations concerning the appearance of Matzah. If it is to be found suitable for use in the Passover Seder, it first has to be stripped. ALL: As was Jesus after He was flogged. Isaiah said, “and with His stripes are we healed.”(Isaiah 53:5)
LEADER: In the second place, it must be pierced. ALL: As was Jesus. The prophet Zechariah said, “They will look on me, the one they have pierced,..” ( Zechariah 12:10) LEADER: Earlier, we called this the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. And this is true. But it is also a symbol of the bread of life, which comes down from heaven, and gives life unto the world. ALL: “Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”(John 6:35) LEADER: Let all who are hungry come and eat.(The Matzah is lowered, and the cups are refilled) ALL: Then what is the meaning of the Matzah Tosh, and why is the middle Matzah broken, buried, and then brought back?
FATHERS: Some teach that the three matzos represent the unity of the three patriarchs of Israel;
ALL: Then why is the middle Matzah broken, buried and then brought back?
FATHERS: Others say that the Matzos represent the unity of worship in ancient Israel;
ALL: Then why is the middle Matzah broken, buried and then brought back? FATHERS: Still others teach that the matzos represent three crowns;
ALL: Then why is the middle Matzah broken, buried and then brought back?
LEADER: There is yet one final explanation. An explanation suggested by the design of the Matzah Tosh itself. For the three parts of the Matzah Tosh form a unity. A TRI-UNITY. A mysterious three in one. Could it be that the TRI-UNITY of the Matzah Tosh bear witness to the TRI-UNITY of One God revealed in three persons;
ALL: Then why is the middle Matzah broken: buried and then brought back?
LEADER: Because Jesus, the second Person of the Godhead, was broken, buried and then brought back. It was at this time during the last Passover Seder Jesus had with His disciples, before His sacrifice, that Jesus said, “and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:24) During Jesus time, the sacrificed lamb was supposed to be the last food eaten, of any kind of food, until morning. Jesus broke with tradition that night by this act of breaking and distributing the unleavened bread. What Evangelical Churches refer to the “Lords Supper”, “The Lord’s Table”, or “Communion” is actually what Jesus did that last Passover Seder night by breaking the unleavened bread and distributed it to His disciples. In fact, Jesus did NOT violate the Seder tradition. Lamb was the last things they ate that night. In John 6:48-58, Jesus is recorded as explaining this; “I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”
LEADER: It is now time for the third cup, the Cup of Redemption. The fruit of the vine at Passover is always red to remind us, the rabbis explain, of the precious blood of that ancient Passover lamb; the lamb that was sacrificed to redeem us from bondage to Pharaoh.
ALL: In the same way, the blood of another Passover Lamb, the Messiah Jesus, was sacrificed to redeem us from bondage to sin and death. It was concerning this cup, “The Cup of Redemption”, the cup taken after dinner, which the Messiah Jesus said, “In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.(Luke 22:20) LEADER: At Passover, each person at the Seder receives a piece of the Afikomen, about the size of an olive. Then the morsel of Afikomen and the third cup of wine are taken together. For those of us who know the Messiah, this serves as a remembrance of the body and blood of our Passover Lamb, Jesus the Christ, The Son of the Living God.
LEADER: A warning from the Apostle Paul before we take the Afikomen and Cup of Redemption. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church, and also to all Christian believers, the following; “What you must solemnly realize is that every time you eat this bread and every time you drink this cup, you reenact in your words and actions the death of the Master. You will be drawn back to this meal again and again until the Master returns. You must never let familiarity breed contempt. Anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Master irreverently is like part of the crowd that jeered and spit on him at his death. Is that the kind of “remembrance” you want to be part of? Examine your motives, test your heart, and come to this meal in holy awe. If you give no thought (or worse, don’t care) about the broken body of the Master when you eat and drink, you’re running the risk of serious consequences. That’s why so many of you even now are listless and sick, and others have gone to an early grave. If we get this straight now, we won’t have to be straightened out later on. Better to be confronted by the Master now than to face a fiery confrontation later”.(1 Corinthians 11:26-32 from THE MESSAGE) Please search your heart right now. Make sure your attitude and your focus are correct. If, if needed, repent and accept Jesus forgiveness.
TAKING THE AFIKOMEN AND THE THIRD CUP, THE CUP OF REDEMPTION: “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.(1 Corinthians 11:23-26) A Time for reflection, prayer, praise and thanksgiving.
(The fourth cup is filled)
LEADER: Now comes the Hallel, the recitation from Psalms 113 through 118. Let us recite psalms of worship at this time, just as Jesus recited them every year as part of His Passover Seder observance. Praise ye the Lord.
ALL: Praise, O ye servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord.
LEADER: Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.
ALL: From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, the Lord’s name is to be praised.
LEADER: The Lord is high above all nations, and His glory above the heavens.
ALL: Who is like unto the Lord, our God, who dwells on high?
LEADER: Give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good.
ALL: For His mercy endures forever.
(All drink the fourth cup)
LEADER: The sharing of the Afikomen and the Cup of Redemption are precious moments in the Passover Seder.
Yet most of God’s beloved Chosen People, Israel, do not yet see how the Messiah, and His promise to redeem them, are portrayed in the breaking of this bread, and the drinking of this cup. As a result, they look ahead to the promise represented by a special cup set aside for the prophet Elijah. It is recorded by the Hebrew prophet Malachi that the coming of the Messiah will be preceded by the return of the prophet Elijah. “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”(Malachi 4:5-6)
Each year at Passover, a child goes to the door and opens it wide, hoping the prophet will accept the invitation, enter the home, and announce the coming of the Messiah. A cherished Jewish prayer is for the prophet Elijah to come soon, in our time, with the Messiah, the Son of God.
Yet we who have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ already know that Elijah did return. In the book of Matthew Jesus is recorded as saying, “As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: “What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written:
“‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’
I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He, who has ears, let him hear.(Matthew 11:7-15)
The prophet, the forerunner, has come. So did the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, during Passover more than 2,000 years ago.
THE HOPE:
LEADER: As we partake of this Passover Seder, may our hearts be joined in gratitude to God for the coming Messiah,
for His death, resurrection and the promise of His soon return.
ALL: Praise the Lord, all you nations; praise Him all you people. For His merciful kindness is great toward us; the truth of the Lord endures forever. Hallelujah!
LEADER: It is traditional to conclude the Seder by singing, “Next Year in Jerusalem”. For generations this song has captured, in melody, the fervent hope of the Jewish people. A hope to be restored to the ancient land of Israel in the presence of the Messiah Himself.
As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ we too have a similar hope; The Hope of Jesus’ soon return. Let us read from the Revelation of John;
ALL: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” ….
“Behold, I am coming soon! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book.”
“Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
“Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.(Revelation 21:1-5, Revelation 22:7, Revelation 22:12-16, Revelation 22:20)
Race baiting MSNBC host and former FBI informant Al Sharpton has never hidden there reverence with which he holds Barack Obama. In fact, Sharpton so likes to emulate Obama that he famously parrots Obama’s words his show Politics Nation. Still, no one would expect this strange and blasphemous analogy from a man who calls himself Reverend.
“I think that the message is, no matter what the world may do to unfairly, no matter how your crucified, nailed to the cross at home, or in your personal relationships, or on the job that you can rise if you don’t lose yourself during the hard times and the challenges.
The story of Jesus on the cross. no matter what they humiliated him with. no matter how they mocked him he took it, because he knew he could rise. And the story of Easter and my message for this Easter session is no matter what unearned suffering you go through, that if you know you can rise above it, don’t become like the diseases that you fight.
That’s not the worst of it. He is attempting, during an appearance on The Tom Joyner Show, to give some words of inspiration as Christians around the world prepare for Easter which celebrates the day Jesus Christ rose from the dead after being crucified on a cross.
But, after this initial message, Sharpton’s idolatry of Obama took a blasphemous turn.
As I looked at President Obama at our convention last Friday where all he took he’s been able to rise politically again.. I’m not comparing him to Jesus, but I am saying that to every crucifixion there is a resurrection for those who believe…”
Once upon a time there were more than fifty cattle ranches operating in the area of Southern Nevada where Cliven Bundy, with the help of numerous armed patriots from all over, is making his stand against the abusive, bankrupting tactics of the bullying federal government.
Now, there is only one rancher and his family left.
After several generations of his ancestors’ having use of the land in question, Bundy is literally the “last man standing” in what is, evidently, a long-range vendetta against ranchers by land-grabbing federal bureaucrats who, also literally, have gone power mad–that is, mad for solar power scams (among other things) and all the big-dollar green graft that comes with it.
By now we all know that the official claim, that the confrontation has to do with protecting desert tortoises, is mostly just steaming bull patties.
ClashDaily.com has obtained evidence which indicates that the desert showdown at the Bundy ranch is actually the result of an expansive and ruthless federal strategy, aimed at bankrupting and driving away every last cattle rancher through increasingly exorbitant fees and endless rules, conditions, and red-tape. This is in order to clear the way for more politically-correct and politically connected (Sen. Harry Reid, his son, and a Chinese energy conglomerate) agendas such as solar energy boondoggles as far as the eye can see.
In a 77-page Federal Bureau of Land Management document titled “Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone,” key aspects of the government’s overall plan for facilitating massive solar energy projects in the region are discussed, specifically including the land where Bundy’s ranch is located. The report is linked here:
Interesting note: In the process of writing this article, the link to the above document suddenly went “dead,” with only the following message showing–
“The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) website (www.blm.gov) and all associated websites/pages are currently unavailable due to planned maintenance on Wednesday, April 16, 2014 starting at 8:00 PM Mountain Time until approximately Midnight Mountain Time. The total outage time should be no more than 4 hours.”
Hmmmm. This comes on the heels of numerous reports from around the web that other key documents have been deleted from the BLM website in recent days, while the Bundy ranch situation has unfolded. (real transparent, Harry & Barry!)
One of the other key documents is titled “Cattle Trespass Impacts & History of Cattle Trespass,” and it specifically discusses problems associated with Cliven Bundy’s livestock (yes, Bundy is mentioned by name multiple times) getting in the way of/interfering with contingencies to mitigate environmental impacts of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities on public lands.” Presuming BLM restores their website by the time you read this, it is linked here:
In case the BLM website continues to deprive you of access to that crucial report at the link, here are screenshots of key portions of it:
Suppose that Cliven Bundy had caved in and paid the disputed federal grazing fees all along. Do you suppose he’d have been able to stay in business, where others went bust? If so, would it even make any difference as to what the “authorities” have planned for the site? Seems they’d want him gone regardless, and would use any tactic, reasonable or not, to try get rid of him.
Cliven Bundy’s ranch and cattle exist directly in the path of very powerful interests’ conflicting intentions for the land. The deals Harry Reid and his son are involved in with a Chinese government-owned energy firm are well-documented by authoritative sources such as Reuters, and by now everyone knows that Reid’s former top advisor now runs the BLM.
If not for Bundy’s principled stubbornness in resisting heeding the escalating fees and conditions demanded from him over the years by the feds, combined with our U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment and social media, we’d probably never have heard of the Bundy family. The government would have just bankrupted him and pushed him off the land as they did to all the other inconvenient ranchers over the years.
The feds have a court order they say they are trying to enforce. Since when does this corrupt administration act with anything remotely resembling good faith to our nation’s passed laws, to its own proper role and authority, or even to court rulings? Please.
In this real-life, modern Western saga of “cowboys and communists,” the dust has only been kicked up a little, and so far the cowboys and their patriot allies have held firm the line and won the day. If push comes to shove, what kind of people do you trust to carry this nation forward? Heroes who stand up to the organized federal shakedown racket, like Clive Bundy and company, or Harry Reid and his agents of a corrupt regime
University of Minnesota at Morris biology professor Dr. Paul Zachary Myers doesn’t like young Republicans. In fact, he called them “assholes.”
“That’s what they are,” Myers told me in a telephone interview on Friday. “I think they’ve amply demonstrated it is accurate.”
And he also doesn’t like The Morris North Star, a conservative student publication that routinely draws the ire of liberals at the University Minnesota at Morris.
After the professor’s diatribe was published, approximately 350 copies of The North Star were stolen from campus distribution bins, the Alliance Defending Freedom alleges. They estimate the theft cost the newspaper $1,750.
“I said it was a terrible, terrible paper and they university should not be endorsing it,” Myers said.
But attorneys for the student newspaper are alleging Myers broke the law when they say he wrote a blog post on his personal blog urging people to throw away the publication.
The Alliance Defending Freedom has accused Myers, an associate professor in the school’s biology program, of encouraging people to steal and throw away a copy of the November 22nd edition of the newspaper.
That particular edition included a satire on affirmative action. The professor said the paper was mocking minority students.
“I would advocate the disposal of their flyers if the Ku Klux Klan started papering our campus, and likewise, the North Star has worn out its welcome and must go,” the professor wrote. “Treat their scattered papers as hate-filled trash and dispose of it appropriately.”
Myers went on to call the student editors of the publication “wingnutty” and even took a swipe at Fox News.
“We do have conservative students here – I expect that the majority are more conservative than I am – but they also trend towards being more the reasonable, rational, educate sort of conservative,” he wrote. “Not the kind you’ll see on Fox News, and most unfortunately, not the kind who are likely to get elected to the Republican party.”
Oh yeah – he also called the conservative youngsters “assholes-in-training.”
After the professor’s diatribe was published, approximately 350 copies of The North Star were stolen from campus distribution bins, the Alliance Defending Freedom alleges. They estimate the theft cost the newspaper $1,750.
Myers told me he had nothing to do with the disappearance of the newspapers.
“I suggested the university needed to get rid of them,” he said. “I have done absolutely nothing to squelch their ability to publish their terrible little rag.”
And last January, The North Star published an issue that included a pro-life story. As many as 100 copies of the newspaper were later found defaced.
The newspaper staff contacted university officials about both incidents –but so far – the university has remained silent.
ADF attorney Kevin Theriot is calling on the university to not only condemn the theft and destruction, but also investigate the incidents.
“The university must take steps to protect The North Star and all other student publications from such viewpoint-based censorship in the future,” Theriot said in a prepared statement.
Theriot also had some choice words to say about Professor Myers.
“Professor Myers has betrayed that public trust by his advocacy of censorship,” he said, accusing the professor of chilling free speech by “advocating that people steal the paper and throw it in the trash.”
For the record, no one has been charged with a crime. And the university sent me a two-sentence statement saying they were reviewing ADF’s claims and “will respond in due course.”
ADF said the most troubling aspect of the incident is UMM’s silence.
“A public university is supposed to be a marketplace of ideas, where free thought and discourse flourish,” ADF wrote in a letter to the university. “By failing to take swift action to denounce the theft and defacing of a newspaper, UMM is teaching students that the appropriate response to ideas you disagree with is to censor or destroy those ideas.”
One would think that a university campus would be a bit more tolerant of opposing viewpoints. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine UMM professors advocating for an old-fashioned book burning. They could use a copy of the First Amendment as fire starter.
ADF said Professor Myers may express his opinion about the newspaper. However, the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments do not protect government officials when they incite illegal activity, “engage in viewpoint discrimination, confiscate property without notice, and seize The North Star’s property.”
Perhaps Professor Myers should remember that – the next time he decides to open his orifice.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is “God Less America”.
Is there anything the U.S. government doesn’t take taxpayer dollars to do?
Here’s a lesser-known function of your hard-earned money: providing backing for people in other countries to buy things from America.
Come again? Yes, that’s right. Let’s say Air China wants to purchase some Boeing jets. To encourage that purchase, America’s Export-Import Bank could loan Air China the money. If Air China were to default on the loan, U.S. taxpayers would be left on the hook.
Put simply, taxpayers should not be financing this kind of “bank”—which is “little more than a fund for corporate welfare,” as candidate Barack Obama described it in 2008.
The Ex-Im Bank, as it is called, is scheduled to expire in September—giving Congress an opportunity to end this program and focus on issues that matter to Americans, like lowering taxes and reducing burdens on businesses here at home.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) recently wrote that the Ex-Im Bank primarily helps big businesses that have friends in Washington.
Most of the benefits go to large corporations that are perfectly capable of securing private financing anywhere in the world. That is to say, Congress allows Ex-Im Bank to risk taxpayer money unnecessarily to subsidize well-connected private companies.
This kind of public policy privilege, best described as “crony capitalism,” is a threat to the free market and its moral underpinnings.
It matters where the money is going, too. A look at the countries getting loans shows that they’re not all America’s biggest fans: They include Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and China.
Ex-Im loans can subsidize purchases by foreign governments as well as businesses in their countries—and those businesses may be competing with U.S. firms. This doesn’t help the U.S. economy. Heritage expert Diane Katz explains:
Ex–Im officials assume that the economic activity they subsidize would not occur absent bank financing. That is an absurd notion, but it is prevalent among bureaucrats who cannot fathom that business actually functions without them.
American taxpayers don’t need to fund any more cronyism, much less loans to hostile nations. We don’t need the Export-Import Bank.
Posted by Carly Hill on April 16, 2014@CarlyDHill
You know the world is upside down when the phrase “after birth abortion” exists. Wondering what that means? It means just what you think. Killing healthy babies after they are born.
Two years ago, two bioethicists, Alberto Giubilini and Frencesca Minerva wrote a medical ethics paper with this shockingly horrible “after birth abortion” concept.
The original paper states,
“…’after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled…Both a fetus and newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life.’ We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her…[A]ll the individuals who are not in a condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life…”
People, this is where moral relativism has taken us. We’ve gone from saying it’s okay to dismember and decapitate a baby, as long as it’s in its mother’s womb to saying that babies born healthy, really, aren’t people.
I have a three year old. If I were to be home alone with her and faint or something – she’d get by for a few hours, but she can’t reach the food in the pantry. She doesn’t know how to unlock the front door. We’re working on 9-1-1, but pretty much, she’d be helpless after a while. So, where would the guys who wrote this paper draw the line? You might say, “Oh, surely they wouldn’t support killing a three year old who can at least feed herself and go to the bathroom,” but my question is, with their line of thinking, where do you draw the line?
Regular, run-of-the mill abortions show how sick we are – and what little regard we have for human life – but supporting the idea of killing healthy infants? I’m speechless.
See – liberals who support moral relativism, who say “Love, peace, love, love, whatever works for you is what is right” think that they are being open-minded and loving, but really, they are advocates for a society void of morals.
A society void of morals becomes so numb to evil and so consumed with self, that they might suggest something unthinkable like, say, killing children.
Conservatives are the antagonists in this country right now – at least, that’s what the President will have you think. Conservatives are made out to be the ones who are hateful and insensitive – but the people who are proposing concepts like “after birth abortion” are the same ones who are shouting that they are “bleeding hearts.”
Religious and political arguments aside — CNN recently reported on a study done by Yale that proved babies as young as 3 MONTHS OLD entertained with a puppet show featuring a “good” and “bad” character would take a cookie from the good character. Almost 90% of infants preferred the “good” puppet and even chose to “punish” the bad puppet when they were given the chance – showing that even babies have a sense of JUSTICE.
As a Christian, I believe that humans are made in God’s image. We are born sinners, but also with a natural sense of morality.
America was founded on religious freedom, yes, but also Biblical principles. Read this article to see just a few quotes from our founding fathers. They weren’t all Christians, but the majority were – and they all feared God. They wrote out a plan for a FREE nation – one that didn’t force any religion on anyone, but one that was based on a Christian worldview.
I’m not for a forced-Christian country. That’s ridiculous. Politically, I say, the less government the better. But, no matter where you stand on any issue, and no matter what you believe or who you worship, you can’t argue that Biblical morality produces the healthiest type of culture.
Bottom line, morality is real. Morality is important. Morality is not subjective. As soon as we start thinking of truth and morality as something that is subjective, we see medical ethics papers like this one pop up.
Abortion in utero is just as horrible as killing an infant, but many of us (myself included) become so desensitized to how widely accepted abortion is in our culture, that we are only shocked by a story like this. There is really no difference between regular abortions and concepts like this. And we need to keep reminding ourselves of that, lest we forget the REALITY and stop fighting for the unborn and infants alike.
Read more at
I was just listening to President Obama speaking during his manipulated NEWS conference. I reminded of a problem we seem to have with our ENGLISH language.
A “LIAR” is someone who is incapable of telling the truth Jesus identified this as recorded in John’s Gospel; 42″ Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. 43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? 47 He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” (John 8:42-47; NIV)
After listening to President Obama and the words falling out of his mouth, led me to believe that he might have has lost all ability to tell the 
truth. Knowing that what he was saying, has already been proven true, he deliberately decides to tell the same lie again. Adding to that bad choice is his deliberate instructions to his “Obamabot” Army to follow his example and not tell the truth.
Jerry Broussard
President Obama is asking the U.S. Senate to confirm Sylvia Mathews Burwell as the next leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, but at least one veterans organization is vowing to do everything it can to block her path to the president’s Cabinet – including blocking the Senate with a “human barricade.”
Burwell is currently director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, or OMB.
During October’s partial government shutdown, Burwell sent the memo for the National Park Service to shutter its public attractions, including open-air memorials in Washington such as the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial.
That decision made the World War II Memorial a flash point of controversy during the shutdown, as elderly veterans coming to the nation’s capital on Honor Flights were turned away by barricades.
Members of Congress and veterans groups soon began removing the barricades to allow veterans access to their memorials. Eventually, the government allowed World War II veterans into their memorial, but the general public was left out. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial were closed to everyone.
“The only reason they reversed themselves (on the World War II Memorial) is because there was a public outcry,” said Special Operations Speaks Political Director Larry Ward, whose group was actively involved in the Million Vet March demanding the memorials be re-opened.
“There were flights coming in with 90-year-old men who served our country and saved the world, the Greatest Generation, were coming in to see the World War II Memorial, probably for the last time that they could in their lives, and they were turned away for political spite,” he said. “It’s one of the most reprehensible acts any commander in chief or any bureau head like, Sylvia ‘Barricade’ Burwell, has ever done in the history of this country.” 
Ward said the whole episode shows the depths to which the Obama administration would sink to win a political debate, and whether Burwell or President Obama is ultimately to blame doesn’t really matter.
“The blame at the time went to the president, and rightly so,” Ward said. “[The orders] probably came from on high. The fact of the matter is, she was in charge of making the call. It might have been her idea. We do know that the barricades went up minutes after the government shut down so it was planned and it was reprehensible and idiotic. Let’s call it for what it is.
“There was nothing to be gained by shutting down open-air memorials. The government spent more money shutting them down and guarding them than they would have if they had just left them open and let our veterans go to their memorials.”
According to Ward, whether Burwell ordered the memorial shut on her own volition or was simply following orders, she is unfit for higher office either way.
“She either has a lot of malcontent, has a lot of evil inside her or she’s just an Obamabot,” Ward said. “Either way, we don’t want that person representing the nation’s health care. We need somebody who can stand on their own and make decisions that affect the entire country’s health and well-being, not someone who is going to either have political payback for spite or for whatever reasons that they put these barricades up or just follow orders as the king on high declares.”
While the exact strategy is being worked out, Ward said Special Operations Speaks is planning an aggressive opposition to the Burwell nomination.
“Absolutely, and you’ll hear this first,” Ward said. “We’re planning on hosting a human barricade in front of the Senate at the time of her confirmation hearings.”
Ward adds that military veterans are very reticent to get active in politics, but the members of Special Operations Speaks feel they have no choice.
“They’ve gotten political with this administration because of the reprehensible behavior they have toward our military and our veterans,” he said. “If need be, we’ll rip down barricades every single day and throw them at the White House the way we did at the Million Vet March.”
In this ongoing story surrounding cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, there are a series of questions media has ignored. For instance, in the 20 years Bundy hasn’t been paying his fees, why hasn’t he been taken to court? Why this year, spend nearly $1,000,000 of taxpayer money to round up 400 cattle that ultimately have to be returned? Why didn’t the BLM just place a lien on the cattle rather than attempting to take them by force and then auction them off? The Bureau of Land Management has suffered a huge black eye this week because of their response to the Bundy situation. Perhaps though, there is a reason the BLM chose force over the courts.
In an exclusive interview with Benswann.com, Montana cattle rancher Todd Devlin says the BLM is now considering new ways of dealing with the Cliven Bundy situation. Devlin is not just a Montana cattle rancher, but is also a County Commissioner in Prairie County Montana. He has also worked with the Department of Interior, having taught workshops for the agency in the past. Monday, Devlin reached out to his contacts in the Department of the Interior to find out why the Bureau of Land Management has refused to work with Bundy rather than simply attempting to run over him.
In most states, if a trespass or use of land occurs regularly for at least 5 years without the “owner” of the land taking legal action, prescriptive rights come into play. Because Bundy stopped paying his grazing fees to the BLM in 1993, but continued to use the land for over 20 years, it is possible he now has prescriptive rights to the land. That might explain why the BLM has not taken this issue to court and never bothered to file a lien against the cattle.
Granted, there have been court actions over the years. In 1998, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against Bundy, ordering him to remove his cattle from the federal lands. He lost an appeal to the San Francisco 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet, the “trespass cattle” remained on the BLM land. In fact, it took until August of 2013 for a court order to be issued saying Bundy had 45 days to remove his cattle from federal land. 15 years went by from the time of the last court case over the cattle until the BLM attempted to remove the livestock.
Of course, Bundy has not made the claim that he will not pay the fees, he simply says he will not pay those fees to the BLM because he doesn’t recognize federal authority over the land. Bundy has said that in the past that he would pay fees to Clarke County, Nevada, though Clarke County has refused to accept them. The BLM has insisted that Bundy owes $1.1 million dollars in grazing fees for his trespass cattle.
“Why don’t you just let him pay them there (Clarke County)? I got a call back from the liaison saying ‘Yes, pursue it.'” Devlin reached out to contacts in Nevada to get that process moving forward. If that were to happen, Clarke County could collect the grazing fees and if it desired to do so could hand those fees over to the BLM.
Finally, Devlin says instead of allowing the situation with Bundy’s cattle to grow completely out of control, the BLM could have simply placed a lien on the cattle in the first place. Of course, that lien might have been rejected in court if Bundy were able to demonstrate those prescriptive rights. Then again, the courts so far have sided with the government; therefore, it is even more baffling why the lien wasn’t placed on the livestock.
Days after the BLM has claimed they will stand down, they are now reportedly considering a lien on the cattle,
“I asked why you didn’t put a lien against the cattle?” Devlin asked the BLM. “They hadn’t thought about that, but they are considering it now.”
Read more at
Unfortunately, we have idiots doing the idiot thing, pretending to be “tea partiers,” while challenging sitting Republican senators over fairly minor ideological differences.
Anyone opposing an incumbent Republican for any reason other than amnesty is a fraud or an idiot. Right now, immigration and Obamacare are the only things that matter. Since every Republican voted against Obamacare, that leaves only immigration.
Conservatives who ignore amnesty while carping about the debt ceiling, TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), the Internet tax bill or Benghazi are too stupid to help their country.
Suppose the Senate had passed a bill that would cut Texas out of the Union? Would that get your attention, fake tea partiers? Without Texas, Republicans would immediately lose 38 electoral votes, two senators and 24 members of Congress. (Democrats would lose only 12 House members.)
How would you rate the prospect of repealing Obamacare if Republicans could: never win another presidential election; never win another majority in the House; and never again win a Senate majority? Oh, and how does the expression “President Nancy Pelosi” grab you?
Would that bill be slightly more important to you than the Internet tax bill?
Well, guess what? Amnesty will produce the exact same result as losing the entire state of Texas. In fact, merely continuing our current immigration policies will achieve the same result; it will just take a little longer. (But wow, I’m sure glad we got “Octomom”! What a boon she’s been to our American way of life.)
The population of Texas is about 27 million. With amnestied illegal aliens allowed to bring in their cousins and brothers-in-law under our insane “family reunification” policies, the 12 million illegal immigrants already here will quickly balloon to 30 million new voters — who happen to break 8-to-2 for the Democrats.
Consequently, before running off and staging a primary fight against a sitting Republican, anyone who truly loved his country would ask himself the following three questions:
(1) Does the incumbent Republican support amnesty? And by the way, “Supports amnesty” includes anyone who says one of the following:
– “We already have de facto amnesty”
– “What are you going to do — round up 12 million illegals?”
– “They’re doing jobs American just won’t do,” or
– “Our housekeeper, Lupe, is like family.”
(2) Is a primary challenge unlikely to flip a Republican seat to the Democrats?
(3) Am I fairly certain the challenger is smart enough to avoid the (apparently) rocky shoals of being asked about abortion in the case of rape?
There are at least three Republican primary candidates who pass this test with flying colors. They’re smart, attractive, articulate and unlikely to ever use the phrase “legitimate rape.”
No incumbent Republican senators are in jeopardy — the one Senate race is for a seat currently held by a Democrat, and the other two races are for House seats in reasonably safe Republican districts.
Finally, all three races represent the battle at the heart of the Republican Party: Are we the party of soulless businessmen who care nothing about the country but only want higher profits for themselves? Or are we the party of middle-class and working-class Americans?
If you don’t think the Republican Party should speak exclusively for Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the Chamber of Commerce, then you have to support:
– Dr. Greg Brannon, running in the Republican primary against foreign-labor cheerleader Thom Tillis, to challenge the Democratic senator from North Carolina, Kay Hagan. (Primary: May 6)
– Frank Roche, running against the lying, amnesty-supporting Renee Ellmers in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District. (Primary: May 6)
– Dave Brat, economics professor, challenging the amnesty-addled Eric Cantor in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. (Primary: June 10)
State legislator Tillis championed a bill making it easier for North Carolina employers to hire foreign workers. Instead of temporary guest workers coming in for a few months a year to do farm work, Tillis’ bill expanded “farm labor” to “all industries,” and expanded “seasonal” to “nine months.”
This wasn’t an idle vote cast thoughtlessly: After the Republican governor vetoed Tillis’ job-killing bill, Tillis led the legislature to override his veto.
Tillis has been well repaid by business interests. North Carolinians can repay him for driving down their wages on May 6.
Frank Roche, who is challenging two-term incumbent Renee Ellmers, speaks more knowledgeably about immigration than almost any sitting member of Congress. (After two decades in international banking in New York, he moved to North Carolina and became an economics professor and talk-radio host — so he can talk.)
Roche has this crazy idea that a nation’s immigration policies should be good for the citizens of that country. (Somebody get this guy in leather restraints!)
By contrast, his opponent, Rep. Ellmers, has dedicated herself to supporting the needs of her rich donors by being strident, rude and utterly cliched on the subject of immigration.
Naturally, she is supported by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg — because who cares about the needs of North Carolina workers more than a Silicon Valley one-hit wonder seeking cheap foreign labor? (I’m sure Zuckerberg has the very best interests of the country at heart.)
Every exchange Ellmers has about immigration seems to end in a blizzard of shouts and insults. After failing to tear at the heartstrings of talk radio’s Laura Ingraham with tales of rich farmers who need cheap foreign labor, Ellmers shouted that Ingraham was “ignorant” and “emotional.”
About a week later, Ellmers denounced a constituent who criticized her on immigration, telling him that he didn’t have “any damn facts” and was full of “hatred and vitriol.”
(Zuckerberg apparently pays his politicians better than he pays his computer programmers.)
For the cherry on top, both Ellmers and Tillis go around claiming they’re opposed to amnesty — while doing everything they can to sneak foreign workers into North Carolina.
So at least they know amnesty is not popular with voters. Here’s an idea! Instead of running candidates who have to lie about their position on immigration, let’s run Republicans who actually agree with the voters!
Sucking up to businessmen may have brought Tillis and Ellmers a lot of campaign cash, but it’s unlikely to help them with North Carolina’s population, which, by the way, is 22 percent black. Recall that Mitt Romney won an astounding 20 percent of the young black male vote by being the toughest presidential candidate on immigration in 50 years. (I guess they do want the jobs “Americans just won’t do.”
Dave Brat, an economics professor like Roche, is challenging Rep. Eric Cantor: Maniacal Amnesty Supporter. Cantor says “immigration reform could be an economic boon to this country.”
You don’t have to be an economics professor to know that bringing in millions of workers is not “an economic boon” to the workers already here. (If only we could bring in millions of workers to compete for Cantor’s job.)
Brat responded to Cantor’s baby-talk, saying immigration “lowers wages, adds to unemployment, and the taxpayer pays the tab for any benefits to folks coming in.”
Republicans aren’t at much risk of losing any of these seats, with or without primary fights. But we’ll lose them all within a decade if Republicans like Tillis, Ellmers and Cantor aren’t stopped.
Brannon, Roche and Brat are the candidates true patriots should support with everything they have.
Ann Coulter is author of the new book, Never Trust a Liberal Over Three – Especially a Republican (Regnery 2013).
This list of Democratic Senators who have actually taken money from the Koch Brothers from 2006-2014 according to Open Secrets includes some heavy-hitters: Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and even Barack Obama himself.
Check it out. Via Truth Revolt:
The following are Democrats in the House who took campaign funding from the Koch Brothers:
It’s not that the Democrats are against money in politics, it’s that they’re against their political opponents having money. That’s why they are against corporations donating money, but are fine with unions doing it. That’s why they are against Super-Pacs (or were – until Democrats began raking in the donations). It’s why they are against 501c4s donating money (because they lean Republican), but are fine with 501c3 charities (giving to Democrats).
All of this Koch Brothers bru-ha-ha and yelling “racist!” or “war on women!” whenever a leaf blows down the street is all a very pathetic attempt on the part of Democrats to deflect from the fact – pointed out by their opposition for years and years now – that Democrats are leading the country in the wrong direction, and lying like crazy about their opponents to boot.
–> We at Eagle Rising are excited to introduce y’all to our newest writer – Young Publius. Publius is our correspondent behind the lines in the public school system of Illinois. Today he’s writing to explain to the rest of us what Common Core really looks like. Please give Young Publius a warm Eagle Rising welcome!
The federal government has developed a new platform for American education: the Common Core Curriculum.
The leftists have been promoting it across the liberal mainstream media. There is a minor hole in the media’s coverage of Common Core; they never ask the ones being affected by this platform: the students. In order to establish my future statements, I am a sophomore in high school; I am an honors student participating in the college prep course.
Recently I was “selected” to participate in a “test of the test” for the new Common Core state test (the PARCC) which is set to replace the PSAE in the state of Illinois. On paper, Common Core sounds like a good idea, asking a student to explain how they got the wrong answer to a math problem and if they can explain their answer giving them credit for their work; however, in the long term, this will only undermine the American education system. We all (I hope) have been taught that 2+2=4. Under Common Core, if a student answers with 5 instead of 4, and can explain their answer, the student will receive credit.
School officials have said that Common Core is meant to drift towards the “how” and “why” questions instead of correct computation.
On Tuesday, April 8, 2014, I took the PARCC test.
The test administrator handed out the test booklets and answer documents. Once time began all the students started working on the test. The first part of the test banned the use of calculators. I did not mind this because I usually prefer to write down my work, so I was not overly concerned. Then I saw how the rest of the test was going to go. In order to find the answer to one of the problems I needed to know the square root of eleven (which is a prime number) and it rendered the problem unsolvable.
This was the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
In the second part of the test I was asked to explain my answers, and my mathematical computation did not count as the explanation. There were other problems that did not even involve math; all I needed to do was write a paragraph about a certain item to gain credit. Then there were the graphs. For me personally, graphs are not a major issue, when they are labeled. This test gave me multiple graphs that had no indicators of which axis represented a certain part of the problem, not to mention on many of these problems there was contradicting information. These problems were unsolvable.
In conclusion, Common Core is a bad concept that will ultimately backfire on the American education system, as well as the American youth.
Now it’s the U.S. Postal Service getting into the business of buying large quantities of ammunition? Does a place with enough violence in it’s history to cause the coining of the phrase “going postal” really need a whole lotta ammo?The USPS recently listed a purchasing notice on its website which reads: “The United States Postal Service intends to solicit proposals for assorted small arms ammunition.” Wtf?
Read this from Newsmax:
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Washington-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said: “We’re seeing a highly unusual amount of ammunition being bought by the federal agencies over a fairly short period of time. To be honest, I don’t understand why the federal government is buying so much at this time.”
Jake McGuigan, director of state affairs and government relations for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said widely reported federal ammunition purchases have sparked conspiracy-type fears among gun owners, who worry that the federal government is trying to crack down on Second Amendment rights via the back door by limiting the ammo available to owners.
It’s not just the USPS that is stocking up on ammo. A little more than a year ago, the Social Security Administration put in a request for 174,000 rounds of “.357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow-point” bullets. Before that, it was the Department of Agriculture requesting 320,000 rounds. More recently, the Department of Homeland Security raised eyebrows with its request for 450 million rounds — at about the same time the FBI separately sought 100 million hollow-point rounds.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also requested 46,000 rounds. Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, asked: why exactly does a weather service need ammunition? “The problem is, all these agencies have their own SWAT teams, their own police departments, which is crazy. In theory, it was supposed to be the U.S. marshals that was the armed branch for the federal government.”
The Energy Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Commerce Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development are a few of the federal entities that boast an armed division, tasked with investigating fraud and suspected criminal activities. As such, the agents get to carry guns.”Most of these agencies do have their own police forces,” said Jim Wallace, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Gun Owners’ Action League.
What the hell are they worried about – that’s what I want to know ? When we get a magazine delivered that’s obviously already been read, it’s annoying – but who gets mad enough for an armed confrontation?
Now they want real magazines?
more from Newsmax:
That, perhaps more than federal ammunition purchases, is the larger issue, he suggested, and Van Cleave agreed. “What’s the need for that? Do we really need this? That was something our Founding Fathers did not like and we should all be concerned about,” Van Cleave said, speaking of the expansion of police forces throughout all levels of government.
The Department of Homeland Security employs in its various law enforcement entities — from the Coast Guard to the Secret Service to Customs and Border Protection — more than 200,000 workers, an estimated 135,000 of whom are authorized to carry weapons. “We realize that the House is still investigating the ammo purchases by the administration, but from what we’ve seen so far, most representatives don’t seem alarmed,” said Erich Pratt, communications director for Gun Owners of America.
“I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Gottlieb said. “The amount of ammunition they’re buying up far exceeds their needs. It far exceeds what they’ll use — they’ll never use it all.”
Of course after the events of this past weekend in the Nevada desert, these things may begin to make more sense..
Just watch out for your dog when the mailman comes around next time – he may be looking for revenge and packing a little heat..
Remember: The Postman always shoots twice.. boo.
Sugar? No thanks, I’m sweet enough..
Send hate mail to kowenhoven@gmail.com
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If you are looking for an example of delusional people who have no idea Who God is, Who His Son, Our Savior is, or God’s expressed entrance requirements to enter His Heaven, you have found that example in this simple minded man, Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Jerry Broussard
The reason for his free pass from the big man upstairs is that he’s done enough on earth to deserve his place up there while fighting for gun control, smoking bans, and drink restrictions, as well as against fattening foods, according to The New York Times.
“I am telling you, if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed,” Bloomberg told the Times. “I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”
Bloomberg, 72, started thinking about how long he has left in this world while preparing for his upcoming 50th college reunion, and was shocked to learn how many of his former classmates had been appearing in the “in memoriam” pages of his school newsletter.
During his tenure, Bloomberg became known for attempting to run a “nanny state” in New York due to his many initiatives to help get overweight New Yorkers in shape.
Last year, he proposed legislation that would have encouraged city residents to forgo elevators and escalators and use the stairs. His get-fit measure followed his previous assault on smoking in public places and his battles against the consumption of oversize sodas, sodium, and trans fats.
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Western Washington University (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) 
on how the administration could succeed at making sure that in future years, “we are not as white as we are today.” (REALLY??????? WHAT HAPPENED TO GIVING THE STUDENT WITH THE BEST GRADES AND S.A.T. EXAM RESULTS TO OPPORTUNITY SAID STUDENT WORKED THEIR ASS OFF TO ACHIEVE?)The question notes that WWU’s racial make up does not perfectly reflect the nation at large, and asks students to consider strategies that other universities have used to focus on skin color as the paramount indicator of a student-applicant’s worth.
The president of WWU has stated that his explicit goal is to reduce the white population on campus, according to Campus Reform.
“I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, that we as a faculty and staff and student body, as an administration, if we 10 years from now are as white as we are today, we will have failed as a university,” said Bruce Shepard, president of WWU, in a 2012 address.
The statements and actions of administrators suggest a preoccupation with skin color at WWU. In his address, Shepard made sure to discuss the racial make up of his new hires.
The university is also putting staff members through diversity and sensitivity training on topics such as “heterosexual privilege,” and “language privilege.” Such sessions were made voluntary after some people complained. (RELATED: University staff members forced to undergo reeducation in ‘heterosexual privilege’)
Published: 4 hours ago
A series of emails from ex-IRS official Lois Lerner, who twice refused to answer questions from Congress about her targeting of conservative groups, reveals she was in contact with Eric Holder’s Department of Justice about prosecuting those organizations, according to the Washington watchdog group Judicial Watch.
“These new emails show that the day before she broke the news of the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner was talking to a top Obama Justice Department official about whether the DOJ could prosecute the very same organizations that the IRS had already improperly targeted,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton Wednesday.
Fitton said the IRS emails show the Department of Justice is now implicated and conflicted in the IRS scandal.
“No wonder we had to sue in federal court to get these documents,” he said.
The IRS has admitted creating special hurdles for conservatives opposing President Obama’s policies as they tried to acquire tax-exempt status leading up to the 2012 election. Among the hurdles were a demand to know the content of a group’s prayers and a promise not to protest the abortion business Planned Parenthood.
Now Judicial Watch has gone to court to get copies of the emails, which includes a May 9, 2013, message indicating the IRS planned to meet with the Department of Justice over whether to prosecute groups that “lied” about their political activity.
Judicial Watch said a new batch of internal IRS documents show Lerner, who has been referred to the full House of Representatives for a vote on contempt of Congress charges, “communicated with the Department of Justice about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities.”
The documents reveal an email from Lerner to Nikole C. Flax, at the time the chief of staff to acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller.
In it, the discussion focused on prosecuting nonprofits.
“I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ … He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who ‘lied’ on their 1024s –saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs,” Lerner wrote. “I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS.”
Flax responded: “I think we should do it – also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?”
Judicial Watch said the documents show Lerner then passed the issue to attorney Nancy Marks, who was then supposed to set up the meeting with DOJ. Lerner also decided that it would be DOJ’s decision as to whether representatives from the Federal Election Commission would attend.
Judicial Watch explained Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., had asked why the DOJ and IRS “have not prosecuted 501(c)(4) groups that have seemingly made false statements about their political activities.”
Lerner took up the issue in an email to IRS staff.
“As I mentioned yesterday – there are several groups of folks from the FEC world that are pushing tax fraud prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when they are (or these folks think they are). One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these down. One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn’t feel so comfortable doing the stuff.
“So, don’t be fooled about how this is being articulated – it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity,” she wrote.
Lerner seemed to be calling for the prosecutions even though she admitted in another email that they weren’t allowed under the law.
“Whether there was a false statement or fraud regarding an [sic] description of an alleged political expenditure that doesn’t say vote for or vote against is not realistic under current law. Everyone is looking for a magic bullet or scapegoat — there isn’t one. The law in this area is just hard,” she wrote.
The watchdog group said: “In an email to an aide responding to a request for information from a Washington Post reporter, Lerner admits that she ‘can’t confirm that there was anyone on the other side of the political spectrum’ who had been targeted by the IRS. She then adds that ‘The one with the names used were only know [sic] because they have been very loud in the press.’”
Another email from an aide specifically draws to Lerner’s attention “Tea Party Organizations,” the “Tea Party movement” and “Tea Party Patriots.”
Judicial Watch launched its federal Freedom of Information Act requests and eventual lawsuit after a May 14, 2013, Treasury Inspector General report revealing that the IRS had singled out groups with conservative-sounding terms such as “patriot” and “Tea Party” in their titles when applying for tax-exempt status.
The Treasury report found: “Early in Calendar Year 2010, the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status to (e.g., lists of past and future donors).”
The campaign, which critics believe traces to the highest levels of government, stretched on for months and “delayed processing of targeted groups’ applications” preparing for the 2012 presidential election.
Lerner was director of the IRS branch that dealt with applications for tax-exempt status at the time, although she later left amid calls to remove her.
Congress now is reviewing its work with Lerner, since she refused to testify in May 2013 before the House Oversight Committee and again during another hearing just weeks ago.
WND reported recently when a member of Congress revealed the IRS also mounted Big Brother-type surveillance of groups that already were authorized to operate at the time.
The confirmation from Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, came days after WND reported the IRS even today sends small exempt organizations to a major progressive think tank to have tax information processed.
In a statement first released in the Wall Street Journal, Camp said his committee’s ongoing investigation discovered the federal government singling out established groups “for audits.”
“We now know that the IRS targeted not only right-leaning applicants, but also right-leaning groups that were already operating as 501(c)4s,” Camp said. “At Washington, D.C.’s direction, dozens of groups operating as 501(c)4s were flagged for IRS surveillance, including monitoring of the groups’ activities, websites and any other publicly available information.”
Camp’s committee was to oppose IRS plans for a raft of new regulations that would target the speech rights of those right-leaning organizations, by determining that efforts such as candidate forums or voter information drives would be designated as “political” speech and therefore banned.
Camp said those rules “are a blatant attempt to legalize and institutionalize targeting by the IRS, and are designed to put conservative groups out of business. It is no wonder the IRS tried to develop this rule behind closed doors and out of the public’s view.”
“I want to be perfectly clear – this committee will fight any and all efforts to restrict the rights of groups to organize, speak out and educate the public, just as unions are allowed to do so,” he said. “We will get to the bottom of this, and I expect the IRS to produce – quickly – the outstanding documents the committee has requested.”
WND reported that those small exempt organizations are directed by the IRS itself to file confidential tax information through the Urban Institute, whose chief is linked to the Center for American Progress, the source for many of Barack Obama’s ultra-progressive agenda items as president.
Cleta Mitchell, a top Washington attorney, told WND: “If true, this is a violation of federal law. And since most of the tea-party groups have annual revenues of [$50,000] or less, this would redirect their filings to a group whose mission is fundamentally at odds with tea-party organizations.”
Mitchell said federal law “strictly prohibits the disclosure of confidential taxpayer information to persons outside the IRS.”
“It is a felony to disseminate the information,” she said.
“Surely this cannot be happening. Surely,” said Mitchell. “This would be well more than a ‘smidgen’ of corruption.”
Mitchell, a partner in the Washington-based law firm Foley & Lardner LLP, is well known for providing expert legal advice to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Deep in the flat and featureless landscape of eastern Ukraine, it is all too possible that the outline of World War III is taking shape.
Whipped up by the Kremlin propaganda machine and led by Russian military intelligence, armed men are erecting road blocks, storming police stations and ripping down the country’s flag.
They are demolishing not just their own country — bankrupt, ill-run and beleaguered — but also the post-war order that has kept most of Europe and us, here in Britain, safe and free for decades.
Vladimir Putin is striking at the heart of the West.
A Ukrainian military convoy traveling towards the eastern Ukrainian town of Slovyansk where Russian nationalists have seized the regional administration building
His target is our inability to work with allies in defence against common threats. The profoundly depressing fact is that the events of the past few months, as Russia has annexed the Crimea and suppressed opposition in Ukraine, have shown the West to be divided, humiliated and powerless in the face of these land grabs.
We are soon to face a bleak choice. We can chose to surrender any responsibility we have to protect Ukraine and the Baltic states — almost certainly Putin’s next target — from further Russian incursion. Or we can mount a last-ditch attempt to deter Russia from furthering its imperial ambitions.
If we do choose to resist Putin, we will risk a terrifying military escalation, which I do not think it an exaggeration to say could bring us to the brink of nuclear war.
Putin knows that. And he believes we will choose surrender. For the real story of recent events in Ukraine is not about whether that country has a free-trade deal with Brussels or gets its gas from Moscow.
It is about brute power. It is about whether Putin’s Russia — a rogue state on Europe’s doorstep — can hold its neighbours to ransom, and whether we have the will to resist him. So far the answer to the first question is yes. And to the second a bleak no.
The Russian leader believes the collapse of the Soviet Union was a ‘geopolitical catastrophe’. He believes Russia was stripped of its empire by the West’s chicanery. And quite simply, he wants it back.
When the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, the former captive nations of Eastern Europe scrambled into Nato and the protection it offered as fast as they could.
As the tension escalates a Ukranian air force Su-27 fighter patrols an area 100 miles from the Russian border in estern Urkraine
But the bitter truth is that Russia did not reform its ambitions in 1991. The Kremlin has always retained its imperialist outlook.
While modern Germany has forsworn militarism and empire, and is liked and admired even by countries such as Poland, which suffered horribly at Hitler’s hands, Russia has not.
Putin believes its historic destiny gives Russia the right to seize land, intimidate and blockade its neighbours. The Russian leader sees Ukraine not as a real country, just a territory, and one he is determined to dominate.
First he took Crimea. Now he has launched an operation in the east and south of Ukraine. Russian troops are prowling the border as the Ukrainian authorities launch a desperate attempt to regain control of government buildings and police stations in key cities that have been seized and occupied in recent days.
Only yesterday it was reported that between four and 11 people had been killed as Ukrainian troops re-took Kramatorsk airfield from pro-Russian forces.
Putin has presented the Ukrainian leaders with an impossible choice. Either they consent to the dismemberment of their country. Or they fight a war they cannot win.
Ukraine’s ill-trained, ill-equipped and ill-led soldiers are quite unsuited to deal with the fraught challenge facing them.
Any bloodshed against a single Russian soldier will give Putin a pretext to use his military might.
For her part, Russia has played a brutally clever game. She has deliberately sought to humiliate and destabilise Ukraine.
Now Putin can claim his soldiers must be allowed to intervene because the very social disorder his outriders have engineered demonstrates that the authorities cannot maintain order.
The hypocrisy is breath-taking. But the Ukraine adventure is stoking a patriotic frenzy at home which distracts the public from his regime’s incompetence and thievery.
But the biggest benefit to the Russian president lies abroad. He makes no secret of his hatred for the West. He is contemptuous of, yet fears, our soft power. He resents the laws, liberty and prosperity that our citizens enjoy. They throw into bleak contrast the dismal life that his own corrupt and incompetent rule offers Russians.
He also despises our weakness. He sees a Europe and America that talk tough but have failed to provide a united response to the growing catastrophe. Yes, we talk a good game — Foreign Secretary William Hague has called for ‘a clear and united international response’ — but our deeds do not match our words, and Putin knows it.
In his bleak world view, only force and money count. He believes we in the West are too weak to defend ourselves when threatened. So far, his assessment looks right. Even Nato — the bulwark of our security since 1949 — is creaking under the strain of the Ukraine crisis.
Nato’s gutsy commander, General Philip Breedlove, wants to share international intelligence with Ukraine and boost Nato’s forces in its most vulnerable member countries: Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
But the White House has blocked the first recommendation. And European countries such as Germany are blocking the second.
Vainly, our leaders hope diplomacy will make Putin back down. Surely he can be made to understand that confrontation is not in Russia’s interests? The markets are already punishing the rouble and big Russian companies.
But that approach fundamentally misunderstands a man like Putin. He is prepared to make his people suffer economic pain and risk war for what be believes is their national interest. We in the West are not.
Having taken Ukraine, he will turn his attention to the Baltic states. Members of the EU and Nato, their lawful societies, elections and thriving economies are an implicit rebuke to those who preside over sleaze and brutality in Russia.
Nato and the EU — on current form — will merely appeal for dialogue and threaten sanctions. But nothing will happen. Which means the Baltics will buckle, and Putin will take back lands which he believes are rightly Russia’s.
That will be the end of Nato — and the dawn of a terrifying new world in which international rules count for nothing and the strong dominate the weak. Russia — ruthless and greedy — can play divide and rule for decades to come.
Suppose we do try to resist, with our shrunken armed forces and craven allies? With the latest round of cuts, the British Army is about to become the smallest it’s been since the Napoleonic wars.
Meanwhile, our once ‘special relationship’ with America was tested by our failure to support Obama over intervention in Syria.
What’s worse, the West’s intelligence operations have been severely compromised by the exploits of Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor who has taken refuge in Moscow, having stolen tens of thousands of secret state documents.
Deplorably, the complacent and self-indulgent journalists who so damagingly published the West’s intelligence secrets and effectively blinded our spies have been awarded America’s greatest journalistic honour, the Pulitzer Prize.
If the West does stand up to Russia, Putin will put its nuclear forces on alert, all the while decrying our ‘aggressive behaviour’.
As the centenary of the Great War in July approaches, historians are vying to pinpoint the chain of events which started that conflict.
I may be wrong, but in 100 years time, will their successors look back at the events in Ukraine to make sense of the beginnings of the next world conflagration?
Last Friday, in a speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference, President Obama proudly announced that the Justice Department had taken on more than 100 voting rights cases since 2009. The problem with that claim is that, since 2009, the Justice Department has taken on only 39 voting rights cases—and as former Voting Section lawyer Christian Adams points out, only 13 were related to protecting minority voting rights. And, with respect to some of the cases in which the department has been involved, it lost spectacularly—such as its false claim that South Carolina’s voter ID law was discriminatory.
Perhaps President Obama misspoke when he overstated the number of voting rights cases by more than 60—or perhaps he was misinformed by his Attorney General, Eric Holder. In fact, the ever-criticized Bush administration had a much better enforcement record with much higher case numbers than the Obama administration, as was outlined in a report released by the Justice Department’s Inspector General in March 2013. President Obama also made no mention of his administration’s unjustified dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party—that would, after all, not fit the narrative he is trying to propagate. Regardless, President Obama’s exaggerated claims come as no surprise, especially given the setting of this particular speech.
Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference in New York City, where Bertha Lewis, the former CEO of ACORN, an organization convicted of numerous voter registration frauds, participated in a panel discussion earlier in the week, was the perfect arena for the President’s inaccurate claims. In her remarks, Lewis declared that there is a “great fear” of what she called the “darker…new majority” that she says wields power in America. She went on to say that supporters of voter ID laws are attempting to implement a “South African apartheid-type thing where the masters of the universe still rule.” She is apparently unaware that Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s former president, supported voter ID laws or that South Africa today has much stricter ID requirements than any state in America.
Consider also that Al Sharpton keynoted a voting rights rally in Ohio this March where convicted voting fraudster and former Ohio poll worker Melowese Richardson was brought onto the stage and given a hero’s welcome. Sharpton embraced Richardson, despite her 2013 sentencing in state court for six counts of voter fraud (as well as her previous convictions for intimidating and threatening a witness in a case against her brother, DUI, theft, and participating in a bar fight). During the investigation into Ms. Richardson’s fraud, she showed no remorse for abusing her role as a guardian of the polls. As Judge Robert P. Ruehlman of Ohio put it, Richardson’s actions diluted her fellow citizens’ votes and infringed on the sacred doctrine of “one person, one vote.”
In light of President Obama’s claim that voting rights “justice” is being administered by the Department of Justice, it is worth noting that Melowese Richardson was never charged by the Justice Department—even though she admitted, on camera, to having voted for President Obama multiple times in 2012, which is a felony under federal law. This type of behavior may explain another claim by President Obama at last week’s conference: that there were “only 10 cases of alleged in-person voter impersonation in 12 years.”
If the DOJ is going to ignore cases in which voter fraud is being openly admitted, their prosecution statistics will continue to lose any semblance of credibility. Not surprisingly, the President ignored the hundreds of people that North Carolina just discovered to have voted twice in the 2012 election and the numerous other cases of voter fraud that have been successfully prosecuted over the past decade by state and local authorities. That wouldn’t fit his narrative either.
The President denounces voter fraud as myth, while ignoring documented cases of blatant voter fraud. In his Friday speech, President Obama said that all Americans must have an equal right to vote and that he is in favor of common sense reform to secure the ballot. Voter fraud prevents Americans from holding an equal right to vote because, as Judge Ruehlman said, the votes of honest Americans are diminished when fraud is committed. And what could be a more common sense reform than requiring the same kind of ID that the government requires visitors to show when they enter a government building—such as the White House or the Department of Justice?
Image: FBI Flyer.
FBI counterterrorism agents are visiting gun shops in South Carolina to investigate “suspicious purchases” made by people who talk about “big government,” according to a new report.
Author Brandon Turbeville says he was approached by an individual who works in a Columbia, South Carolina gun shop to relate the story of how an FBI agent entered the store on Monday, showed his credentials, before proceeding to ask a series of stunning questions.
Telling the gun store worker he was tasked with visiting all the firearms outlets in the local area to check on “suspicious purchases” for counterterrorism purposes, the agent then began discussing what in actual fact were “completely normal transactions,” such as, “paying with cash, purchasing long guns, and other similarly innocuous behavior.”
The FBI agent then reportedly made a shocking remark that almost seems too chilling to believe.
“If you see some Middle Eastern guy come in, you don’t have to be so worried about that. What we’re really looking for are people talking about being sovereign such as sovereign citizens or people talking about big government,” the agent reportedly stated.
Before the agent left the store, he handed the employee a flyer which lists paying with cash, buying in bulk, along with other seemingly innocuous behavior as suspicious activity.
While there’s little chance of verifying the story since the FBI would almost certainly deny the claim, the notion of FBI agents charactering innocuous activity as a potential indication of terrorism is firmly established in the federal agency’s own literature and training procedures.
The FBI has also repeatedly labeled those who identify as “sovereign citizens” to be domestic terrorists.
In 2012, we reported on how the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism (CAT) program was instructing businesses that banal activities conducted by millions of Americans on a daily basis were potential indications of terrorist activity.
Flyers for the program being handed out to businesses such as Internet cafes even listed paying for a cup of coffee with cash as a suspicious activity.
A flyer aimed at Military Surplus stores also encourages owners to report people who “make bulk purchases of items to include….meals ready to eat”.
In total, there are 25 different CAT flyers aimed at businesses from across the spectrum – everything from hobby shops to tattoo parlors.
The flyer pictured above which was reportedly handed to the gun store worker by the FBI agent contains very similar language to that used in flyers produced for the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism program.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
This article was posted: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 at 6:07 am
The plan involves an Interstate Compact where states would commit to select electors pledged to vote for the national popular vote winner regardless of how their own state voted. When enough states pass this law — sufficient to cast the Electoral College’s majority 270 votes — it will take effect.
The Electoral College will become a vestigial anachronism.
So far, nine states and the District of Columbia — casting 136 electoral votes — have joined moving half way to the 270 needed to put the compact into effect. The ratifying states are: Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, DC, Vermont, California, and Rhode Island.
Both houses in New York have passed it and its on Governor Cuomo’s desk.
And, it has already passed one house in: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oregon. These states, plus New York represent 107 votes. Combined with the others they are up to 242 votes . They need 270.
Who is pushing this?
All of those ratifying voted for Obama as did eight of the 10 one-house states.
Essentially, it is an end run around the regular constitutional amending process. Rather than get a two-thirds majority of each house of Congress and three-quarters of the states, this proposal would take effect when a simple majority approve it.
Democrats usually see a smaller percentage of their people go to the polls than Republicans do.
Under the electoral vote system, they figure why beat the drums to get a high turnout in New York City when the state will go Democrat anyway? But, if its the popular vote that matters, the big city machines can do their thing — with devastating impact.
And think of the chances for voter fraud! Right now, the biggest cities, the ones most firmly in Democratic control (e.g. Washington DC, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, etc.) are all solidly in blue states. Not only does this make it unnecessary to maximize turnouts there, but it also makes it unnecessary to promote double voting, fraudulent voting, and all the other tricks of the trade at which Democrats excel.
But if the popular vote determines who will be the next president, we can bet that the machines will be out in force lining up voters, real and phony, to pad their statistics.
Some Republicans, particularly in non-swing states, are inclined to back the proposal simply so that they get their fair share of attention. They are tired of delegating to Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Virginia, et al the power to choose the president. And they can’t remember when a candidate for that office last favored their state with his presence.
How can we stop the Democrats from ravaging our political system? The key battles are coming up in Arkansas and North Carolina. In both states, one house has passed the Compact. We need to stand firm in these two red states and block the Compact from taking effect. Republicans in Minnesota and Wisconsin, both blue states, need to stop ratification in their states.
And, Republicans should focus on stopping the second house from ratification in those states where only one house has acted.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Morris/morris-democrats-electoral-college/2014/04/15/id/565661#ixzz2yzybSQKa
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!
As a matter of fact, according to Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), since taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama has formally proposed a total of 442 tax increases, according to their analysis of Obama administration budgets for fiscal years 2010 through 2015. The 442 total does not include the 20 tax increases Obama signed into law as part of Obamacare.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the Obama budget with the lowest number of proposed tax increases was released during an election year. In February 2012, Obama released his FY 2013 budget, with “only” 34 proposed tax increases.
In addition to the 442 tax increases in his annual budget proposals, the 20 signed into law as part of Obamacare, and the massive tobacco tax hike signed into law on the sixteenth day of his presidency, Obama has made it clear he is open to other broad-based tax increases.
During an interview with Men’s Health in 2009, when asked about the idea of national tax on soda and sugary drinks, the President said, “I actually think it’s an idea that we should be exploring.”
I have stated before that taxation has become a weapon of mass destruction — far worse than climate change, John Kerry — enabling a fiscally irresponsible government to expand beyond its constitutional limits.
It has also become a political battering ram used in a dangerous game of bribery for more largesse from the public treasury in exchange for votes — as we endure the insidious progressive socialist class warfare themes of fair share, economic equality, income inequality, shared prosperity, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
I invite you to hold up a dollar to our misguided liberal progressive comrades and ask, “how much of this should a hardworking American get to keep?” My answer is no working American should give more than 30 percent of his or her income to the government (local, state, federal). This must be sufficient for effectiveness and efficiency. And we must no longer have a percentage of Americans who are not “paying any share” in the functions of government.
Here is my tax reform proposal.
Common sense tax, regulatory and government reform are what we need, because I wish for the day when Americans didn’t dread April 15th, but were proud to support their government because it is effective, efficient, and fiscally sound. Sound good to you?
I hope you can understand now why General West is my first choice for President of the United States. This is a genuine leader with genuine leadership experience, education and government service experience. I encourage you to prayerfully consider joining me in encouraging General West to run, and then support him to win.
As the Easter season approaches, it is time to reflect on our faith and stand in awe of the miracle that is Jesus Christ.
I am given to remember a song titled “Wonder of Wonders” by Charles B. Wycuff.
It was recorded by The Inspirations, one of my favorite gospel groups from Bryson City, NC.
This is the line I find most impressive in the beautiful hymn:
“The wonder of wonders, oh how could it be, that God became flesh and was given for me. The Almighty came down and walked among men. The wonder of wonders he died for my sin.”
If you think on that line, God’s sacrifice is almost too much to imagine, and that is not even getting into His crucifixion.
He came down and walked among men. He left heaven to come and live here on earth with us.
When I hear that, I wonder how He saw the difference in this earth with its’ carnal ways. How difficult it would be, if we put ourselves in His shoes, would we be willing to do it?
Just as a most simplistic comparison, would you or I be willing to leave our comfortable, clean, well-appointed homes to live in squalor in a third world country for 33 years just because our father asked us to do it?
How much more did Jesus give up to come here, knowing how long He would be here and how horrifically He would die, yet still willing to do his Father’s will?
This past Sunday was Palm Sunday, the day Jesus entered the city. He knew he would be killed in a very violent way within the week.
He was made flesh and felt all things as we do. He asked His Father to let it pass from him in prayer, yet ultimately accepted His fate with serenity.
If you only think of these examples of His exemplary life, disregarding all of the rest, you cannot help but marvel and praise.
The very least we can do is stand up for His name and His church in everything we do.
It is not something reserved for the Holy Week, but should be a lifestyle.
As you gather with your family and friends this Holy Season, remember to keep it holy.
Honor Him and thank God for His Son who did what we would shrink away from doing.
Image: Courtesy of: http://www.themindfulword.org/2014/contemplation-cutting-edge/
Read more at http://clashdaily.com/2014/04/challenging-question-jesus/#iKW0EgM0VWsEX4R7.99
This is the first instance on record where this has been the case in back-to-back years. But I find even the framing of the statistic troubling. Notice what it does not say. It doesn’t say that women receiving food stamps now outnumber women working full-time jobs. It says that people receiving food stamps now outnumber women with full-time employment.
Why would that even be a meaningful statistic? The only thing I can think is that a considerable amount of people on food stamps are actually single mothers. Or, at least, that single mothers are more likely to be on food stamps. Consider that, in 2012—the last reported year on record—45% of all single mothers received food stamps (formally called SNAP benefits). That’s a huge percentage of single mothers.
The entire system is really at fault here. For one, where are the fathers? Why are there millions of mothers out there raising children on their own? Because of the absenteeism and profligacy of the American man, women are in a position where they feel they must go to the State for help. And the State offers two kinds of help in most cases: abortions and welfare.
Think about how integrated the socialist system is. The whole debate over abortion, welfare, dependency, national budgets, etc. could be resolved if the majority of men would do one simple thing: stay with their kids and the mothers of their kids and work to provide for them.
If this correlation were not so well-documented, I would be hesitant to make such a blanket statement. But I’m actually not exaggerating in the least. A report in Frontiers of Freedom outlines just a few of the most egregious examples of Obama’s crony capitalism at work: from Solyndra to Quality Software Services to Big Labor, the Obama administration has been perfectly faithful to reward its big donors and supporters. And, on the other hand, Obama has been equally faithful to punish its detractors.
Processing of the application by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice was expected to take at least twelve months. But five months later, the Department of Justice announced it would file a lawsuit blocking the friendly merger.
Leading the merger quest was AT&T CEO Randall L. Stephenson. Mr. Stephenson is well known to be a Bible Belt, pro-free market, Republican with a reputation as a fierce executive with a head for numbers. He is a proponent of tax reforms that include broadening the tax base and lowering tax rates as a formula for economic growth, rather than the Administration’s position of making the rich pay more of their “fair share” while government makes subjective decisions about redistributing the wealth of the working class.
If only Stephenson had been an Obama supporter, he would been assured the success of his merger. Just look at Comcast and Time Warner. The merger looks like a shoe in, in spite of the fact that the merger is worth a few billion more dollars than the AT&T merger and would also result in a 40% market share for one company. The only significant difference between the cell phone merger and the cable company merger (aside from the fact that the Comcast merger has even more severe consequences to consumer choice) is that AT&T is led by a Republican and Comcast/Time Warner are headed by Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who was exposed last Friday as the mastermind behind the Bureau of Land Management’s persecution of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, can be seen in this March 2014 photo breaking ground for a new solar farm near the Bundy Ranch, emphasizing that the senator’s plan for solar projects in Nevada wasn’t just limited to the shelved solar farm near Laughlin.
“First Solar is thrilled to celebrate this important milestone with Sen. Reid and distinguished guests, and honored to work with the Moapa Band of Paiutes on this landmark project,” Jim Hughes, the CEO of First Solar, said at the time.
The development of solar farms just like this one is exactly why Sen. Reid was using the BLM, whose director is Reid’s former senior advisor, to push Bundy out of the Gold Butte area his family has worked for over 140 years.
As we revealed last Friday in an article that became the #1 news story in the world for 24 hours, the BLM specifically stated that it wanted Bundy and his cattle out of the area as part of the agency’s “regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone.”
The BLM attempted a cover-up by deleting documents exposing the plan from its web site, but fortunately contributors at the Free Republic were able to save them for posterity.
Others have attempted to whitewash the situation by suggesting that the solar farm development was only limited to the shelved 2012 deal between Sen. Reid and Chinese-owned ENN Energy Group in Laughlin, Nev., but by reading the BLM’s own documents it is quite obvious that this is not the case.
“The Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone is the first of several pilot plans to be developed by the BLM,” the press release added.
In summary, the BLM, acting under Sen. Reid’s corrupt interests, wants Cliven Bundy out of the 600,000 acre Gold Butte area so the agency can use the land for future solar projects and de facto buffer zones surrounding the solar farms.
This is crony capitalism at its finest and Bundy’s supporters, who numbered in the thousands, knew it.
Reid smelling anything but rosy in ranch fight – World Net Daily
Nevada ranch standoff could leave dirt on Harry Reid’s reputation – The Washington Times
This article was posted: Monday, April 14, 2014 at 12:58 pm
“I’m hoping this is very positive of things to come, with people standing up and objecting to the federal government’s intrusion into our lives and everything that we do. And when the people do get together and stand up, I think government will be forced to back down. But the other thing is, is that governments don’t give up their power easily, and they may well come back with more force like they did at Waco with the Davidians. So, I don’t know which way it’s going, but so far so good.”
Paul told Cavuto that he was “delighted” that the standoff had thus far ended non-violently and that he hopes that it will continue to be non-violent:
“I was delighted that they got through those couple days and there wasn’t any shooting and no killing, because I really encourage, you know, the demonstration against unfairness by our government, but I’d like to see it all non-violent and that weekend, so far, turned out to be a good step.”
Paul then made the point that the dispute was caused by federal government overreach and usurpation of state land, noting that when the government says they own land, “everybody owns it, yet nobody owns it.”
“They had virtual ownership of that land because they had been using it….but it’s not clean enough, I think land should be in the states and I think the states should sell it to the people, it’s worked out quite well in big states,” stated Paul while pointing out that publicly owned land encourages multiple special interest groups to fight over it.
Paul thinks that the federal government should get completely out of owning land for the sake of owning land, and that their involvement will lead to more problems in the future.
“You need the government out of it and I think that’s the important point, if you don’t look at that you can expect more of these problems, especially when our economy gets into more trouble,” said Paul, adding that the real enemy is “bad ideas and bad politics that we have to change.”
Matthew Burke is a former Financial Advisor/Planner for 24 years. He was a 2010 Constitutional Conservative candidate for U.S. Congress in Washington State. View all Posts by Matthew Burke
Once again President Obama has deliberately, with forethought, insulted every Evangelical Christian around the world. Politically it might not hurt him, but remember the warning from the Apostle Paul ,, inspired by The Holy Spirit, when he wrote to the Galatian Church, Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others — ignoring God! — harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life. (Galatians 6:7-8; (from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.))
As reported by Twitchy, here is the prayer that Obama said at Easter breakfast.
According to his tweet, Robinson was not expecting Obama to have him close out the breakfast in prayer.
Robinson married a woman in 1970, then divorced in 1986 after admitting his homosexuality. He became involved in an openly homosexual relationship with a Peace Corp volunteer in 1988. His actions caused a schism within the Episcopal Church. After delegates to the church convention ratified Robinson’s as bishop coadjutor, a large faction of the church split, forming the Anglican Church in North American, in opposition to having an openly and practicing homosexual as a spiritual leader in the church. Though he had, despite his homosexuality, thought that marriage should be a man and a woman, he eventually changed his mind and married his partner in 2008.
Robinson has since retired and now works for the George Soros funded, far-left, radical progressive ‘think-tank’ the Center for American Progress.
Leave it to Obama to turn the sacred Christian day of Easter into a political statement.
Jennifer Burke became politically active for the first time at the Porkulus Tea Party in Seattle in February 2009. She was a speaker at the Seattle Tax Day Tea Party at Westlake Center on April 15, 2010, was featured in a popular Tea Party video, Proud to be a Teabagger, that has gone viral on YouTube and many top conservative blogs, and was a speaker at the WA 4 WI rally in support of Scott Walker. View all Posts by Jennifer Burke
Last week, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee held a hearing provocatively titled “Is Al-Qaeda Winning?” The answers that the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade received were profoundly unsettling.
Former Senator Joseph Lieberman (I–Conn.) testified that Syria had become a key focal point of al-Qaeda’s efforts. He noted that there are more foreign militants fighting in Syria today than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the past 10 years: “Put very bluntly, Syria has become the most dangerous terrorist sanctuary in the world today—and the United States has not coherent or credible policy for dealing with it.”
>>> Read More: The Arab Spring Descends into Islamist Winter: Implications for U.S. Policy
Frederick Kagan, director of the critical threats project at the American Enterprise Institute, warned that the Obama Administration has underestimated the threat posed by al-Qaeda’s ideology, which has inspired a global insurgency. He assessed that al-Qaeda’s “brand is spreading like wildfire, the groups affiliating themselves with it control more fighters, land and wealth than they ever have, and they are opening up new fronts.”
Heritage Foundation analysts long have warned about the more permissive environment that al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups have exploited in many countries destabilized by the “Arab Spring” uprisings. Syria, in particular, has been a magnet for foreign militants and a rich recruiting ground for al-Qaeda.
>>> Read More: A Counterterrorism Strategy for the “Next Wave”
Al-Qaeda has made a comeback in Iraq, and gained followers in Egypt, Libya, Mali, East Africa, and Yemen
Related:
Al-Qaeda Seeks American Recruits in Syria
Al-Qaeda Resurges in Iraq
These Words from Obama Are Frightening—and Revealing
Another 40 Days for Life campaign is now complete, and we’re still counting the blessings God has provided!
More of our local campaign leaders will be sending in their reports soon … but so far, we are aware of …
547 babies whose lives have been spared from abortion during this campaign!
And as always, those are only the ones we know about. Here are some of those stories.
“Exciting news from the sidewalk!” said one of the El Paso volunteers. “A woman rejects abortion! “
When the woman arrived with her sister, there was a group of people praying on the sidewalk. One of the counselors talked to them, and provided information about positive options.
They continued on their way inside the abortion center … but came out soon after. “With a smile on her face,” the volunteer said, “the woman said she had changed her mind.” She was thinking about abortion because she feared her husband’s response to the pregnancy. But after talking with the counselors, she no longer felt afraid.
“We believe the prayers of everyone united helped give this woman the courage she needed to say yes to life,” the El Paso volunteer said. “Praise the Lord!”
A couple parked near the abortion facility in Tuscaloosa – close to the location where 40 Days for Life volunteers were praying. As they walked towards the building, vigil participants offered them information, but they didn’t take it.
They weren’t inside for long before they exited and said they couldn’t go through with the abortion. The woman said she couldn’t do it “because of all the young girls inside.”
The two were visibly shaken by what they had seen inside the abortion center. This time, they took the information the volunteers had offered.
The Pensacola team asks for prayers for a woman who was abortion-minded … until the baby’s father convinced her not to go through with it.
The woman is still struggling, however. She has had a number of abortions in the past and feels she is incapable of mothering a child. She does, however, seem open to adoption … and there is a couple that stands ready and willing to adopt the baby.
Like this pro-life news article? Please support LifeNews with a donation during our April fundraising campaign!
“Please pray,” said one of the Pensacola volunteers, “that God will give them all the strength, love, mercy, and healing that they need to proceed with these adoption plans and provide a most beautiful future for this baby.”
Lastly, a few words for this campaign in Croatian: 40 Dana Za Život — 40 Days for Life — and they’re on a billboard above a row of buildings in Zagreb.
“They are an impressive group,” said Robert Colquhoun, our international outreach director, who visited Zagreb recently.
Dan Miller, the local 40 Days for Life director in Milwaukee, Wisconsin saw this photo and said, “this says awesome in any language!”
I think we can say that about all of the 40 Days for Life volunteers. You’re awesome! May God bless you richly!
LifeNews.com Note: Shawn Carney is the campaign director for the 40 Days for Life pro-life prayer campaign against abortion.
We can all recall a time when a black woman named Rosa Parks defied law and won. No need exists to paint the picture. You already know it. You can already see her. Here we see a modern representation as Americans awaken to the insidious growth of our federal Creature. Over the weekend, a fierce standoff between Bundy Ranch militiamen and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) came to an end– For now.
Highlights from the events that took place are finished off with a dramatic conclusion in a Youtube video watermarked by InfoWars.
Posted yesterday, the video already has 105k hits. For all intents and purposes, the video has gone viral. However, Facebook is doing its best to stand in the way of people seeing it. Facebook is a private company. They may control content if they please. However, Facebook’s lean to the left becomes more prevalent as the days go on.
If you own a “conservative” Facebook page you know all too well that Facebook has been censoring, charging higher prices for ad space, and decreasing the social reach of your page when compared to more liberal leaning pages for quite some time now.
Facebook users who attempted to share the video were met with an abrupt security pop-up:
Mark Zuckerberg and his team of liberal elitists would rather not have Americans see what it looks like to win for once. Here at BenSwann.com we believe in the free flow of information. Although Facebook won’t allow you to directly share the video, you may still be able to share this inspirational video through this article.
Bundy Ranch: Who Actually Owns America’s Land? (http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/04/bundy-ranch-crisis-causes-us-ask-actually-owns-americas-land/)
Update: Feds planning a full scale raid on Bundy Ranch after “standing down.” (http://benswann.com/exclusive-sources-inside-the-blm-and-las-vegas-metro-say-feds-are-planning-a-raid-on-bundy-home/)
A huge wave of public testimony, reports and documents on what happened in Benghazi now floods Washington, and little of it focuses on the role of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton before, on, or after Sept. 11, 2012.
Over the past 18 months, there have been at least seven public congressional hearings and three fact-finding reports on the terrorist attack. If not invisible, Mrs. Clinton is certainly portrayed as being only in the background during Benghazi, unaware of key events.
In the early post-Benghazi days on Capitol Hill, Republicans tried to pry “what did she know and when did she know it” information out of witnesses. But in later hearings, her name came up rarely — if at all.
On key questions, there is a dead end. For example, the nation’s two most senior military officials said they never spoke with Mrs. Clinton during the eight-hour crisis in Benghazi, Libya.
The State Department refused to cooperate for a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigation, Republicans say, and her name is not in the final report.
Mrs. Clinton testified that she was never informed about how susceptible the Benghazi diplomatic mission was to attack or about requests for more security officers. On the infamous Benghazi talking points, that process was carried out below her level, she said.
At the recently concluded public hearing of Michael J. Morell, the CIA deputy director who coordinated the “talking points” with State, references to Mrs. Clinton, who leads in polls to be the next Democratic presidential nominee, were made twice as asides, not as to Benghazi facts.
P.J. Crowley, who was Mrs. Clinton’s top spokesman at State in her first year, said Republicans have tried to nail her but there simply is no evidence.
“Benghazi happened on her watch, so she will always have a connection to the attack,” Mr. Crowley said. “There have been some efforts to make it about her, which I suspect will continue despite the lack of evidence.”
Lawyer Victoria Toensing has another view. She said members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence displayed incompetence while questioning Mr. Morell.
“Nobody from the House committee asked about her,” said Mrs. Toensing, who represents Gregory Hicks, the chief of mission in Tripoli that day who was among the first to blow the whistle on lax security in Benghazi and a lack of help from Washington during the crisis. “Was that hearing somewhat incompetent? Yes.”
Mrs. Toensing said the investigative failings pertaining to Mrs. Clinton began much earlier in the search to explain the deaths of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and his aide, Sean Smith.
State’s own investigation, by the accountability review board, gave Mrs. Clinton a pass. It never interviewed her on facts and decided that culpability lay at a much lower level, said former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, a co-chairman of the board.
His report said Stevens was in Benghazi that day “independent” of Washington.
“It’s a lie. An outright lie,” Mrs. Toensing said, adding that Mrs. Clinton’s fingerprints can be seen on that point.
“One of the most important facts about her is left out. Why was Chris in Benghazi?” the attorney said. “He was in Benghazi because on the day he was sworn in, Hillary met with him privately [in May 2012] and said she wanted him to go to Benghazi and assess whether it could be made a permanent post.”
Stevens met with Mr. Hicks and “Chris told him about this priority of the secretary’s,” Mrs. Toensing said. After the new ambassador took care of many initial tasks, September became the month he had to act on Benghazi before the fiscal year — and thus money — ended Sept. 30.
“He was there because of Hillary Clinton, and when the [accountability review board] interviewed Greg [Hicks], Greg said that to Pickering,” Mrs. Toensing said.
The review board took notes but did not transcribe its witness testimonies, which would have formed a more complete historical record.
Mr. Hicks has been denied access to the notes, Mrs. Toensing said.
Talking points issued
Mr. Crowley, Mrs. Clinton’s former spokesman, said there is historical precedence for putting a mission in a contested area such as Benghazi. The State Department erected two large complexes in Iraq and Afghanistan amid wars to further the goal of “expeditionary diplomacy.” Mrs. Clinton embraced the strategy, he said.
“This trend helps explain what Chris Stevens was doing in a post-conflict environment in Libya,” Mr. Crowley said. “He understood better than anyone that diplomats cannot hermetically seal themselves off from danger and do the job they were sent to do. Benghazi is about the nature of conflict in the 21st century, not about any one person.”
In January, a second major report emerged on Benghazi. This one, too, was Clinton-less.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a bipartisan report that attempted, after months of investigation, to lay out an official chronology of what officials did to prepare for and respond to the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission. Mrs. Clinton’s name is not mentioned in the report.
The committee’s Republicans wrote in an addendum that the State Department stonewalled the investigation by refusing requests for documents and witnesses.
“We surmise that this lack of forthrightness stems from a desire to protect individual political careers, now and in the future, and the Department’s reputation, at the expense of learning all the facts and apportioning responsibility,” the Republican senators wrote.
Then there are the long-debated “talking points,” President Obama’s first report to the nation about what happened in Benghazi.
The White House-State Department–CIA back-and-forth emails that produced the Sept. 16, 2012, talking points contain no reference to the secretary of state. Her fingerprints do not appear during two days of intense exchanges during which Clinton aides rejected various CIA versions. In the end, the CIA produced a brief statement that blamed protesters — an assertion Republicans say fit the president’s re-election campaign themes but not the facts.
The CIA’s first version turned out to be accurate, but under internal and outside pressure during two days, all references to al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists were removed.
‘She’s definitely culpable’
As Mrs. Clinton worked that late afternoon on Sept. 11 and into the night, no U.S. military help ever arrived at a CIA annex under attack for eight hours. Two former Navy SEALs were killed in their effort to protect CIA officers and huddled diplomats who were rescued from the burning compound.
Retired Army Gen. Carter Ham, who led U.S. Africa Command at the time, has stated that no one from State on Sept. 11 ever asked for a military rescue attempt.
Mrs. Clinton’s role in that lack of a request? Gen. Ham was not asked that question when he appeared in secret before a House Armed Services subcommittee in June, according to a declassified transcript.
Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle is known to be fiercely loyal. When CNN attempted to produce a Clinton documentary that would likely be favorable, all 100 aides and Democrats contacted refused to cooperate. Director Charles Ferguson canceled the project.
“I discovered that nobody, and I mean nobody, was interested in helping me make this film,” Mr. Ferguson wrote in The Huffington Post.
Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA official and State counterterrorism official, said the same thing that happened to Mr. Ferguson happened to Benghazi investigators.
“It’s part of the ‘protect Hillary’ deal. That’s what’s going on,” Mr. Johnson said. “But she’s definitely culpable. The security at the annex and so-called consulate was the responsibility of the State Department. Libya was one of the top five foreign policy priorities for the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton. She didn’t do anything. That’s the point.”
In her own words
Mrs. Clinton’s aides also tried to control post-attack information coming out of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.
When Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, visited the embassy, a State Department attorney — referred to by one Republican as a “spy” — was not allowed in his briefing because his security clearance was not high enough.
The next thing Mr. Hicks knew, he was getting a phone call from Cheryl Mills, Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff.
“She was very upset,” Mr. Hicks told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
An example of a brief and unsuccessful attempt by Republicans to find Mrs. Clinton culpable occurred in February 2013 at a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire Republican, noted Stevens‘ cable to the State Department on Aug. 15, one month before the attack, in which he said the Benghazi compound could not sustain an assault.
At the witness table sat the nation’s two highest military officials: Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chiefs chairman. Asked whether they discussed the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi with the secretary of state, both men said they had not.
Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, asked what conversations the men had with Mrs. Clinton between the first attack on the diplomatic mission and the next morning when the CIA annex was shelled. Mr. Panetta said he and Gen. Dempsey never spoke with Mrs. Clinton during those critical hours.
When Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, asked whether it was true that Mrs. Clinton never saw Stevens‘ Aug. 15 warning, Gen. Dempsey answered, “Well, I don’t know that she didn’t know about the cable.”
Asked whether he would be stunned if she never saw it, Gen. Dempsey responded, “I would call myself surprised that she didn’t.”
For now, the lone source for a detailed account of what Mrs. Clinton did and did not do regarding Benghazi is — herself.
In January 2013, as her four years as secretary of state came to an end, she sat alone before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to tell the Benghazi story as she saw it.
About Stevens‘ request for more security, she said: “The specific security requests pertaining to Benghazi, you know, were handled by the security professionals in the department. I didn’t see those requests. They didn’t come to me. I didn’t approve them. I didn’t deny them.”
On the talking points, she said: “I wasn’t involved in the talking points process. As I understand it, as I’ve been told, it was a typical interagency process.”
On what she did that night at her desk in Foggy Bottom, she testified: “I participated in a secure videoconference of senior officials from the intelligence community, the White House and DOD. We were going over every possible option, reviewing all that was available to us, any actions we could take.” (SEE REPORT BELOW)
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/13/hillary-clinton-all-but-erased-from-tragic-story-o/?page=4#ixzz2yuZTRysO
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Jerry Broussard
EXCLUSIVE – WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group is planning to release, through its liberal imprint Convergent Books, a manuscript titled God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships.
Is the Christian world about to suffer through another World Vision moment?
The book’s author, Matthew Vines, is a homosexual activist and Bible revisionist known for manipulating Christian terminology to advance the counter-Christian homosexualist agenda.
Despite his frequent use of a Christian-like lexicon, Vines surprisingly admits to running an apostate enterprise that he calls The Reformation Project. An unabashed denier of Biblical teaching on sexual morality, Vines has publicly acknowledged that his goal is to “reform church teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity.” The book is scheduled to be published on April 22, 2014.
In an email sent to BarbWire, a source with unspecified ties to Multnomah wrote the following:
With a little help… I recently followed a few breadcrumbs – connected some dots – and the picture turned out to be pretty disturbing. I know for a fact that there are certain individuals (whistleblowers, if you will) who believe this information should become public, but there is immense pressure from within Multnomah Publishers to keep this under wraps, and not allow entities in the NRB Association/Evangelical orbit to learn about it.
Multnomah is a long-trusted name in the world of Christian publishing. It is now called WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group. Over the years the company has published scores of Biblically orthodox works by authentic Christ-followers like Randy Alcorn, Kay Arthur and Dr. David Jeremiah. The company has also published manuscripts by Mother Teresa.
Continued the email:
A little over a year ago, WaterBrook [Multnomah] announced the formation of a new imprint, called Convergent. From this article [in Publishers Weekly] you can see where it’s going: “Stated [WaterBrook Multnomah president Stephen W. Cobb], ‘The audience for Convergent Books represents a growing movement of consumers. These readers typically don’t see themselves as either liberal or conservative, evangelical or mainline. Yet they frame their spiritual journey in Christian terms, and they’re absolutely passionate about what theologian Brian McLaren has called, “the sacred endeavor of loving God and neighbor, stranger, alien, outsider, outcast and enemy.”
Publishers Weekly further explained the connection:
The imprint will be based in Colorado Springs, Colo., and headed by Stephen W. Cobb, who has been president and publisher of the WaterBrook imprint since 2001. With the acquisition of Multnomah Books in 2006, a Multnomah imprint was added to Cobb’s portfolio. …
The email to BarbWire provides more context:
An “imprint” in the publishing world is like a mask – the name and logo of the entity may be unique, but the same staff, editors, executives, promoters, are behind the book as are behind those put out by other “imprints” (i.e., directly from Multnomah, and wearing that brand/mask). So Multnomah is now consciously trying to hide from NRB [National Religious Broadcasters] and its members the fact that it is putting out this new project. Insiders are reporting threats should they release any such information outside the company, but I believe Multnomah authors have a right to see the full picture of the company with whom they’re partnering. (Though we should try and protect those who are under threat.)
It is reasonable to speculate that Multnomah is trying to cover up its fast-growing connection to sexual sin activism, and furtively avoid the kind of widespread scandal and Christian backlash that took place after World Vision abandoned clear Biblical teaching on sexual immorality. World Vision had recently embraced the sodomy-centered and counter-Biblical notion of so-called “same-sex marriage,” only to quickly reverse course and publicly ask the global Christian community for forgiveness.
Multnomah appears poised to make the same mistake.
The Heritage Foundation has put together the impact of Obamacare in pictures. This is visual evidence that Obamacare is not only not working, but it is destructive. Above is but one of those pictures which reveals the economic impact of Obamacare on 27 year olds.
The accompanying full pictures below looks at areas ranging from canceled policies, reduced choices, new taxes and more.
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Actress Kirsten Dunst is feeling the wrath of militant feminist who sent a resounding reminder that their views are the only correct views when it comes to gender and gender relations. Any other ideas are shot down as blasphemy and the messenger degraded relentlessly. During a recent interview with the UK division of Harper Bazaar, Dunst shared her ideas about feminism in a way that is counter to the Hollywood and Democrat perspective that is tossed in the faces of Americans by the likes of Lena Dunham, Sandra Fluke, Kathy Gifford, and others.
Dunst’s perspective was a view of women and men in the more traditional sense and that won the ire feminists who came out in droves to attack her. What she shared is a belief held by many others who are not associated with the radical, militant feminists.
“I feel like the feminine has been a little undervalued… We all have to get our own jobs and make our own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being the mother, cooking – it’s a valuable thing my mum created. And sometimes, you need your knight in shining armor. I’m sorry. You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s why relationships work…”
* Erin Gloria Ryan, who writes for the far-left feminist site Jezebel, said, “Kirsten Dunst is not paid to write gender theory so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that she’s kind of dumb about it.” She unleashed her disdain for Dunst’s opinion, which apparently Ryan believes she shouldn’t share since she is not paid to do so, in the title of her article “Kirsten Dunst Thinks Ladies In Relationships Should Wife the F**k Out.”
* Stacy Ritzen from Uproxx called Dunst “insufferable” for daring to have these traditional opinions and, even worse, voice them.
This type of hate-filled rant from the left should come as no surprise since the left and their militant feminist wing have in the past displayed their hypocrisy in the policing of thought and action to fit their need. On one hand, many of them chided Sarah Palin, during her run as VP on the GOP presidential ticket in 2008, for having so many kids and not staying home. The left wanted to destroy Sarah, so that was one method of attack that they used. Then, four years later, militant feminists and others on the far-progressive left attacked Ann Romney, wife of then presidential candidate Mitt Romney, of never holding a ‘real job’ because she was a stay-at-home-mom.
The militant feminists on the left have waged a war on traditional values when it comes to marriage and gender. Dare to engage in conversation with ideas counter to what they believe and they’ll make you pay with their wrath.
Will Republican Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn run for President in 2016? That is the question that has been mulled around in the minds of many. According to an article at Real Clear Politics, Blackburn is not ruling out a possible run for president if she sees an opportunity.
If there’s a door to kick down, she’s willing to kick it down,” the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. “These are the kinds of events you go to — test the waters, and see what the reaction is.”
Blackburn is a staunch social and fiscal conservative who was first elected to Congress in 2002, and a presidential run by her would be a long shot by any measure.
But with no women known to be plotting a 2016 bid on the Republican side, she has the potential to stir up the pot in a wide-open race for the nomination.
“There is kind of a void to fill there,” the Blackburn aide said of the likely GOP presidential field. “Whenever there’s been a need for leadership or someone to get out there and fight the fight, she’s always been the first in line and she’s not afraid of it. She’s not afraid to go toe to toe with anybody.”
Blackburn tested the waters of her message over the weekend when she spoke at the New Hampshire Freedom Summit. Her words were powerful. The audience showed a positive reaction to things Blackburn said, points that many in the Republican party have seemingly been afraid to say.
She opened up her remarks with an almost immediate attack on Democrat Senator Harry Reid. But, she did so in almost “bless your heart” Southern style.
Oh, Poor Harry! He’s not happy. But, I tell you what, I think Harry Reid knows the exact same thing that you and I know– two hundred and six days from today, we are going take back the U.S. Senate!
Blackburn then shared with a crowd just how much of a direct threat to freedom that President Obama is stating how he treats the office as if he is an imperial President. In regards to his executive fiats to circumvent Congress and the Constitution, she said, “Mr. President, Congress doesn’t pass suggestions. We pass laws. And it’s about time you start following them!” The crowd loved her strong message.
She laid out the stark contrast between democrats and republicans in relation to what each side fights for. Democrats, according to Blackburn, fight for government. Republicans, on the other hand, fight for people, opportunity, and freedom.
The story of Gibson guitars speaks volumes as to big government attack on freedom. The company, based in Tennessee, was targeted and harassed by the feds long before the IRS scandal against the Tea Party. Gibson took the raiding of their facilities and the seizing of the wood used for their guitar heads and used it to their advantage. After paying unnecessary fines and getting the wood back, Gibson made special edition “Government Series” guitar. Blackburn said, “Every one of these guitars features an eagle painted on the neck with their talons around the neck of that guitar.” She then used the analogy and said, to resounding crowd approval, “It is time for the federal government to get its talons off the necks of American entrepreneurs!
The resounding message in Blackburn’s speech was freedom and opportunity. She relayed that message by retelling the story of Reagan and how his words brought real hope and change and his policies unleashed opportunity for all. She addressed the issue of poverty not by touting big government entitlement programs, but the expansion of freedom and free markets.
From the Democrats use of women in their focus on free contraception rather than freedom to the importance of school choice; from the importance of commanding fear and respect around the world to strengthening our military, Blackburn covered a variety of areas and said that words with power and strength that so many have longed to hear.
One resounding message that all in attendance left with after Blackburn’s speech can be wrapped up in a quote that she delivered, ““Steel is strong because it knew the hammer and white heat.”
“That’s America,” Blackburn said, “A country is like a metal that gets stronger under pressure.” With those words, Blackburn let everyone know that she is ready for the battle against big government progressivism and, if we all stand together on principle, we can defeat it.
Click HERE to watch Rep. Blackburn’s speech, beginning at the 19:03 mark, at the New Hampshire Freedom Summit in its entirety.
As the nation began to become familiar with the plight of the family of Cliven Bundy, many of us harkened back to another standoff in which the Federal government attempted to bully it’s outcome: Waco, Texas and the Branch Davidian massacre.
It is telling that in the Nevada case the feds pulled out so quickly, given all they had indicated they were willing to do to resolve the matter to their satisfaction. They had set up a perimeter around the Bundy’s family land, ranch, and home. They had brought in extra artillery, dogs, and snipers. They were beginning the process of stealing more than 300 head of cattle that did not belong to them.
They did so–or so we were told–for the reason of protecting the desert tortoise. But then it was revealed that the Bureau of Land Management had shot far more desert tortoises than the Bundy cattle had even possibly destroyed. We were told they did it because the Bundys had broken federal laws by not paying what amounted to retroactive grazing fees to the federal government. But the Governor of the state of Nevada told us that Bundy had paid every ounce of state tax, met the state requirements, and their family had been improving the property more than 100 years previous.
That approach is at least consistent with the readily documented abuse of eminent domain where the government for any number of reasons–few of them valid–have taken to taking what doesn’t belong to them. Americans then watch as it gets handed over to some multi-national corporation for the “cause” of the “greater good.”
1. Technology – As the Bundy family members were abused, cameras captured it. Not television network cameras, but dozens of cell phone video devices that gave witness to a Bundy aunt being shoved to the ground, and a Bundy son being tazed. All of this while threatening protestors with dogs, brandished weapons and vehicles was captured, uploaded and made viral to the watching world.
2. States’ Rights – As the drama unfolded it became clear that the Governor of Nevada, and the Sheriff of Clark County knew that Cliven Bundy’s family had not only not broken any state law regarding the land, but that they had gone to the enth degree to insure compliance with Nevada laws on the property. The Governor and the Sheriff, to their credit, did not favor the feds as a more powerful party in the conflict. Though there must have been pressure from Senator Reid’s office, the administration via the Bureau of Land Management, and local officials who were bought and sold like the Clark County Commissioner who told those coming to support the Bundys to have “funeral plans in place.”
3. Grassroots Response – As other incidents have transpired in the past, the amount of time it took honest information to reach the grassroots and thus the response to the action came to slow. In the massacre in Waco, most of the nation had been sold a single narrative from the limited media outlets covering the events. Similarly the events surrounding the abduction of Elian Gonzales from his family in Florida and deportation to Cuba took place in such a response vacuum that by the time Americans knew the real story, the damage was done. With the Bundy ranch, internet outlets by the dozen had competing information with the limited “official news” being released by the networks, and in most cases the alternative sources had it correct and usually a full day or so ahead of the news cycle. By the time afternoon drive hit, when the network news rooms in New York were preparing their first stories, talk radio audiences had already been dialing their elected officials in Washington demanding action.
The majority of Americans saw through the efforts to spin the story in Nevada. Couple that with the leadership failures that the American people view the administration responsible for, from Benghazi to the Affordable Care Act, all it took was the unedited video of federal agents tazing Bundy’s son, followed by his pulling the wires from his chest and continuing to stand his ground for there to be comparisons made to the American revolution.
It’s also important to note that merely pulling back from the Bundy property hasn’t settled the matter for the American people either.
The feds have stolen 352 head of cattle, and will not confirm or deny if they euthanized some or all of them. Recompense must be made. And to be candid, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see if a few ambitious law firms don’t try to convince the Bundy family of the validity of litigation.
Fortunately for the American people, the feds were not able to ultimately bully a simple rancher, not for a tortoise, a solar power plant, or a dirty Senator and his administration.
House Speaker John Boehner is reviewing whether the action by Michigan has triggered the constitutional mandate that Congress call such a convention.
Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California recently asked Boehner for clarification as to where the state count stands, and if Michigan has tipped the two-thirds majority needed to make the convention call.
“With the recent decision by Michigan lawmakers, it is important that the House — and those of us who support a balanced budget amendment — determine whether the necessary number of states have acted and the appropriate role of Congress should be in this case,” Hunter wrote to Boehner.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told The Washington Times that the Republican leader will have his lawyers review the request.
What may give the speaker pause in his decision is that several states long ago rescinded their calls for a convention, although there is nothing in the Constitution that allows them to do that.
Also, states have made the requests in differing forms, with some calling to confine such a convention to specific amendments, such as one requiring a balanced federal budget.
For example, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and New Hampshire called for a convention in the 1970s, and all later rescinded the requests. While they were not the only states to rescind the measure, since 2010 the four states have again called for a convention to specifically deal with a balanced-budget amendment.
The resulting confusion, and lack of clear guidance in the Constitution, will have to be sorted out by the congressional leadership since Article 5 says that Congress “shall call a convention for proposing amendments” when requested by enough states.
Under Article 5 of the Constitution, such a convention can be convened when requested by two-thirds of the states, and it is one of two ways to propose amendments to the nation’s founding document.
The other method — by which all previous constitutional amendments have been initiated — requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. Ratifying amendments then require three-fourths of the states to approve.
Many but not all of the states have called for a convention that would specifically seek to balance the budget.
“A balanced budget amendment is long overdue and remains an effective tool to address runaway spending and deficits,” Hunter said.
Unless called to deal with a specific issue, some legal experts warn a “runaway” convention could create chaos.
“Let’s assume that we get Congress to call for a convention, and we are deliberating about one item. Maybe that would stick. But how can you be confident that once you open the door to a constitutional convention, even if for one narrow amendment, that it won’t just become a runaway convention?” said Steve Hayward, a visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
“It seems to me that our Constitution may have problems these days, but I think most conservatives would be very nervous about opening it up to a new convention,” Hayward told Newsmax.
Columnist George Will suggested a good arrangement on the budget issue might be one prescribed by the Goldwater Institute called “The Compact for America.”
Will, writing in his April 10 column, outlines an Article 5 convention focused on writing a narrowly drawn balanced-budget amendment “written precisely enough to preclude evasion by the political class.”
“State legislatures can form a compact — a cooperative agreement — to call a convention for the codified, one-item agenda of ratifying the balanced-budget amendment precisely stipulated in advance,” Will said.
Will notes that in calling for a convention, Congress has no discretion, meaning it is clear that if two-thirds of state legislatures ask, it must happen.”
Conservative radio talk-show host and author Mark Levin also has been out front in pushing for such a convention. In his best-selling book “The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic,” he proposes 11 constitutional amendments that he believes should be considered by the gathering.
And the group Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), headed by Tea Party Patriots co-founder and former spokesman Mark Meckler, is promoting a convention on the webat conventionofstates.com.
“A Convention of States needs to be called to ensure that we are able to debate and impose a complete package of restraints on the misuse of power by all branches of the federal government,” CSG wrote on its website.
Louis Fisher, a scholar-in-residence at the Constitution Project, calls the idea a “gimmick,” especially when it comes to taking up an issue like a balanced budget amendment.
“We always, instead of asking politicians to be responsible, are looking for some outside gimmick. A constitutional convention and amendment would be a constitutional gimmick,” said Fisher, who worked in Congress for 40 years and has testified before congressional panels as far back as the Graham-Rudman Act in 1985.
Fisher counseled caution before attempting to rewrite parts of the Constitution.
“Just think about the amendment to eliminate alcohol. Oh, that worked out!”
Fisher told Newsmax. “We finally had to repeal that, and it became one of the stupidest amendments possible.”
Hayward, at the University of Colorado, noted there are ways for issues to advance without constitutional authority. He cited the Equal Rights Amendment as an example. It was close to being ratified but fell short.
“It’s not always necessary to actually get an amendment of the Constitution to change our constitutional thought,” he said. “Is there anything that feminists wanted in the ERA that they haven’t gotten? They have pretty much gotten what they want over time.”
While some have argued that a rethink of the Constitution might not be a bad idea, Hayward isn’t so sure that it wouldn’t create chaos in the forms of mass lawsuits that would likely land on the Supreme Court’s steps for review.
Having to do the rewriting in public with CSPAN broadcasting every moment might also prove problematic for a modern-day convention, he said.
“The original Constitutional Convention in 1787 met behind closed doors, there was no press coverage and … there were lots of compromises and back-door dealing. You couldn’t do that now. And so it would make it harder.”
Drew Zahn is a WND news editor who cut his journalist teeth as a member of the award-winning staff of Leadership, Christianity Today’s professional journal for church leaders. A former pastor, he is the editor of seven books, including Movie-Based Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching, which sparked his ongoing love affair with film and his weekly WND column, “Popcorn and a (world)view.”
LGBT advocates have launched an effort to disparage the movie online, petition against it and work to make sure “Irreplaceable” isn’t seen in your local theater.
Focus President Jim Daly reports in a blog post that some of the more than 700 theaters nationwide scheduled to show the film in a one-night-only event are starting to back out, intimidated by homosexual activists.
Efforts to shut down the movie are being coordinated through Facebook, Twitter and a Change.org petition begun by Shalom Rosenberg, a homosexual middle school teacher from Belmont, Calif.
An advanced copy of “Irreplaceable” obtained by WND, however, makes almost no reference to homosexuality. Instead, it contrasts the value of committed marriage against society’s rise in easy divorces, out-of-wedlock births and the “hook-up” culture. It follows the journey of New Zealand Focus employee Tim Sisarich on a journey around the world to understand the meaning of family, only to discover a very personal journey into forgiving his own father and becoming the kind of dad his children need.
“In our family relationships we’re floundering,” Daly told WND. “We don’t know what is true; we don’t know what a dad should do. … When you leave ‘Irreplaceable,’ you hopefully will conclude why I need to be a better dad, a better husband, a better mom, a better wife. I think you will leave the theater having a better understanding and a higher motivation to live the life of a higher calling, of sacrifice, of doing the right things to hopefully place your family in the best possible position to honor God.”
Even the sharply leftist HBO comedian Bill Maher has noticed the recent rash of swift and personal attacks against those who publicly speak out for traditional values.
What Did You Say? 
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on April 18, 2014