The day’s top political news:
53 Republican Congressmen demand firing of 'safe schools czar' Kevin Jennings
The lawmakers accused Jennings of "pushing a pro-homosexual agenda" and said that Jennings's past writings exhibit a record that makes him unfit for the position.
Jennings has come under scrutiny from conservative personalities like talk show host Sean Hannity for his handling of an alleged incident involving underage sex, as well as Jennings's own reported personal history with drugs and alcohol — charges the GOP members echoed.
Jennings, who founded the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teacher Network (GLISTeN), was appointed by Obama to head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, a position Jennings assumed in July.
U.S. troop funds diverted to Democrat pet projects such as a Kennedy memorial
Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.
Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance "a disgrace. The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines," he says in a statement.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/15/troop-funds-diverted-to-pet-projects/.
Obama calls for $250 payments to seniors
Obama is calling on Congress to approve $250 payments to more than 50 million seniors to make up for no increase in Social Security next year.
The Social Security Administration is scheduled to announce there will be no cost of living increase next year. By law, increases are pegged to inflation, which has been negative this year.
Obama's proposal is similar to several bills in Congress. The $250 payments would also go to those receiving veterans benefits, disability benefits, railroad retirees and retired public employees who don't receive Social Security. Recipients would be limited to one payment, even if they qualified for more.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091015/D9BB77S00.html
Opinion:
Obama’s White House – demanding they get what they want from Capitol Hill. Dissent will not be tolerated.
Democrats on Capitol Hill are being hammered by White House boss, Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel is a product, of course, of Chicago’s Democrat Machine, a bare knuckled bunch of big city political operatives who don’t take “no” for an answer to any question. If you are a Democrat in Congress, you had better kneel to Emanuel’s demands, or be prepared to pay a heavy penalty of some sort.
Hey, that’s the way they do things in Chicago politics. It’s a political operation that sneers at things such as compassion and which is driven by a thirst for political power, not government achievement per se.
I’d hate to be a first term Democrat Congressman today – especially one such as Alan Grayson who sits in a chair that can go either way when the votes are counted. (Of course that’s IF the votes are not counted and tabulated by Democrat gangs such as Obama’s own ACORN).
Imagine, if you will, how a Saturday Night Live skit depicting how ACORN and the Chicago Democrat Mob might count votes:
“Chicago Democrat Gang member: ‘How many votes did our guy Sam get in your precinct?’
ACORN official: ‘Hmm just how many votes does your guy Sam need from this precinct?’
Chicago Democrat Gang member: ‘we hoped he’d carry your precinct by about 250 votes.
ACORN official: ‘funny thing, that’s exactly what he got. Now about that union contract we were discussing?’
Chicago Democrat Gang member: ‘you’ve got the contract, of course. Nice doing business with you’”
Needless to say, that’s totally a product of my imagination and I cannot prove any such thing has happened. But I have done business politically in Illinois, and I’ve seen the Chicago Democrat Machine in action. Of course, we’ve ALL seen ACORN in action in this secret video tapes in which they explained how to cheat on taxes and offered help and support in sneaking illegal alien teens – very young teens – into the country to work as prostitutes – and ACORN was prepared to facilitate the hooker scam in states all over the country.
Thus Rahm Emanuel confronts Democrat Congressmen with a reputation for heavy-handed dealings and for getting his way on things.
No wonder the Obama White House reputation is what it is. For what it’s worth, Rahm has a brother, Ezekiel, who is a major proponent of the “death panels” mentioned by Sarah Palin. “Zeke the Freak”, as I call him, is big on demanding old people “just go ahead and die”. Zeke sees them as taking up assets and access to physicians that should be saved for younger people who can offer more to “the state”.
Obama has expressed similar sentiments – holding old people have “an obligation to die and get out of the way”.
Meanwhile, I received an email today that reported the Obama White House will have no Christmas trees this year. Instead, they will have “Holiday Trees”. They also are said to make a point that donated ornaments should avoid religious terms or citations.
Be assured, I am doing all I can to run down this rumor. If it proves accurate, be certain you will hear a great deal more.
I’m on it. Big time.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
The kids had rehearsed the words to the point they remembered them from when they were sung during Black History Month. That, my friends, is indoctrination to accept the "hope" provided under Messiah Obama.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/14/parents-hope-meeting-assuage-obama-song-concerns/
Parents at New Jersey School Hope Meeting Will Assuage Obama Song Concerns
Joshua Rhett Miller
FOXNews.com
A New Jersey mother of a second-grader who was seen in an unauthorized video singing the praises of President Obama said she hopes to get some answers at a public meeting held by the township's board of education.
The mother of a second-grader says she hopes to get some answers Wednesday night as to why her daughter was videotaped with the rest of her class singing the praises of President Obama at a New Jersey elementary school last spring.
Andrea Ciemnolonski, of Burlington, N.J., said she'll attend a 6 p.m. "work session" held by the Burlington Township Board of Education, which she hopes will assuage her concerns regarding security at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School.
"I still have questions," Ciemnolonski told Foxnews.com. "Mostly I just want to see what the school is going to do to improve security at the school. Clearly, if the children were videotaped, there's something wrong. They should not have been -- that's not permitted."
Ciemnoloski's 8-year-old daughter was one of roughly 20 children captured on a YouTube video singing songs overflowing with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," repeatedly chanting the president's name and celebrating his accomplishments, including his "great plans" to "make this country's economy No. 1 again." Critics of the videotape have complained that the performance was tantamount to indoctrination of young children.
The song was first performed as part of a Black History Month program in February and was reprised and videotaped without consent on March 23, when author Charisse Carney-Nunes visited the school in recognition of Women's History Month.
In a statement released Monday, the Burlington Township School District said parents had received prior notice of Carney-Nunes' visit and that one of her guests videotaped the performance "without knowledge or permission" of staff members. The district and the school have not replied to multiple requests for details of the notices sent to parents in advance of the performance.
District officials also dismissed allegations of indoctrination, saying there was nothing "systematic" about the classroom activity.
"After an investigation of this event, we found that no form of indoctrination took place, and there was no intent for indoctrination," the statement read. "There was no intention to make any political statement or promote a political agenda at all."
The statement continued, "We determined that there no was no malicious intent or behavior on anyone's part regarding this song."
Despite those claims, a crowd of approximately 75 people protested outside the school on Monday, chanting slogans like "No politics in the classroom" and "Reassign the principal."
Gina Pronchick, whose 8-year-old son Jimmy was also in the controversial video, told the Burlington County Times that school officials "pushed their political views" on the students. Her husband, Jim, said the investigation into the video has been far from thorough.
"I'd like to see Principal [Denise] King reassigned," he told the paper. "I'd like to see [Superintendent Christopher Manno] reprimanded for this one-sided investigation, and I'd like the school to at least apologize for what happened and admit there was a violation of policy."
Multiple calls to Manno and King were not returned.
Liz Scott, a spokeswoman for the school district, confirmed that the work session will focus on the "issue" of the videotape.
"It will be on the agenda," she told Foxnews.com Monday. "We're ready for our public."
Scott said no protests are planned for the event to her knowledge and that it was unclear how many people would attend. She also said the district would be unavailable to produce copies of the notices purportedly sent out in advance of the March event.
The commissioner of New Jersey's Department of Education ordered a review on Sept. 24 following the posting of the video. In a statement to Foxnews.com, Education Department spokeswoman Beth Auerswald said Commissioner Lucille Davy directed Manno to review the matter. Auerswald said Davy wants to ensure that students can celebrate Black History Month without "inappropriate partisan politics in the classroom."
"In addition, it is our understanding the teacher in question retired at the end of the last school year," the statement continued.
Auerswald declined to indicate exactly what the review would entail, or its possible ramifications.
Ciemnoloski, meanwhile, said she doesn't think school officials intended to indoctrinate students with the song, but she added that's not the issue she is most concerned about.
"Someone wasn't paying attention to this author and her entourage, as it were," she said. "Someone needs to be keeping a closer eye on visitors in the school."
2.
http://townhall.com/columnists/TonyBlankley/2009/10/14/washington_is_nuts
Washington Is Nuts
Tony Blankley
Want to hear a real laugher? Despite the current disharmony in politics, there's one policy on which all of Washington agrees. Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, president and Congress all agree that after last fall's financial crisis, the federal government has to regulate the financial industry more closely to protect our economy from risk of systemic financial collapse.
Here's the joke. As boom- and bust-prone as high finance always has been and remains, the greatest systemic risk to our economy is not Wall Street.
It's the growing federal debt (and weakening dollar) being enacted by those Washington politicians -- the ones who want to protect us from Wall Street.
It soon may be not a risk but a certainty of generations-long economic stagnation and hard times as a direct result of "unsustainable" and ever-growing national debt, driven by a federal budget almost half of which is to be paid for each year by borrowing money -- primarily from China -- and already weakening the dollar such that foreigners are trying to get rid of their dollars any way they can.
Don't take my word for it. In June, the Congressional Budget Office published "The Long-Term Budget Outlook," its summary reading in part:
"The federal budget is on an unsustainable path -- meaning that federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. ... Rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly. ...
"... Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress income growth. ... The accumulation of debt would seriously harm the economy. Alternatively, if spending grew as projected and taxes were raised in tandem, tax rates would have to reach levels never seen in the United States (highest marginal income tax rate so far: 94 percent, in 1944-45). High tax rates would slow the growth of the economy, making the spending burden harder to bear."
And yet the same Congress and president who want to stop the banks from taking too much risk cannot stop themselves from ever more deficits. Indeed, so intoxicated -- nay, hypnotized! -- by debt is the current government that it is not even proposing to try to cut back.
Last week saw, at the same time:
1) the world shuddering about the debt-driven weakening dollar ("The biggest story in the world economy is the continuing fall of the U.S. dollar, or at least it is everywhere outside of Washington, D.C., the place most responsible for its declining value." -- The Wall Street Journal) and 2) Washington cheering Sen. Max Baucus' health bill's spending levels ("Health Care Bill Gets Green Light in Cost Analysis" -- The New York Times).
That's right. The federal government is giving the "green light" for the country to drive to the poorhouse -- and drive there, I would argue, by way of the lunatic asylum. Are they nuts? Consider a few details.
Before the Baucus health bill is enacted, $9.3 trillion of newly created deficit already has been added to the national debt. The Baucus bill is considered a triumph of careful budgeting because it may cost only $829 billion -- and will not add to that unsustainable deficit because it is to be paid for by cutting Medicare and other programs by about $400 billion and raising taxes primarily on health care insurance by about $400 billion.
Now, forget for the moment that even the Congressional Budget Office doesn't believe its own numbers.
(Last week, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote to Baucus, warning, "Long-term budgetary impact could be quite different if those provisions were ultimately changed." That is, CBO must score the cuts called for by the bill. However, Congress invariably fails to actually implement the painful cuts, but it does keep or increase the benefits. That is why entitlement programs always cost much more than is predicted.)
But let's assume the numbers are real. This is still insane. Remember, until a few months ago, President Barack Obama insisted on passing health care legislation this year (during the economic crisis we are still in) because it would lower overall costs -- a necessary step for a return to a healthy economy.
But neither he nor Congress could design a bill that saved money. So they are settling for not adding to the "unsustainable" current deficit.
Here's a thought: As shrinking the unsustainable deficit is a critical prerequisite for a healthy economy, why not just enact the $400 billion of Medicare cuts and $400 billion of health insurance tax increases -- thereby reducing the 10-year deficit by about $1 trillion (when you count reduced interest payments) -- but don't provide the new entitlement benefits that were the purpose of the bill?
Helping out the uninsured might be a nice notion someday. But the first priority now is to avoid permanently destroying our economic capacity -- as we rapidly are doing -- by the insanity of adding to entitlement programs while the dollar begins to fail and the CBO predicts we never will recover from the current debt and deficit levels. So cut the 10-year deficit by that almost $1 trillion.
Then incrementally move the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security to 70 by 2030. That would reduce their costs by about 3 percent of gross domestic product, which is about what it would take to keep them functioning without bankrupting America. It's a start.
Stop the madness. Don't increase benefits; cut costs. Now. It's doable -- except for the fact that Washington is nuts.
3.
http://action.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147487202
Bryan Fischer-Focal Point
What Hitler Knew
Bryan Fischer
Director of Issues Analysis, American Family Association
All of us agree that the left has made its major gains in eroding religious liberty in America through activist judges. What they have not been able to gain at the ballot box, or through the legislative process, or through their elected representatives, they have gained through out-of-control judges who legislate from the bench.
These judges, taking a twisted, distorted and upside-down view of the First Amendment, have removed prayer, Bible reading and the Ten Commandments from public schools, and are rapidly stripping Americans of what remains of the first liberty the Founders guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights.
In order for us to recognize judicial activism when it comes to the First Amendment, we need to have a clear understanding of what it does and does not mean. I’d like to suggest a plain, simple, straightforward understanding of this amendment as the Framers intended so that it will be clearly evident when judges are tampering with it.
I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the radio, but I can read.
Most of us are familiar with the wording of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The most overlooked, ignored, forgotten and yet most important word in this amendment is the first one: “Congress.” “Congress shall make no law.”
The only entity the Founders restrained in the First Amendment was the Congress of the United States. No entity or individual other than Congress is restrained in any way by the First Amendment.
Do not miss the significance of this. It is constitutionally impossible for a governor, a state legislature, a mayor, a city council, a principal, a teacher, or a student speaking at graduation to violate the First Amendment, for one simple reason: they’re not Congress. The restrictions of the First Amendment do not even apply to them.
Some will surely cite the Incorporation Doctrine, which is based on the plainly false theory that the 14th Amendment applies the restrictions of the First Amendment to the States. But the Incorporation Doctrine itself is clearly a pernicious and lethal exhibition of judicial activism, which nobody thought of until 1947 when it came to the repression of religious liberty.
Somehow the use of the Fourteenth Amendment to stifle religious expression at the state and local level had escaped the finest legal minds in America from 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted, until the Everson ruling of 1947, a span of 79 years.
Now the Constitution did not suddenly change in 1947; what changed was the willingness of hyperactive Justices to start finding emanations and penumbras in the Constitution, fabricated out of whole cloth by their fevered judicial imagination.
We know as a matter of historical record that the Fourteenth Amendment does not incorporate the First Amendment against the states. We know this because in 1875 James Blaine, a senator from Maine, tried to push his Blaine Amendment through Congress.
His proposed wording read, “No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Do not miss the implication of this. If the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment had intended to incorporate the First Amendment against the states, there simply would have been no need – just seven years later – for the Blaine Amendment. Sen. Blaine simply would have been told, “Hey, didn’t you get the memo? The Fourteenth Amendment has already done this.”
So clearly, Congress had no intent in passing the Fourteenth Amendment of clamping down on religious freedom at the state or local level.
Even more telling is this indisputable historical fact: Sen. Blaine’s amendment did not make it through Congress. Congress rejected his effort to take the First Amendment and use it to squeeze the life out of religious freedom at the state and local level.
So if Congress and Congress alone can violate the First Amendment, how can it do that? The Founders were clear, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The only way Congress can violate the First Amendment is to “establish a religion.”
Now when the Founders used the term “religion,” they did not use it, as we often do, to refer to religion in general, let alone to mere public references to God, as the ACLU argues...No, what they meant by “religion” was one of the various denominations or “sects” of Christianity. At the time of the founding, 99.8% of the population were followers, to one degree of intensity or another, of the Christian faith. Almost all of the other 0.2% were followers of the Jewish faith. Virtually 100% of the American people at the time of the founding were adherents of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The Founders used “religion” in much the same way as I and my friends did on the playground when I was young. We’d ask each other, “What religion are you?” by which we meant, “Are you Baptist, or Lutheran, or Methodist or Roman Catholic?”
The term “establishment” also had a clear, precise, unambiguous and technical meaning at the time. To “establish” a “religion” meant to pick one Christian denomination, give it preference in law, and compel citizens to support it with their tax dollars.
Our Founders had seen in England the kind of religious tyranny and repression that results from an established church and were determined not to repeat that mistake in the our young nation.
So only Congress can violate the First Amendment, and the only way it can do that is to select one Christian denomination, make it the official church of the United States, and compel citizens to support it with their tax dollars.
Don’t miss this: if Congress doesn’t do that, it can do anything it wants. It has complete constitutional liberty to engage in any kind of religious expression it chooses as long as it does not establish an official church.
Now why is all this important? Why is it so important for us to fight to protect genuine religious liberty in America?
Here are two official slogans or mottos. As I rehearse them for you, ask yourself where these originated.
• “Politics do not belong in the church.”
• “The church must be separate from the state.”
These mottos did not come from the ACLU, nor from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, nor from the Freedom from Religion Foundation..
No, these slogans, word for word, came directly from the mind of Adolph Hitler.
These were official slogans of the Nazi Party, adopted in the mid-1930s and relentlessly hammered into the minds of the compliant German population by the Nazi propaganda machine.
In essence, what Hitler said to German pastors was this: “I don’t care what you teach your congregations, as long as you don’t talk about politics, and as long as you keep your voice inside the four walls of your churches.”
Why did Hitler do this? For one simple reason. He knew that the only force in Germany which could keep him from fulfilling his totalitarian ambitions was the church of Jesus Christ. He knew that if could not silence the voice of the church, he could not exercise total domination over the German people.
He also knew that if he could silence the voice of the church, nothing could stand in his way.
The church and its leaders meekly capitulated to this form of tyranny, and 25 million people died as a result, six million of them Jews.
Secular fundamentalists in the United States know the same thing that Hitler knew. The only thing that stands in their way of the total takeover of our culture, the final removal of any mention of God from the public arena, and the shredding of the last remains of our Judeo-Christian value system, is the church of Jesus Christ.
I once had a lesbian activist say these exact words to me when I was pastoring: “I don’t care what you teach or believe as long as you keep it inside the four walls of your church.” In essence, she was saying, “Your church belongs to you, but the public square belongs to us.”
They know that if they cannot silence the voice of the church, they cannot succeed. And they also know that if they can silence, neutralize and castrate the voice of the church, nothing can stand in their way.
I submit that the future of our country, as well as the future we leave to our children and grandchildren, hinges on this one question and this one question alone: will the church allow its voice to be intimidated into silence, or will our spiritual leaders once again take their prophetic role in our society and speak truth to power outside the four walls of the church?
Will the leaders of the church once again speak the unchanging and unchangeable truths of God and his Word into the public square, declaring his truth without apology, compromise, or concession? Will our pulpits once again flame with righteousness, or will the church allow its voice to be strangled by the strident voices of the left?
Our future as a nation hinges on the answer to that question. And so we turn our eyes to the leaders of the church of Jesus Christ, and we ask, “What will you do? What will your answer be?”
