Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon
Rare Sightings
URL of the Original Posting Site: http://conservativebyte.com/2015/04/rare-sightings/
This is part one of a five-part series by Rita Dunaway. Click here to read the original article on TheBlaze.com.
Perhaps the most unifying conservative trait is the conviction that our Founding Fathers designed an ingenious federal system that we ought to conserve. But as federalism lies dying and our society spirals toward socialism, there is dissension among conservatives about using the procedure the Founders left to the states to conserve it.
Because Article Five’s amendment-proposing convention process has never been used, some have branded it a mystical and dangerous power—a thing shrouded in mystery, riddled with unanswerable questions, and therefore best left alone. Some have literally labeled it a “Pandora’s Box,” the opening of which would unleash all manner of evil upon our beleaguered nation.
Article Five opponents accuse proponents of being reckless with the Constitution. They say we have no idea how a convention would work, who would choose the delegates, how votes would be apportioned, or whether the topic of amendments could be limited.
My task today is to remove the shroud of mysticism by revealing what we do know about an Article Five convention from its text, context, historical precedent, and simple logic.
For starters, we know that the Founders’ whole purpose for including the convention mechanism was to provide a way for the states to bypass Congress in achieving needed constitutional amendments.
An early draft of Article Five vested Congress with the sole power to propose constitutional amendments. Under that version, two-thirds of the states could petition Congress to propose amendments, but it was still Congress that did the proposing. On Sept. 15, 1787, George Mason strenuously objected to this, pointing out that such a system provided no recourse for the states if the national government should become tyrannical, as he predicted it would do.
The result was the unanimous adoption of Article Five in its current form, providing two ways for constitutional amendments to be proposed: Congress can propose them, or the states can propose amendments at a convention called by Congress upon application from two-thirds, or 34, of the states. Regardless of which body proposes the amendments, proposals must be ratified by three-fourths, or 38, of the states in order to become effective.
We also know from history that voting at an Article Five convention would be done on a one-state, one-vote basis. This is the universal precedent set by the 32 interstate conventions that occurred prior to the Constitution’s drafting. It explains why it was unnecessary for Article Five to specify the number of delegates to be sent by each state; the states can send as many delegates as they like, but each state only gets one vote.
We know that state legislatures choose and instruct their delegates to the convention, who act as agents of the state legislatures. Again, this is a matter of universal historical precedent for interstate conventions.
On Nov. 14, 1788, the Virginia General Assembly filed the very first application for an Article Five Convention to propose a bill of rights, aptly branding the convention “a convention of the States” to be composed of “deputies from the several States.”
Because Congress ultimately used its own Article Five power to propose a Bill of Rights, that meeting was rendered unnecessary. But the application demonstrates the contemporaneous understanding that the convention process was state-led. The Supreme Court has likewise referred to the process as a “convention of states.”
Finally, we know that the topic specified in the convention applications does matter. Over 400 applications for an Article Five convention have been filed since the drafting of the Constitution. The reason we have never had one is because there have never been 34 applications seeking a convention for the same purpose. The state applications contain the agenda for an Article Five convention, and until 34 states agree upon a convention agenda, there will be no convention.
Because the authority for an Article Five convention is derived from the 34 state applications that trigger it, the topic for amendments specified in those applications is a binding limitation on the scope of the convention.
The “unanswerable” questions about Article Five do have answers. The unshrouded Article Five convention isn’t a Pandora’s Box at all, because there is no such thing as magic in a box for us to fear—there is only history, law, and reason to guide faithful Americans in tending their government. And precisely because there is no such thing as magic, we’re going to need an effective tool to do the hard work of restoring our Republic.
It’s time to dust off the tool the Founders gave us in Article Five and get started. Click here to learn more about the Convention of States Project.
Rita Martin Dunaway serves as Staff Counsel for The Convention of States Project and is passionate about restoring constitutional governance in the U.S. Follow her on Facebook (Rita Martin Dunaway) and e-mail her at rita.dunaway@gmail.com.
Bob Unruh On 11/03/2014

Obamacare has been challenged in court since it was launched, with charges that it is unconstitutional, violates religious rights, invades privacy and unlawfully orders consumers to purchase a product.
Now, a new lawsuit by four Christian institutions argues the Obama administration is using the law to attack religious groups that oppose the White House’s promotion of abortion.
The plaintiffs allege “the purpose” of Obamacare’s mandate that employers pay for abortion-causing contraception and abortion “is to discriminate against religious organizations.”
The complaint cites then-Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius comparing Obamacare opponents to “people who opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s” and asserting that upholding the law requires the same action as was shown ‘in the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation.’”
Attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom are representing the Association of Christian Schools International, Samaritan Ministries International, Taylor University and Indiana Wesleyan University in the case against Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and others.
The Supreme Court already has ruled the abortion mandate cannot force business owners to violate their faith.
So the White House has offered an “accommodation” in which the abortion-causing drugs and abortion services can be provided to the employees without any paperwork that connects the transactions to the employer.
The Christian organizations contend, however, the Obama rules still impose a burden, or duty, on them.
“They believe that God has condemned the intentional destruction of innocent human life. They hold, as a matter of religious conviction, that it would be sinful and immoral for them intentionally to participate in, pay for, facilitate, enable, or otherwise support access to abortion, which destroys human life,” the complaint explains.
“They hold that one of the prohibitions of the Ten Commandments (‘thou shalt not murder’) precludes them from facilitating, assisting in, serving as the conduct for, or enabling the use of drugs and devices that can and do destroy very young human beings in the womb. The health benefits they provide to their employees reflect these convictions.”
The case alleges the Obama administration is violating the Administrative Procedure Act, the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, the Free Speech Clause, the Establishment Clause, the Free Exercise Clause and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Further, evidence suggests religious believers who object to abortion-causing drugs are deliberately being targeted, the case claims.
“The Final Mandate forces the plaintiffs to facilitate government-dictated education and counseling concerning abortion that directly conflicts with their religious beliefs and teaching,” the lawsuit states. “Facilitating this government-dictated speech directly undermines the express speech and messages concerning the sanctity of life that the plaintiffs seek to convey.”
Further, the government’s demand “advances no compelling governmental interest” and such drugs already are commonly available through “numerous alternative mechanisms.”
The government easily could provide the “benefits,” the lawsuit said, or “the government could simply exempt all conscientiously objecting organizations,
just as it has already exempted the small subset of nonprofit religious employers that are referred to in Section 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) or (iii) of the Internal Revenue Code.”
The government, through its actions, already admits that the mandate is not part of any “compelling interest.”
“The Final Mandate was promulgated by government officials, and supported by non-governmental organizations, who strongly
oppose religious teachings and beliefs regarding marriage, family, and life,” the case states.
“Defendant [former HHS Secretary Kathleen] Sebelius, for example, has long been a staunch support of abortion rights and a vocal critic of religious teachings and beliefs regarding abortion and contraception,” the complaint continues. “On Oct. 4, 2011, six days after the comment period for the original Interim Final Rule ended, Defendant Sebelius gave a speech at a fundraiser for NARAL Pro-Choice America. She told the assembled crowd that ‘we are in a war.’
“She further criticized individuals and entities whose beliefs differed from those held by her and the others at the fundraiser, stating: ‘Wouldn’t you think that people who want to reduce the number of abortions would champion the cause of widely available, widely affordable contraceptive services? Not so much,’” the complaint states.
“On July 16, 2013, Secretary Sebelius further compared opponents of the Affordable Care Act generally to ‘people who opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s,’ stating that upholding the Act requires the same action as was shown ‘in the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation.’”
That attitude leads to the conclusion that the administration is intending to discriminate against religious organizations, the complaint says.
“It cannot be plausibly maintained that the fate of the entire enterprise rests in any measurable way on forcing these four plaintiffs to facilitate access to four drugs and devices – which represent one-fifth of the one of the 143 required items,” the case says.
“In any event, the government has already conceded that it has no interest in imposing the mandate upon religious employers like the plaintiffs,” it says.
So Washington’s “accommodation,” which “does not sufficiently diminish their ethical objection to complicity with sin,” still “conscripts the plaintiffs into the government’s scheme, hijacking their health plans and using them as conduits for the delivery of life-destroying drugs and devices to members of their religious communities.”
The government still demands that the Christian groups identify to the government their insurance policy administrators, play a “central role in facilitating free access to abortifacient services” and make them victim to “a shell game that attempts to disguise the religious organization’s role as the central cog in the government’s scheme for expanding access to contraceptive and abortifacient services.”
The case was filed in federal court in Colorado.
“The government should not force religious organizations to be involved in providing abortion pills to their employees,” said ADF Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor. “The best way to respect everyone’s freedom would have been to extend the existing religious exemption to religious non-profits in addition to churches. The administration has failed in its duty to uphold the freedoms guaranteed to every American under the Constitution and federal law. These religious organizations had hoped to avoid this action, but the cause of religious conscience and liberty compelled them to take this step.”
Added ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot: “All Americans should oppose unjust laws that force people – under threat of punishment – to give up their fundamental freedoms in order to provide insurance. That’s no different for these Christian organizations, which simply want to abide by the very faith they espouse. The government is forbidden from punishing people of faith for making decisions consistent with that faith.”
There have been multitudes of lawsuits filed over Obamacare, and WND reported only a few days ago that another case over the same contraception mandate issue resulted in a loss for Obama.
It was a federal judge in Florida who ruled that the government’s latest revisions to the mandate still “don’t do enough to protect people of faith.”
The ruling came from Judge James Moody Jr. in a suit by Ave Maria University, which charged the Obamacare requirement violates the faith on which it operates.
The judge said: “Defendants do not dispute that Ave Maria is a nonprofit Catholic university purposed with ‘educat[ing] students in the principles and truths of the Catholic faith.’ … One such element of the Catholic faith that Ave Maria holds and professes concerns the sanctity of life. Ave Maria ‘believes that each human being bears the image and likeness of God, and therefore any abortion – including through post-conception contraception – ends a human life and is a grave sin. Ave Maria also believes that sterilization and the use of contraception are morally wrong.’”
He said the “rule” that was intended to provide an “accommodation” to faith members was not a satisfactory solution.
“After dozens of court rulings, the government still doesn’t seem to get that it can’t force faith institutions to violate their beliefs,” said a spokesman for that legal team, assembled by the Becket Fund. “Fortunately, the courts continue to see through the government’s attempts to disguise the mandate’s religious coercion.”

The New York State Democratic Committee is bullying people into voting next week with intimidating letters warning that it can easily find out which slackers fail to cast a ballot next Tuesday.
“Who you vote for is your secret. But whether or not you vote is public record,” the letter says.
“We will be reviewing voting records . . . to determine whether you joined your neighbors who voted in 2014.”
The letter and accompanying post card was criticized even by party members, with one Democratic consultant saying it was the wrong way to inspire votes.
“It’s a threatening letter. It’s a scare piece that is unnecessary and inappropriate,” the insider said.
Brooklyn and Manhattan residents who received the note Wednesday were furious, calling it an attempt to browbeat them into showing up at the polls.
“I’m outraged. Whether I vote or not is none of your business!” said a Manhattan voter, who was so incensed that she complained to a local Democratic leader.
“The letter is ludicrous and menacing,” said the voter, who requested anonymity.
The woman also received a report card of her voting record, pointing out that she had failed to vote in two of the last four elections.
Overall, the notices were sent out to 1 million registered Democrats who had failed to vote in previous midterm elections, according to the group.
The committee — chaired by former Gov. David Paterson — defended the scare tactic, calling it standard practice throughout the country.
“This flier is part of the nationwide Democratic response to traditional Republican voter-suppression efforts, because Democrats believe our democracy works better when more people vote, not less,” said Peter Kauffmann, a committee spokesman.
“The difference between Democrats and Republicans is they don’t want people to vote and we want everyone to vote.”
Paterson declined to comment.
The mailer has a phone number on it that goes to Election Protection, a nonpartisan voting organization.
The organization said it had received a “significant” number of calls about the letter.
Such attempts to shame people to vote — what politicos call “social pressure” or peer pressure — has become more common place and was used by the Obama campaign in 2012, sources said.
A Yale University study in 2008 found that voter participation increased substantially after lazy voters received letters telling them their spotty voting history was a public record that would be scrutinized.
The notice includes a “vote report card” rating New Yorkers’ voting records as “excellent,” “good,” “fair” or “incomplete.”
“Many organizations monitor turnout in your neighborhood and are disappointed by the inconsistent voting of many of your neighbors,” it says.
The letter came a week before heavily favored Democratic Gov. Cuomo faces off against Republican Rob Astorino.
Cuomo was not behind the shame letters, party sources insisted.
But Astorino scoffed, “Andrew Cuomo’s thuggish tactics just crossed the line into creepy territory . . . Threatening and intimidating people is not how honorable elected leaders operate.”
Renewable energy development could disrupt productive farmland and kill agriculture jobs in the Imperial Valley, farmers and conservationists argued at a public meeting on the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan.
Unprecedented in scope and scale, the plan lays the ground rules for the next quarter-century of solar, wind and geothermal development across 22.5 million acres of California desert. In Imperial County, it could open more than 700,000 acres to solar and geothermal development — largely on disturbed private land — while designating nearly 900,000 new acres for conservation.
Policymakers and some renewable energy advocates have hailed the plan, which was released last month, as a landmark in the fight against climate change. Others, though, say the desert is being asked to carry too heavy a burden, arguing that regulators should prioritize rooftop solar and other small-scale renewables.
Among the plan’s critics are some Imperial Valley residents who packed Monday night’s public meeting at the Imperial Irrigation District office in El Centro. Carolyn Allen, whose family farms staple crops in the northern end of the valley, said the renewable energy plan would be “devastating to our local economy.”
“The precious farmland that we have down here should not be industrialized for so-called green energy projects,” Allen said.
Donna Tisdale — president of the grassroots group Backcountry Against Dumps, of which Allen is a member — struck a similar note. Tisdale argued the plan would turn Imperial County into a “renewable energy sacrifice zone.”
“Designating most if not all of Imperial County’s irrigated farmland as a development focus area is, in my opinion, inappropriate, unconscionable, disproportionate, and outright exploitation of one of the nation’s most productive breadbaskets — and also one of the most socioeconomically vulnerable areas,” she said.
The plan’s proponents have painted renewable energy as an economic lifeline for Imperial County, where the unemployment rate hovers around 25 percent. But commenters Monday night said the plan would eliminate stable, long-term agriculture jobs, replacing them mostly with short-term construction jobs — many of which could be filled by workers from outside the area.

“While we all support renewable energy, the future of agricultural in the Imperial Valley is at stake, as are the economic futures of Imperial Valley workers and businesses,” he said.
For years, environmental groups have urged regulators to promote development on previously disturbed lands, rather than on untouched landscapes and ecosystems. The agencies that crafted the renewable energy plan largely heeded those calls, proposing many renewable energy zones on private lands that have already been disturbed by agriculture or industrial activity.
On Monday, conservationists criticized the idea of fast-tracking development on Imperial Valley farmlands. Local agricultural fields, they said, provide critical foraging grounds for birds — not to mention produce crops that are shipped around the state and the world.
The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan does not actually approve any projects. Rather, it establishes guidelines for the regulatory agencies that review proposals, creating so-called “development focus areas” where renewable energy projects would be fast-tracked.
In the Imperial Valley, the Imperial County government would be responsible for approving or denying most projects proposed for private land. Andy Horne — who works in the county’s natural resources development office — said county officials are concerned about developing agricultural land, and that those concerns will be reflected in an upcoming update to the county’s land-use plan.
“We’re looking very hard at the opportunities that might exist at the Salton Sea — not only for energy development but for conservation,” Horne said.
Under the plan’s “preferred alternative,” which has served as the starting point for public debate, a wide swath of land across central Imperial County is designated for development. To the east and west are proposed conservation lands, designed to protect fringe-toed lizards, shorebirds, burrowing owls and Swainson’s hawk — among other species.
The preferred alternative leaves the Imperial Sand Dunes, which are already designated for recreation, mostly untouched. It also proposes designating the Ocotillo Wells off-highway vehicle zone as a dedicated recreation area, which would be protected from renewable energy development.
The plan doesn’t include the southern edge of the Salton Sea in a development focus area, even though new geothermal hotspots could emerge as the sea recedes. Unless something changes before the plan is finalized, geothermal projects proposed for those areas would not be fast-tracked — a potential obstacle for Salton Sea advocates, who see new geothermal development as key to funding the sea’s restoration.
Imperial Irrigation District employee Shayne Ferber said the district, which has supported efforts to boost geothermal development, is “generally supportive” of the renewable energy plan. Like most commenters, though, he requested that the 90-day public comment period be expanded — a request that regulators seem likely to grant, since most stakeholders are still wading through the 8,000-page document.
Commenters also criticized the four agencies that crafted the renewable energy plan — the federal Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the California Energy Commission — for not getting more input from local residents.
“If you took the time to talk to some of the people that have either lived in the area or had to move away from the areas around the solar panels because they were just not livable anymore — or the farmers that have been affected by having their fields adjacent to huge solar projects — you would see that it is just very, very destructive,” Allen said.
Regulators will hold nine more public meetings on the renewable energy plan over the next month, including one at UC Riverside’s Palm Desert campus at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7.
Energy Reporter Sammy Roth can be reached at Sammy.Roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622 and @Sammy_Roth.

On Sunday, Judicial Watch tweeted that it was good to see Tom Fitton and the El Paso Times taking the ISIS terror threat seriously:
However, when it comes to the rest of the media, there is nothing but silence.Beyond Fox News and a handful of alternative news websites, few are mentioning the Judicial Watch report. The organization cited sources within the government that said an ISIS attack on the United States emanating from Ciudad Juarez is “coming soon.”
“The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism makes no reference to Islamist terror threats, despite last year’s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting– both carried out by radical Muslim Americans,” writes Bill Gertz for the Washington Free Beacon.
The most prominent threat to America, according to the FBI and the government, comes from “eight types of domestic extremist movements – none motivated by radical Islam.”
“They include anti-government militia groups and white supremacy extremists, along with ‘sovereign citizen’ nationalists, and anarchists. Other domestic threat groups outlined by the FBI assessment include violent animal rights and environmentalist extremists, black separatists, anti- and pro-abortion activists, and Puerto Rican nationalists.”
According to the report, “lone actors” and “small cells” inspired by “anarchist, anti-government militias, white supremacy, and sovereign citizen extremists… will engage in lethal violence, although it is most likely the majority of violent criminal acts will continue to be characterized as serious crimes, such as arson and assault, but which are not, ultimately lethal.”
DHS, FBI, DOJ, State Police: Political Opposition in America Are the Real TerroristsThe absence of Islamic terror in the FBI assessment is hardly surprising given previous reports produced by the agency and the Department of Homeland Security.
In June Infowars.com reported on Attorney General Eric Holder’s “Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee,” a revamped version of Janet Reno’s post Oklahoma City bombing task force. It will include members from the FBI and Justice Department’s National Security Division.
“We face an escalating danger from self-radicalized individuals within our own borders,” Holder said in a video posted on the Department of Justice website. “As the nature of the threat we face evolves to include the possibility of individual radicalization via the Internet, it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home.”
“Holder pointed to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report that claims domestic terrorism has produced more than two dozen incidents since 9/11 as justification for the task force, specifically noting the Boston Marathon bombing and Fort Hood shooting,” writes Mikael Thalen.
The Department of Homeland Security has produced a number of reports warning patriot groups and others pose a threat to national security.
In 2012, the agency produced Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970-2008 (PDF), a document characterizing Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.
“While largely omitting Islamic terrorism – the report fails completely to mention the 1993 World Trade Center bombing – the study focuses on Americans who hold beliefs shared by the vast majority of conservatives and libertarians and puts them in the context of radical extremism,” writes Paul Joseph Watson.
In 2011, the DHS produced several PSAs, or Public Service Announcements, depicting non-Muslim Americans as terrorists. “Far from representing some superficial nod to political correctness, this is in fact a deliberate effort by the feds to characterize predominantly white, middle class, politically engaged Americans as domestic extremists. It’s all part of the agenda to frame dissent against big government as dangerous radicalism,” Watson wrote in August, 2011.In 2009, Infowars.com reported on “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” a DHS produced document that characterized patriot groups as potential terrorists.
Prior to the release of the DHS report, Alex Jones and Infowars.com reported on a Missouri
Information Analysis Center (MIAC) document on the “Modern Militia Movement” dated February 20, 2009, that “describes supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists and instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties,” we reported on March 11, 2009.
The documents produced by the government demonstrate the establishment is more concerned about political opposition at home than Islamic terrorism abroad that has the potential of crossing over an unprotected border.
The Judicial Watch report reveals the possibility of a terror attack by a group that has repeatedly demonstrated its desire to attack civilians and military forces alike. The establishment media is now ignoring this threat.
Leo Hohmann is a news editor for WND. He has been a reporter and editor at several suburban newspapers in the Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, areas and also served as managing editor of Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh, North Carolina.

A Utah congressman wants to strip federal agencies of their paramilitary power, which is increasingly being used to intimidate American citizens, he says, destroying whatever small level of trust the people still have in their government.
Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, introduced HR 4934, also called the Regulatory Agency De-militarization Act or RAD, in late June, and it has since gained more than 30 co-sponsors in the House.
“When we get back to Washington (from August break) we’ll get right back to working on this RAD bill, because people know it’s just so unnecessary for the federal government to have this kind of power,” Stewart told WND. “You’ve really got to twist yourself into a pretzel to defend this type of power.”
In recent years, nearly every federal regulatory agency – from the U.S. Department of Education, to the Food and Drug Administration and the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – has deployed some kind of SWAT-type unit with high-powered assault rifles, helmets, menacing black uniforms with faces covered, body armor and militarized armored vehicles.
Stewart said it’s disturbing for Americans to read stories of federal regulators armed to the teeth and breaking into homes and businesses with no reason to think there would be resistance.
Stewart said the root of the problem goes back to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In a state of panic, Congress reacted by passing legislation creating the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Buried in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was language that granted arrest and firearms authority to the criminal investigative wings of federal agencies operating under the U.S. Office of the Inspector General.
“Like a lot of times, we write bad legislation in the heat of a crisis,” Stewart said. “We did it with Dodd-Frank in reaction to the banking crisis. So that’s exactly what happened here; they gave this authority to federal agencies that never had it before. We have to pull it back now, because it creates so much distrust with the America people.
“Survey after survey shows the American people just don’t trust big government anymore and they shouldn’t because this is nothing but an intimidating show of force.”
Americans have seen what the escalation of an event can look like when federal regulators call out tactical paramilitary units. It happened in
Nevada earlier this year at the ranch of Cliven Bundy, when the Bureau of Land Management brought a sniper team to the ranch, killed some of Bundy’s cattle and threatened him with guns over a legal dispute about unpaid grazing fees. The tense standoff finally ended as the BLM backed down in the face of increasing numbers of ranchers and militia groups converging on the scene, many with their own weapons.
But it’s not just the BLM that’s armed like a National Guard infantry unit. The DOE, the FDA, the IRS, the EPA, the Agriculture Department, the Commerce Department, the Social Security Administration and dozens of other agencies have all been arming themselves. And when they have guns, they buy ammunition – lots of ammunition. Even the Postal Service has joined the ranks of federal agencies that have sent out requests to purchase large amounts of ammunition in recent years, prompting people to ask the obvious question: Why?

Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, said his organization is giving its full support to Stewart’s bill, which he believes is long overdue. The reason, he said, is because many times the federal agencies will call out their SWAT units simply because their target holds a gun permit.
“The overwhelming number of gun permit holders are law-abiding, peaceful people. It’s been a long-time concern of our organization, because all this militarization of police is really not good for anyone in the country, from gun owners to anyone else, and it seems like every government organization now has its own SWAT team,” Van Cleave told WND. “But the big question is why do they need that? We have the Posse Comitatus Act that tried to keep the military and police separate, and this seems to be an end-run around that.”
Van Cleave said the military’s mission is very different from the police or regulatory mission.
“Police mission is to come in and resolve a situation as peaceably as possible whereas the military you come in and you kill them, and that’s why we don’t want that in this country,” he said. “Police are to bring peace to a situation, not kill as many people as necessary to get from point A to point B. Police are to try to avoid using deadly force at all cost, not so for the military.”
The other problem Van Cleave sees with the federal SWAT teams is they could easily touch off a violent confrontation, such as almost happened at the Bundy ranch.
“They often dress in all black, they have no name or number on their badge, their faces are often covered, and you really don’t know what is going on as they’re breaking in on you,” he said. “It’s easy to mistake them for a bunch of gang bangers breaking into your house. These no-knock warrants combined with these tactical teams are dangerous to normal citizens. The excuse they give is it’s to stop evidence from being flushed down the toilet. Our civil liberties are far more important than trying to get every little drug dealer in the drug war, which is a failure anyway, and coming in with machine guns.”

Stewart said his bill will be an easy sell in the House. Even some Democrats will support it, he predicts.
“When you ask them what is it you don’t like about this bill it’s almost fun to watch them squirm? Who in the world thinks these agencies need SWAT teams?” he said. “The agencies themselves, they say, ‘Oh, it’s not a SWAT team it’s a Special Event Tactical Team or SETT.’ There is no difference. The American people are smart enough to know that.”
The agencies also have not been very forthcoming with information about their SWAT teams, Stewart said.
“We would ask these agencies, well, what are the rules of engagement for using these tactical units and they would say ‘oh we can’t tell you that,’” he said. “So we would ask how often are they used and under what circumstances and it’s, ‘Oh, we can’t tell you that either.’ They can’t say how many times or where they’re deployed.”
Stewart said the House leaders will likely wait until after the November election to send their bill to the Senate.
“We’re going to get a number of Democrat co-sponsors on this,” he said. “That is very important to us, because we can’t send what appears to be an overly partisan bill to the Senate on this. But the House has sent hundreds of pieces of legislation to the Senate, and they die sitting on Harry Reid’s desk. We’re going to keep working on it, keep building co-sponsors, particularly Democratic co-sponsors, so it will take that amount of time (until after the November elections) anyway. We could send it right now, but I want it to pass.
“Sometimes you do things for the sake of messaging, but this is something I hope actually becomes law. I think we’ve got something here we can actually get through the Senate and put on president’s desk.”
Stewart said that while the problem began under President George W. Bush, the rate of militarization has increased under President Obama.

The RAD Act has three pieces:
“The militarization of agencies is only a symptom of a much deeper and more troubling problem within Washington – that the federal government no longer trusts the American people,” Stewart said. “When all of us feel that we are no longer seen as citizens but as potential dangerous suspects – a relationship of trust is impossible. I’m working to restore and rebuild trust – beginning with this effort to defund paramilitary capabilities within federal regulatory agencies.”

Stewart said the average Americans is not even aware of the militarization problem.
“Not so much, but I’ll tell you this, it only takes 30 seconds for them to become a fan of this legislation, because all you have to do is get a list of the agencies that have these SWAT teams and show how they can be abused and they say, absolutely, something has to be done to stop this,” Stewart said. “I think we live in a time where most people are highly attuned to that and highly sensitive to the abuses of government power; and we should be, and let’s diffuse some of that power instead of sitting by and letting it increase.”
He said he understand that federal agents must be capable of protecting themselves.
“But what we have observed goes far beyond providing necessary protection. When there are genuinely dangerous situations involving federal law, that’s the job of the Department of Justice, not regulatory agencies like the FDA or the Department of Education. Not only is it overkill, but having these highly-armed units within dozens of agencies is duplicative, costly, heavy handed, dangerous and destroys any sense of trust between citizens and the federal government.”
WND’s extensive reporting on such developments in police actions range from plans to put iris scanners on school buses to an elderly vet being arrested for asking public officials to speak louder at a meeting.
There also was a cop going ballistic on a wheelchair-bound man, the feds’ biosurveillance efforts to grab Americans’ medical records and a decision by the Supreme Court that greenlighted the detention of Americans.
I’m a huge fan of retired radio talk show host, Neal Boortz. I always loved how he fearlessly defended the Constitution and the principles of
liberty while unapologetically expressing exactly what was on his mind at any given moment. The “talkmaster”, as he referred to himself, seemed to be an equal opportunity offender and that made his show more edgy and entertaining. I loved it…even on the rare occasions that I was the one he was offending. Boortz still broadcasts a daily rant on his former flagship station, Atlanta’s WSB. So, when his July 3rd rant dealt with the subject of democracy, I thought it was particularly timely considering that it is a term that is constantly thrown around by politicians, pundits and members of the media when referring to the US system of government.
In his rant, Neal Boortz reminds us that “Democracy means majority rule — what the majority wants the majority gets. A constitutional republic operates on the rule of law, not the demands of the mob”. Many would no doubt wonder what is so wrong with a government by majority rule? On the surface, it sounds like a good thing, but as Winston Churchill said, “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” We have a population that is so braindead, (thanks, in part, to the government education system), that many of the average idiots on the street do not even know that Joe Biden is the Vice President. Frankly, that is a fact that I wish I could forget as well, but I digress.
When people are so woefully ignorant, do we really want them in charge of creating policy that affects all of us? Although many consider democracy to be an American ideal, the founding fathers were very clear in their opposition to it, which is why they constructed a system that
would protect us from ourselves.
John Adams: Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Thomas Jefferson: A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.
James Madison: Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant.
John Marshall: Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.
Boortz also poses a hypothetical scenario in which the government seizes all bank accounts over $50,000, and how easy it would be to gain public support for such an act, despite the illegality of it. We have already seen a degree of this example play out. I think we all know this guy:
Immediately after this exchange, Barack Obama’s sycophants sicced all kinds of scrutiny upon this average American Joe who dared to question the anointed one. Not only do we have a right to practice dissent, we have an obligation. Even Hillary Clinton in all of her shrillness, said “We are Americans, and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.” That is probably the only thing that she and I agree upon. The problem is, we have a population that is too lazy and stupid to hold the our leaders accountable for their lawlessness, and the ruling class knows it. We had better start exercising dissent or that is going to be the end of the ballgame.
The difference between a democracy and a republic is not just a matter of semantics. This constitutional republic gives us the right to engage in speech that allows us to offend and to be offended, as speech that is innocuous needs no protection. Although, in this current thinskinned, chip-on-shoulder society, it would seem that even the most benign speech is now considered offensive. Imagine what would have happened to Neal Boortz’s career if the majority had the ability to silence speech that they found outrageous. This constitutional republic gives us the right to assemble in places like Murrieta, California, (where the tyranny of this government is currently on full display), to the point that federal riot police may be released on American citizens in the illegal immigration showdown. Imagine what our country would look like as a democracy with millions of illegals allowed to tip the scales. This constitutional republic gives us the right to bear arms, to protect ourselves from enemies foreign and domestic…including our own government. I hope it does not come to that. These are only a few of the rights that we are guaranteed. Rights are like muscle…use them or lose them. To retain them is going to require much vigilance, but most things that are worth having require effort.
The rule of law is the framework that keeps our freedoms in place. If we start allowing that framework to be torn down beam by beam, even those who have not been paying attention will some day wonder how they ended up buried under the rubble of tyranny. If we allow this great American experiment in liberty to set into the horizon like the sun, the night that follows may be very long and very dark. Are you really prepared for that?
Follow Neal Boortz on Twitter @Talkmaster.
Follow me on Twitter @ThatChristyChic.
“Unfortunately, the United States, the world’s largest arms exporter, has signed but not ratified the treaty,” said Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Goldring went on to lament that the U.S. Senate doesn’t seem disposed to act on approving the treaty and likely won’t “for many years.”
“You’re correct Ms. Goldring. Keep your commie hands off our guns, and your nose out of our business. GET OUT!” JB
For now, it seems Goldring’s gauge of the political climate in the Senate is accurate. In a letter sent to President Barack Obama last October, 50
senators laid out six reasons the president should refuse to present the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to the Senate for ratification. Among the objections is the grant to “foreign sources of authority” the power to “impose judgment or control on the U.S.”
“You read that correctly. This treaty relinquishes our sovereignty to a panel of “who-knows-who”, made up of people who hate, or are jealous of America. They get to pass judgment and impose punishment on “offending” Americans. THAT’S NUTS!” JB
“The simple truth is the ATT does not affect the domestic trade in weapons in the United States. It’s a treaty about international arms transfers, not sales within the United States,” she added.
In case a reader would rather read the text of the treaty than to take the word of a UN representative, the English-language version of the Arms
Trade Treaty can be found here. Beyond that, here are a few provisions of the treaty that would, despite Goldring’s assurances, directly and immediately impact the full expression of the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
• Article 2 of the treaty defines the scope of the treaty’s prohibitions. The right to own, buy, sell, trade, or transfer all means of armed resistance, including handguns, is denied to civilians by this section of the Arms Trade Treaty.
• Article 3 places the “ammunition/munitions fired, launched or delivered by the conventional arms covered under Article 2” within the scope of the treaty’s prohibitions, as well.
• Article 4 rounds out the regulations, also placing all “parts and components” of weapons within the scheme.
• Perhaps the most immediate threat to the rights of gun owners in the Arms Trade Treaty is found in Article 5. Under the title of “General Implementation,” Article 5 mandates that all countries participating in the treaty “shall establish and maintain a national control system, including a national control list.” This list should “apply the provisions of this Treaty to the broadest range of conventional arms.”
Goldring thinks such steps are but the first in a path that leads to “better control” of the trade of weapons. There is little doubt who would be left in control of firearms if Goldring gets her way. The United Nations, acting through domestic enforcers, would require registration of weapons, which Americans recognize as the first step toward their control and outright confiscation.
“Disarm America and invasion is easier. History is full of statements of tyrants saying the number one reason for not considering invading America is that so many of our citizens own guns and know how to use them.’
“Just in case you need another reminder; According to Jefferson himself, the number one reason for the Second Amendment is to deter “would be tyrants.” That is THE reason the Leftist/Marxist/Socialist Democrats want to disarm America. A citizenry that can’t fight back is easy to control and conquer. History is loaded with such examples. Tyranny is stopped, or slowed down when patriotic citizens are ready to lay down their lives for freedom. That requires an armed citizenry.” JB
The right to keep and bear arms was known to our Founders as he ultimate check on the rise of tyrants. Americans jealous of this God-given right know that now is the time to reject the UN’s attempts to repeal the Second Amendment and that organization is the key to safeguarding their gun rights.
For more than half a century, The John Birch Society has offered patriots an opportunity to unite in the cause of preserving the Constitution and enforcing its principles of limited government. Not long after its founding, the JBS launched its project to get the United States out of the United Nations — and this project remains one of the most timely and critical aspects of the JBS agenda.
“I am not now, nor have I ever been, a supporter of the John Birch Society. That is the opinion of Joe A Wolverton, II J.D..” JB
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment, the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com .
(CNSNews.com) — The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency tasked with enforcing workplace discrimination laws, is suing a private American business for firing a group of Hispanic and Asian employees over their inability to speak English at work, claiming that the English-language requirement in a U.S. business constitutes “discrimination.”
Judicial Watch reported Tuesday that the government is accusing Wisconsin Plastics, Inc. of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on “national origin.” The government argues this includes the “linguistic characteristics of a national origin group.”
Irene Garcia, the blog editor and Spanish media liaison for Judicial Watch, called the EEOC’s accusation “ludicrous.”
“That’s ludicrous and an overreaching of government,” Garcia told CNSNews.com. “If you are a private company in the United States, you should be able to require your employees to speak English.”
According to a news release from the EEOC, Chicago Regional Attorney John C. Hendrickson said the Green Bay-based company’s English requirement is based on “superficial” reasoning.
“Our experience at the EEOC has been that so-called ‘English only’ rules and requirements of English fluency are often employed to make what is really discrimination appear acceptable. But superficial appearances are not fooling anyone,” Hendrickson said in the release. “When speaking English fluently is not, in fact, required for the safe and effective performance of a job, nor for the successful operation of the employer’s business, requiring employees to be fluent in English usually constitutes employment discrimination on the basis of national origin — and thus violates federal law.”
But Garcia said the ability to speak English is necessary for employees of Wisconsin Plastics, Inc., but that the employees in question “were not able to speak English at any kind of level that would be considered proficient.”
“In this case some English is necessary to communicate with supervisors and stuff like that, and the EEOC just went after this private company because some employees were being marked down for not having English skills. So that doesn’t really make sense,” she said.
Garcia added that the lawsuit, filed on June 9, is just the latest in a slew of attempts by the EEOC and the Obama administration to go after American businesses for so-called “discrimination.” She cited numerous cases in which the EEOC has accused businesses of discriminating by requiring workers to speak English, running background and criminal checks, and enforcing company-wide restrictions on head coverings, including those worn by some Muslim women.
“We’ve seen some decisions that are kind of radical that we haven’t seen in the past, under Republican or Democrat administrations,” she said, claiming the EEOC under the Obama administration is “on a roll.”
Many lawsuits brought by the EEOC subjectively twist the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include things it was never meant to cover, Garcia added.
“We’re seeing a lot of these kinds of law suits using his civil rights law to sue on behalf of all these different causes that I believe violate the spirit of the law,” Garcia explained.
“In terms of religious and language rights under the Civil Rights Act, that’s what the administration is using to offer and extend protects when really and truly there’s no place for them [in the law],” she said.
This week Americans will enjoy Independence Day with family cookouts and fireworks. Flags will be displayed in abundance. Sadly,
however, what should be a celebration of the courage of those who risked so much to oppose tyranny will instead be turned into a celebration of government, not liberty. The mainstream media and opportunistic politicians have turned Independence Day into the opposite of what was intended.
The idea of opposing — by force if necessary — a tyrannical government has been turned into a celebration of tyrannical government itself!
The evidence is all around us.
How would the signers of the Declaration of Independence have viewed, for example, the Obama Administration’s “drone memo,” finally released last week, which claims to justify the president’s killing American citizens without charge, judge, jury, or oversight? Is this not a tyranny similar to that which our Founders opposed? And was such power concentrated in one branch of government not what inspired the rebellion against the English king in the first place?
“In care you haven’t read the Declaration of Independence recently, I’ve provided a copy for you below.” Jerry Broussard
The “drone memo,” released after an ACLU freedom of information request, purports to establish the president alone as the arbiter of who is or is not a terrorist subject to execution by the US government. There is no due process involved, just the determination of the president. Thus far the only American citizens killed by the president are Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenaged son, but the precedent has been established, according to the memo, that the president has the authority to kill Americans he believes are terrorists.
Even the New York Times, which generally backs whatever US administration is in power, is troubled by the White House’s legal justification to claim the authority to kill Americans. A Times editorial last week concluded that:
…the memo turns out to be a slapdash pastiche of legal theories — some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law — that was clearly tailored to the desired result.
I agree with the New York Times’ conclusion that, “[t]his memo should never have taken so long to be released, and more documents must be made public. The public is still in the dark on too many vital questions.”
Coincidentally, in addition to the “drone memo” released last week, a broader study of the US use of drones was also released by the Stimson Center. The study, co-chaired by Gen. John Abizaid, former U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commander, concluded that contrary to claims that drones help prevent wider conflicts by targeting specific individuals, the use of drones “may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider wars.”
In fact, the study concluded, the use of drones overseas is likely counterproductive. “Civilian casualties, even if relatively few, can anger whole communities, increase anti-US sentiment and become a potent recruiting tool for terrorist organizations,” the study found.
Seven years ago I wrote in an Independence Day column:
Only the safe-guards and limitations that are enshrined in a constitutionally-limited republic can prohibit a nation from lurching toward empire…I hope every person who reads or hears this will take the time to go back and read the Declaration of Independence. Only by recapturing the spirit of independence can we ensure our government never resembles the one from which the American States declared their separation.
On Independence Day we should remember the spirit of rebellion against tyranny that inspired our Founding Fathers to set out our experiment in liberty. We should ourselves celebrate and continue that struggle if we are to keep our republic.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Column 1 Georgia: Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton
Column 2 North Carolina: William Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton
Column 3 Massachusetts: John Hancock Maryland: Samuel Chase William Paca Thomas Stone Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Harrison Thomas Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton
Column 4 Pennsylvania: Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas McKean
Column 5 New York: William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark
Column 6 New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett William Whipple Massachusetts: Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver Wolcott New Hampshire: Matthew Thornton
Reprinted from http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

During an interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained that the Obama administration was getting impatient with Congress.
“[W]e’re not just going to sit around and wait interminably for Congress,” he explained. “We’ve been waiting a year already. The president has tasked his Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson with reviewing what options are available to the president, what is at his disposal using his executive authority to try to address some of the problems that have been created by our broken immigration system.”
“In other words, MORE TYRANNY. Now he isn’t hiding it. He is proud of the fact that he thinks himself King Obama, and doers not have to answer to the Constitution.” JB
Earnest added that, although Obama was exploring executive action, it was
on immigration reform.
“That’s why we’re trying to focus on getting that done,” he concluded.
Obama has been heavily criticized after his 2012 executive decision to defer the deportations of some young illegal immigrants, which critics argue was a key incentive for more children to cross the border illegally.
The United Kingdom, our closest ally and oldest friend, is continuing to move towards
a godless, secular society. They are considering forcing churches to perform gay marriages, they are arresting Christians for speaking against sin, and now they have banned talk of intelligent design in their schools. Soon there will be nothing left to remind us that Britain was once leader of the Christian world. What has happened to the nation that once sent more Christian missionaries out to the world than any other? Can we really call a godless United Kingdom our friend?
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Schools in the United Kingdom are banned from teaching creationism following a clarification of regulations released by the UK government
last week.
The new documents make plain that any school receiving public funds, which includes many church-run schools, will violate the Funding Agreement with the government if it teaches creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to the theory of evolution. In addition, schools are required to teach evolution as the current scientific consensus regarding the origin of Earth’s many species.
“The parties further recognize that the requirement on every academy and free school to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, in any case prevents the teaching of creationism as evidence based theory in any academy or free school,” the government’s new documents say.
Elsewhere, creationism is defined as “any doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution.” Such theories, the agreements say, are roundly rejected by today’s scientists.
“It does not accord with the scientific consensus or the very large body of established scientific evidence; nor
does it accurately and consistently employ the scientific method, and as such it should not be presented to pupils at the Academy as a scientific theory,” the government declares.
Creationism may be brought up when studying religion, but instructors may never present it as a scientific alternative to evolution.
A 2012 poll by AngusReid found that only 17 percent of Britons believed humans were created by God in their original form within the last 10,000 years, while 69 percent believe humans arose through millions of years of evolution. The same poll found that only 30 percent of Americans believe in Darwinian evolution while 51 percent believe humans were created in the last 10,000 years.
The announcement is a win for the British Humanist Association, which has been running a “Teach Evolution, Not Creationism” campaign since 2011.
“We believe that this means that the objectives of the campaign are largely met. We congratulate the Government on its robust stance on this issue,” the organization’s head of public affairs Pavan Dhaliwal said in a statement.
The UK’s decisive prohibition is in stark contrast to the United States. While the Supreme Court has abolished bans on teaching evolution as well as laws requiring that creationism be taught alongside evolution, private schools have extensive leeway in teaching science and many state legislatures have battles over laws affording varying degrees of protection to public school teachers who wish to question evolution.
As recently as this March, Oklahoma’s House advanced a bill by a wide margin that if enacted would provide protections for science teachers to criticize Darwinian theory.

Published: 20 hours ago

Evidence of dozens of U.S. veterans dying as they waited months for appointments and treatment are just the tip of the iceberg – and the real number of deaths could be in the thousands – according to a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who closely follows the issue.
Jessie Jane Duff spent 20 years in the Marines, rising to the rank of gunnery sergeant. She is now on the organizing committee at Concerned Veterans for America. While the government is essentially admitting to about 40 deaths in Phoenix due to long waits and dozens more facilities are under investigation, Duff said the real number of veteran deaths due to the VA bureaucracy in recent years is exponentially higher.
“Yes, I do estimate it’s in the thousands,” she said. “Let’s go to the backlog that they had. Fifty-three veterans died a day just waiting on their benefits in 2011. The VA itself has those numbers. We’re talking about egregious mismanagement, a culture of corruption that was allowing all these executives to give the impression that they had 14 days of waiting time, not months and months of waiting time, so they could get bonuses. So I expect it will be several hundred, if not thousands.”
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Jessie Jane Duff:
Duff said another reason the numbers are likely to soar is because of systemic bureaucracy that grinds the system to a crawl.
“In Albuquerque, New Mexico, veterans were waiting over four months with gangrene, heart disease, brain tumors. I didn’t even know you could wait that long with any of those predicaments. In Harlingen, Texas, in 2010, they decided that men had to come back with three screenings that came out positive before they could get in for a colonoscopy. By that time, it was a Stage Four cancer,” said Duff, who elaborated further on some of the red tape veterans are forced to navigate in Albuquerque.
“It came out that they had eight cardiologists on staff. But only three would work a day, and they would see only two patients per day. I’m not sure if that was two patients per cardiologist or two total. Regardless, the report I read determined that they were seeing in a week what most medical facilities could see in two days,” she said.
Duff said a final death count may prove difficult since many vets ultimately gave up on the VA system and sought care in the private sector. Duff said the most troubling aspect of this story is not just incompetent mismanagement but the blatant deceit perpetrated by VA officials around the nation.
“What disappoints me the most out of this is that it was deliberate. I used to think it was just mismanagement. I’ve been reporting on mismanagement for the past year. Now I realize it was all deliberate and it was all in the name of an almighty dollar,” she said. “I’m so shocked and saddened to know that executives at the highest level were training their employees to hide numbers, training their employees to make it look like veterans were only waiting 14 days.”
Duff added, “They were not realizing the reality nor did they care about the reality that this was going to result in many of these veterans’ deaths. And we’re talking often about our Vietnam era and older. Many of those men are not in a position where they can heal quickly and go without medical care for sustained periods of time.
“It’s tragic that these executives became so removed, so removed from the very veterans they were helping that they never looked in the eyes of these family members or went to one of the funerals or watched the pain and suffering that these men went through.”
Federal spending on veterans’ health care is up significantly in the Obama administration, and the president vowed last week to fight for as much additional money as needed to fix the system. That approach to the problem leaves Duff incensed.
“Oh please. I just want to scream when I hear somebody say, ‘Let’s slap more money onto it,’” Duff said. “They have a $150 billion budget. They requested $160 billion for the next fiscal year. They’ve never been denied anything from the Senate or the House, as far as their budget goes. Thirty-nine percent is going to medical costs. Thirty-nine (percent) of the $150 billion.”
Duff reports that 52 percent of taxpayers dollars spent at the Phoenix VA went to administrative costs, including the purchase of expensive office furniture. Another six million was spent on a sparsely attended national conference in Orlando, Florida.
“They’ve wasted thousands and thousands and millions of dollars,” she said. “The money is simply being mismanaged.”
She is also seething at Senate Democrats for blocking the VA Accountability Act, which easily passed the House and would give the secretary of Veterans’ Affairs. However, GOP attempts to approve the plan in the Senate were blocked by Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.
“Sanders has another bill of his own, another $20 billion in a pork-funded bill that he’s trying to get through the Senate. He used two false arguments. His first false argument is we need time to review the bill. It’s a three-page bill, 27 lines, Bernie. How slow do you need to read?”
Duff explained, “The second false argument is that he said this would give a greater opportunity when we change administrations for executives to be fired and that would be unfair. That’s another false argument. The Department of Defense has this authority to fire executives. This was in place in several previous administrations. Secretary (Robert) Gates used it during the Walter Reed scandal in 2007. We have heard of no executives being fired when the administrations changed so that is a false and ridiculous argument.”
She said executives would still have the right to appeal their termination, so punitive firings would be very difficult. Duff said the case of Sharon Helman is the perfect example of why reform is needed.
Helman deliberately submitted false information on the number of veteran suicides. Instead of being fired, she was promoted to director of the Phoenix VA, site of the initial reports of falsified wait lists for veterans.
With all of the promises of reform flowing out of Washington, when will America know if real progress is being made?
“We have over a quarter-million veterans who are appealing their claims. I want to see where they start getting a very solid ratio of when they grant a claim, it’s not being appealed,” Duff said. “That tells me you’re giving a quality assessment to the person who is making the claim. We’re going to see our veteran suicides drop. Right now, 22 vets a day are killing themselves due to mental health issues. Often there is a huge delay of up to three weeks getting in for a mental health exam within the VA. We’ll see that drop.”
“We will also see a greater quality in care. I expect that they’ll start serving these veterans and find out how long they’ve been getting care. And I expect the Senate and the House to be monitoring this a hell of a lot closer than they’ve been. Sadly, they’ve all gotten letters from veterans complaining about the VA, but it wasn’t until Phoenix that we heard them do anything about it.”

As citizens of a free country it is necessary that we acknowledge the sacrifices of the men and women in uniform that died to defend it. Civil society only survives in a world of violence and tyranny if there are rough men ready to do violence on our behalf.
Andrew Jackson, after winning the Battle of New Orleans, reminded us of the necessity of the soldier when he said our sacred liberties would be in trouble indeed if we only employ “lawyers” to defend the Constitution.
Days of memorial for those that sacrificed and died in service to their country are common in American history, stemming back to the Revolution. But the modern practice of celebrating Memorial Day as a national holiday was established after the Civil War as a way for Americans to pay tribute to their Union and Confederate dead. Some of these earliest commemorations were held at Arlington National Cemetery, which this year turns 150 years old.
However, as we look back and remember those that have died defending us we must note the famous line by philosopher George Santayana: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Modern Americans are being failed by an education system that no longer teaches about war and neglects its study to a dangerous degree.
Instruction regarding war, especially those fought by the United States, is vital for every educated citizen and not just the tiny number who now serve in the armed forces. It is important to not just respectfully mourn those lost in battle on this Memorial Day, but to understand why they fought and sacrificed.
There was a time in American history when almost every student would learn about the intricacies of American wars from a young age. In famous historian George Bancroft’s History of the United States of America, the standard history textbook in the 19th century, the battles of the American Revolution played almost more of a role than the ideas.
Bancroft focused on the sacrifice, toil, and hardship that George Washington’s troops faced and highlighted the necessity for this service to the new republic. This encouraged young Americans to join the ranks when their country called in the Civil War; they were inculcated with a belief that they owed a great debt to the previous generation for the great Constitution that protected their liberties and a duty to defend it for those that would come after. Without their sacrifices, and the service of generations of Americans, our grand experiment in liberty and government of, for, and by the people would have faded long ago.
Unfortunately, for modern American students, the “mystic chords of memory” connecting them with past defenders of liberty and the Constitution are being lost. How many today are taught about the suffering at Valley Forge, the heroism at Gettysburg’s Little Round Top, or the world-changing Invasion of Normandy that set a continent free?
Worse, students are left with a serious lack of insight into human nature and will be unprepared when war finally comes.
Thomas K. Lindsey, director at the Center for Higher Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, recently wrote about the frightening lack of military history education at American universities. “If the seeds of war are planted in human nature, the study of human nature, the humanities, needs to take account of it. For this reason, American history courses had always — up until recently — offered military-history courses,” he continued. “No more: Observers have noted an alarming decline in military-history courses in university history departments nationally.”
This lack of military history teaching is bad at the primary and secondary levels of education, but even worse at the university level where any focus on war itself is intentionally diminished. In an article by military historian Victor Davis Hanson he explains the results of a 2004 survey of the top 25 U.S. history departments:
When war does show up on university syllabi, it’s often about the race, class, and gender of combatants and wartime civilians. So a class on the Civil War will focus on the Underground Railroad and Reconstruction, not on Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. One on World War II might emphasize Japanese internment, Rosie the Riveter, and the horror of Hiroshima, not Guadalcanal and Midway.
Great works on war like Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage, and Carl Von Clausewitz’s On War are now utterly neglected.
The burying of military history in modern academia may be a result of the generally anti-war views on college campuses, or a result of it not fitting in with the overall ideological agenda, but regardless of the specific excuse, it is a great disservice to those who want to be educated about the consequences of human nature. Citizens must have insight in how to avoid unnecessary wars and win necessary ones. Hanson had it right when he said: “A wartime public illiterate about the conflicts of the past can easily find itself paralyzed in the acrimony of the present. Without standards of historical comparison, it will prove ill equipped to make informed judgments.”
So, this Memorial Day it is important for Americans to re-learn the lessons of war, especially as the conflict in Ukraine continues to heat up and great powers like Russia and China become increasingly belligerent. We serve the honored dead by becoming informed about our nation’s great and small conflicts, and serve ourselves by cultivating a stronger understanding of human nature and the horrors of war, which will be priceless when, inevitably, the next battle comes.

If liberals really believed in choice, they would not oppose giving parents the choice to place their children in charter schools; something they do vociferously. But self-protective teachers’ unions whose leaders know that under-performing public schools cannot stand up to the competition of charter schools use their political clout to eliminate them as an option. In other words, liberals use political power to ensure that parents have no choice when it comes to the education of their children. So much for choice.
If liberals really believed in choice, they would not attack black Americans who choose independence over government assistance, nor would they attack black Americans who choose conservatism over liberalism. Let a black American choose to identify himself on the basis of something other than race and that individual becomes a pariah among liberals. Let a successful black American choose to publically state that government dependence is just another way to keep the minority races in chains and he will be labeled a traitor or an Uncle Tom. Let a black American choose to join the Republican Party and the attacks on him will be unmerciful and unrelenting. So much for choice.
If liberals really believed in choice, they would not put so much effort into taking away the choice Americans are given by the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment allows Americans to decide for themselves whether they wish to be armed or not. Liberals have already been successful in making the choice to own guns more difficult than the Second Amendment suggests it should be. Apparently the only people liberals want to have freedom of choice when it comes to guns are the criminals who cause all of the gun-related problems liberals are always wringing their hands about. No law or regulation enacted or proposed by liberals has done anything to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The only people punished by gun laws are law-abiding citizens. So much for choice.
If liberals believed in choice, they would not have passed and enacted healthcare legislation that gives Americans no choice concerning health insurance. The misnamed Affordable Care Act was passed out of Congress without even a hint of support from Republicans and over the objections of a few thinking Democrats. Prior to passage of the AFA, Americans could choose what type of health insurance to buy and what types of coverage the insurance would provide. In fact, they could even choose to do without health insurance, which many healthy younger people did. Not anymore. Obamacare took away an American’s choice when it comes to health insurance. So much for choice.
If liberals really believed in choice, they would not have passed regulations that require gasoline to contain ethanol. In the old days Americans could pull into a gas station and choose between regular, mid-grade, and high-test gasoline. Now, no matter what grade of gasoline you choose it is likely to contain ethanol courtesy of the federal government. Despite the fact that scientists have known for some time that ethanol is not the environmentally safe alternative advocates claim it to be, liberals still oppose giving Americans freedom of choice when it comes to the gasoline they use in their cars, trucks, and gasoline powered equipment. So much for choice.
If liberals really believed in choice, they would not tell Americans what size soft drinks they are allowed to purchase, what type of toilet they have to buy, or what type of light bulbs they must use. This article has touched on only a few choices liberals have taken away from Americans; there are many, many more. Not only that, every day bureaucrats in the federal government are creating new and more burdensome regulations that will rob us of additional choices. Liberals make a lot of noise about being pro-choice but the facts belie their hypocritical claim. The truth is, liberals want you to be able to murder an innocent unborn baby and that is about it. As to other choices in your life, they will make them for you. So much for choice.
During the Revolutionary War against the British, it is said that only three percent of the population were involved in trying to win the nation’s freedom. That number reflects the percentage of patriots that actually volunteered to fight. There were many others, of course, that supported the cause, and contributed in other ways, but sadly, there was a huge percentage of Colonial Americans that sat on the sidelines with no opinion on the matter. There were even those who wished to remain loyal to the British Crown. While that may be difficult for some to fathom, it is true, and in some ways we find ourselves in an eerily similar situation today.
The vast majority of Americans have absolutely no idea what is going on in this country, nor do they even care. Among these people, are those who believe in centralized authority and support causes that undermine the very freedom our forefathers fought to secure for them; a system of government, I might add, that protects their rights to do so. These people are feverishly working to replace our constitutional republic with a so called “social democracy,” which, in all honesty, is just a nicer way to say “socialism.”
Just as it was in the late 1700’s when a brave few had the courage to declare people should be free, only a few are aware of the perils we face today. As we attempt to bring attention to the massive usurpations of power committed by our government, they attempt to demonize and ridicule us by calling us terrorists and extremists in an effort to win a public relations war.
Unfortunately, the masses are so inundated with entertainment propaganda, and have been so conditioned to just go along instead of questioning authority, that they are falling for it. Their attitudes towards the nation and the freedom our troops have fought for is contemptible, and as we face the ever encroaching grip of authoritarianism, I can’t help but feel that’s what this nation deserves because it has forsaken all that our relatives have fought and died for. No American service member ever volunteered for war, believing they were fighting for socialism folks. There are some very disturbing events occurring in our nation and in this article I am going discuss the latest developments.
Those paying attention, the tiny three percent, realize that we are rapidly becoming a militarized police state. This is one promise that President Barack Hussein Obama (the name sends a chill down my spine) has kept. He has created a civilian security force that is just as well funded, and just as powerful as the United States military by arming every single government agency. The latest to join the ranks is The United States Department of Agriculture. They recently request of “submachine guns” with 30 round magazines and ballistic body armor. How the majority of Americans are not alarmed by this is disturbing in and of itself, but that’s beside the point. They did not request this armament for target practice folks. You would think that liberals, and their phony quest for human rights, equality and freedom would be up in arms over this. The silence, however, is deafening. While many people may scoff in disbelief by this alarming news, or ask why the USDA would need such weapons, the reason is obvious to those paying attention, the tiny three percent.
In Morgan County Indiana, a Sheriff Deputy inadvertently let the cat out of the bag by describing the reasons the Sheriff’s Department needs to have militarized, mine resistant vehicles. During an interview, Sgt. Dan Downing said the department needs these vehicles because of the combat vets returning home that could use IED’s to defeat police. (Uhh, he said what?) What does that mean?
“Did you get that lunacy? “….combat vets returning home that could use IED’s to defeat police.” Where do this get this garbage? JB
Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, a report released in 2009 by the Obama Department of Homeland Security, calls veterans potential terrorists for several reasons, one of which is returning home to little or no economic opportunity. Why is this not something America is concerned about? It’s probably because American Idol is on tonight. As is the case with everything else, only the tiny three percent seem to give a dam.
In Mexico, one of our Marines is being held prisoner because he got lost and accidentally crossed the border. He had legally owned firearms in the trunk of his car. Mexican authorities arrested him and threw him in a jail cell, and our state department has done nothing.
This is a government that bends over backwards to accommodate illegal immigrants, many of whom have committed horrific crimes in our country. They talk down to us and act as if we should be ashamed for suggesting they follow the rule of law and secure the border. Yet, one of our combat vets is being held in a Mexican prison and they do nothing. What makes it worse is the fact that I called Congressman Jim Bridenstein’s (R-OK) office and the girl who answered the phone was completely clueless that this was even happening. On top of that, she had the nerve to talk to me as if I was rude for suggesting that perhaps she should know. What are we paying these people for? Why would anyone care about one Marine vet being held prisoner in Mexico? After all, there are more important issues like amnesty to deal with, right America? Don’t worry, the tiny three percent will speak for him.
Finally, if this isn’t enough to get you to understand just what we face, then you deserve what you get. At the latest “White Privilege conference,” speaker Amer Ahmed says that resisting jihad is racist. America, Muslims are murdering Christians overseas, (read another instance of this here,) demanding the implementation of Sharia Law in America, and demanding that we abandon our culture while they come here and attempt to make us seem racist for opposing their radicalism.
Many of you are probably not even aware of any of this. Others will call me a radical or an extremist for discussing it. Yet, the only people, at this point, whose opinion I even care about anymore are those that have been brave enough to take a stand; those who have stood to speak the truth about what is going on. We are not radicals or terrorists. In fact, we want what you want. We want our children to be able to grow up in a prosperous America without the burden of a $17 trillion debt on their shoulders. We want to live in a world where there is peace, and people respect the opinions and rights of others.
Sadly, the system, left to us by our founders, cannot exist if the masses are not paying attention to what is happening in the nation. Freedom requires vigilance and commitment to holding those we send to represent us accountable for what they do. We have actually reached a point where the selfish desires of the population have caused them to forsake the freedoms we once enjoyed for false promises of security, and sadly, just as Benjamin Franklin said, we are now left with neither. Don’t worry, there are people who are committed to exposing fraud and corruption, and standing for liberty in the face of tyranny, the tiny three percent.

They insist we don’t need another committee to investigate the attack—but they’re really afraid of the incompetence the truth will reveal.I concur with our colleague Kirsten Powers, who writes that the glib, evasive, and arrogant posture of the White House and the president’s supporters has brought about the present Benghazi inquiry. The American people were told repeatedly in the days and weeks following the attack that it was the result of an offensive video‚ an assessment the president and secretary of state surely knew within hours was far from the truth.
Rather than level with the American people and admit what senior administration officials knew—as well as taking steps to protect our diplomatic assets abroad—the Obama administration stuck with the line that GM was alive, Osama bin Laden was dead, and al Qaeda was on the run. It was hard to square that circle when the Libyan prime minister and our deputy chief of mission in Libya immediately asserted that Benghazi was a preplanned terrorist attack.
Returning to Tomasky’s piece, I was incredulous at his view of the Benghazi attacks and the prism through which he sees the world. First he tells us:
“Benghazi is and has been for some time a witch hunt that perverts all notions of democratic accountability and that obviously carries one purpose and one purpose only—the humiliation or worse of as many Democrats as possible, preferably the big cheeses (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton).”
Let’s start with the notion that this is a witch hunt with the sole purpose of humiliating as many Democrats as possible.
Ambassador Chris Stevens was a political appointee of President Obama and worked under the immediate supervision of Secretary State Hillary Clinton. Democrats, both. Neither Obama nor Clinton have explained why their political appointee’s requests to get security in Benghazi increased were denied. The American people deserve to know the truth. That is hardly a partisan question, but it could expose incompetence once the real answers are uncovered.
Next Tomasky tells us that the Benghazi attack has been probed with two Senate reports and eight House reports. Case closed, right? What he doesn’t tell us is that Secretary of State Clinton has not been interviewed directly under oath. He mentions the investigation chaired by Admiral Mike Mullen and Thomas Pickering but fails to note that the secretary did not make herself available for questioning. Surely one cannot have a comprehensive review of the actions and activities undertaken by the State Department when the secretary is not part of the review process. For that matter, isn’t it odd that none of the personnel from the diplomatic compound in Benghazi have been interviewed on the record? What was their experience that evening, and did they witness a protest sparked by a video? A Select Committee on Benghazi will certainly provide these answers.
Tomasky tells us that Susan Rice, then U.N. ambassador to the United Nations, merely told the American people what the CIA told her to say about Benghazi. I’m sorry to say that’s not true. The truth, sadly, is that the Obama White House misled the American people when it redacted a lawfully subpoenaed document that was disclosed only after a lawsuit by Judicial Watch. In that document, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes pushed the notion that the attack was triggered by a spontaneous demonstration, not a breakdown in policy. The first three goals in the document, which was withheld from Congress, were:
“To convey that the United States is doing everything we can to protect our people and our facilities abroad;
“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy;
“To show we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast during these protests.”
Perhaps Tomasky can tell us how the United States has done everything to protect our people and our facilities abroad when our own State Department denied the ambassador’s requests for additional security. Perhaps he can show us how the protests were rooted in an Internet video, a claim our intelligence services and military officials immediately knew to be false. Or perhaps he can explain how the Obama administration has brought “people who harm Americans to justice” when The New York Times was able to interview a terrorist ringleader about the attack as he sipped a strawberry frappe barely a month after the attack. The grand total of those apprehended or held responsible to date has been zero.
I’ll tell you what’s BS: The Obama administration has misled, dissembled, and otherwise given the finger to the families of those who lost their lives that night.
Finally, despite all the congressional Democrats’ snickering and posturing this week, a Select Committee on Benghazi can answer one question that remains unanswered: Where was the president of the United States the evening of September 11, 2012, and what steps did he take that evening?
We know from former National Security Council spokesman Tommy “Dude, That Was Two Years Ago” Vietor that the president was in the Executive Mansion but not in the Situation Room on the evening in question. Did he monitor the events unfolding overseas? Was he briefed throughout the evening? Why didn’t he order a military rescue mission? Only after the attack occurred did we find out it spanned nearly eight hours. Surely military assets could have been sent to Libya from Italy or elsewhere. Did the commander in chief ask military assets to stand down?
“The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense that some on the left are starting to rethink the breadth of the media exemption and internet communications,” he added. SEE INTERVIEW HERE:
Noting the success of sites like the Drudge Report, Goodman said that protecting conservative media, especially those on the internet, “matters to me because I see the future going to the democratization of media largely through the internet. They can compete with the big boys now, and I have seen storm clouds that the second you start to regulate them, there is at least the possibility or indeed proclivity for selective enforcement, so we need to keep the media free and the internet free.”
All media has long benefited from an exemption from FEC rules, thereby allowing outlets to pick favorites in elections and promote them without any limits or disclosure requirements like political action committees.
But Goodman cited several examples where the FEC has considered regulating conservative media, including Sean Hannity‘s radio show and Citizens United’s movie division. Those efforts to lift the media exemption died in split votes at the politically evenly divided board, often with Democrats seeking regulation.
Liberals over the years have also pushed for a change in the Federal Communications Commission‘s “fairness doctrine” to cut of conservative voices, and retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has delighted Democrats recently with a proposed Constitutional amendment that some say could force the media to stop endorsing candidates or promoting issues.
“The picking and choosing has started to occur,” said Goodman. “There are some in this building that think we can actually regulate” media, added Goodman, a Republican whose chairmanship lasts through December. And if that occurs, he said, “then I am concerned about disparate treatment of conservative media.”
He added, “Truth be told, I want conservative media to have the same exemption as all other media.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.
Why is it that teachers seem to be so uneducated about the trampling of the rights of their students? If they paid any attention to the media, they would see a plethora of cases where teachers were found to be wrong when they exerted their personal agenda and violated the constitutional rights of students. They expect students to learn what’s going on in the world around them so why aren’t the teachers practicing what they preach?
This rant is prompted by yet another teacher violating the constitutional and First Amendment rights of a second grade student at Hamilton Elementary School in the Houston suburb of Cypress, Texas.
During a ‘read to myself’ time in class, a second grade girl was reading her favorite book, the Bible. When the teacher saw her, she took the Bible away from the girl. The parents of the girl contacted the Liberty Institute instead of contacting the school directly. They have asked that their identity be protected for fear of retaliation of some sort.
When attorneys with the Liberty Institute contacted the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, school officials informed all district employees that it is okay for students to read their Bibles during independent reading time.
Michael Berry, Senior Counsel with the Liberty Institute said that the school library where the incident took place contains copies of the Bible for students to check out and read, prompting him to ask:
“So if it’s appropriate for their own library, why on Earth would it not be appropriate for their own students?”
One parent who has a child attending the school, Jennifer Muse commented about the incident when she heard the news:
“They are letting them read the Hunger Games, that’s kids killing kids, why can’t she read the Bible.”
However, another parent, obviously a liberal Democrat believes the teacher responded appropriately because of the so-called separation of church and state. This demonstrates just how much some people have been brainwashed by anti-Christian liberals.
First off there never was a separation of church and state and secondly, the First Amendment gives the student the right to read her Bible on her free time without school or teacher interference. I suspect that the teacher involved was either ignorant of the law or had her own personal anti-Christian agenda. Unfortunately, there are many of both kinds of teachers in the public schools and more times than not they are getting away with it.
This is another reason why I believe that every teacher should be required to take a course or courses in constitutional law so that they know what is and isn’t allowed before they ever set foot in a classroom. Then ignorance would no longer be an excuse and teachers who try to push their own personal agenda on their students can be singled out and dealt with accordingly.
Written
on March 21, 2015